Staff management

Staff management is the management of subordinates in an organization. In large organizations, many of these functions are performed by a specialist department, such as Personnel or Human Resources, but all line managers are still required to supervise and administer the activities and well-being of the staff that report to them.^[1]

Staff managers include people who lead revenue consuming departments (for example: accounting, customer service, or human resources). Staff managers serve the line managers of the organization in an advisory or support capacity by providing them with information and advice. Staff managers usually do not make operating decisions.

Staff management may involve moving a workforce around and utilizing Human Resources to do so. Within staff management there is also line management, which involves the hierarchy system of the organization. Human Resources and Line Management are often aligned as they both involve employees of any given organization.

See explanation of staff and line.

Human resources

"Human resources" (HR) refers to any activity within a business, company or organization used to deal with the management of its employees. These tasks can include employment, training, retention and other tasks to deal with employees inside of an organization. Organizations tend to see Human Resources as a fundamental area to consider when it comes to growth and improvement. A number of large-scale global or international organizations might also do internal job postings which can save finances and time.

The main goal of human resourcing is to 'drive innovation, productivity and share price through mobilizing the workforce towards excellence'.^[2] This was recognized by David Ulrich, who is thought to be the pioneer of HR (Human Resource Champions Book 1996). Human resources, in general, has great importance for almost every business or organization. Another name for Human Resources can also be Personnel, though this is outdated.

Human resources is so highly valued that some organizations share HR systems with other organizations through outsourcing. This creates an environment similar to a partnership as they may share similar systems and gain the ability to transfer employees to areas where they are most needed.

Human resource planning is needed for staffing, to consider the skills, knowledge and attributes needed when hiring new employees. It will also look at the number of employees needed and who they believe are the most qualified.

Line management

Line management is a chain of commands within the hierarchy system in the organization. The person of highest command in an organization is the CEO. It can be difficult to transfer information from the lowest people in an organization to the CEO, as the information flow to the CEO is very limited and only shares information among higher position stakeholders (for example, directors, chairmen, system or product developers and other stakeholders who have authority). Lower level employees (workers and those that tend to have more of a relationship with the customers or the audience for whom they are trying to direct the product) receive their information over the line of command. Another name for them is the workforce, being that they are mainly the people who help with the sales or manufacturing of the organization.

The workforce consists of managers, sales assistants, manufacturers and shop assistants. Global organizations like Fujitsu, Apple, Samsung, Sony, Accenture, Tecos, Sainsburys and other corporations/businesses have a large workforce.

Responsibilities and liabilities

The organization is responsible for everyone in the HR department. They are responsible for employees if something goes wrong. Employees have to receive compensation for the incident that have occurred. Examples include when organization have health incidents or when companies are making people work beyond their capabilities. This can cause potential safety hazards, such as the Primark factory in Bangladesh collapsing on April 24 in 2005. Although the amount of people who died in the Primark incident amounted to 1100, the company was forced to pay the victims £12 million in damages^[3]

This was considered a liability and became a debt that the company was forced to pay. One thing you could say about Primark is that their Human Resources systems are spread out and very hard to monitor. This is why large corporations have a number of issues when it comes to ethics and accountability. Companies such as Primark, are so large that one part of the business maybe corrupt and the stakeholders, CEO, or the main firm may not have the information about the firm or factory abroad.

If an organization owes money to an employee as compensation because of mistreatment, then that is a liability for the business. This becomes an issue of workers rights and ethics.

See also

• Line management

References

1.http://www.businessdictionary.com/definition/human-resources.html 2.http://www.computerworld.com/article/2551850/security0/5-things-your-hr-people-should-know.html 3.http://www.humanresourcesexplained.com/what-is-hr-2/ 4. http://keeping-agile.com/2012/08/24/the-imperative-of-having-an-agile-organization-structure/ 5.http://www.agmanager.info/hr/management/Everything_HR.pdf 6.http://www.labourbehindthelabel.org/staff/item/1140-bangladesh-building-collapse-kills-over-80-workers-primark-and-mango-labels-found 7.http://www.accenture.com/gb-en/Pages/service-bpo-human-resources-overview-summary.aspx?src=myhttp://www.businessdictionary.com/definition/staff-manager.html 8.http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/mar/16/primark-payout-victims-rana-plaza-bangladesh 9.http://www.investopedia.com/terms/l/liability.asp 10.https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/StaffingCategorically:Management