PERSONNEL ADMINISTRATION

the management of the people in working organizations. It is also frequently called personnel management, industrial relations, employee relations, and manpower management. It represents a major subsystem in the general management system, in which it refers to the management of human resources, as distinguished from financial or material resources. The term may be used to refer to selected specific functions or activities assigned to specialized personnel officers or departments. It is also used to identify the entire scope of management policies and programs in the recruitment, allocation, leadership, and direction of manpower. Personnel administration begins with the definition of the required quantities of particular personal capabilities. Thereafter, people must be found, recruited, selected, trained or retrained, negotiated with, counseled, led, directed, committed, rewarded, transferred, promoted, and finally released or retired. In many of these relations, managers deal with their associates as individuals (the field takes its name in part from this type of relationship). In some working organizations, however, employees are represented by unions, and managers bargain with these associations. Such collective-bargaining relationships are generally described as labour relations. Current practice shows wide variation in the range of responsibilities assigned to personnel or industrial-relations departments. Major areas of personnel department responsibilities include: (1) organizing-devising and revising organizational structures of authority and functional responsibility and facilitating two-way, reciprocal, vertical, and horizontal communication; (2) planning-forecasting personnel requirements in terms of numbers and special qualifications, scheduling inputs, and anticipating the need for appropriate managerial policies and programs; (3) staffing, or manning-analyzing jobs, developing job descriptions and specifications, appraising and maintaining an inventory of available capabilities, recruiting, selecting, placing, transferring, demoting, promoting, and thus assuring qualified manpower when and where it is needed; (4) training and development-assisting team members in their continuing personal growth, from pre-employment, preparatory job training to executive development programs; (5) collective bargaining-negotiating agreements and following through in day-to-day administration; (6) rewarding-providing financial and nonfinancial incentives for individual commitment and contribution; (7) general administration-developing appropriate styles and patterns of leadership throughout the organization; (8) auditing, reviewing, and researching-evaluating current performance and procedures in order to facilitate control and improve future practice. Individual personnel departments may be assigned varying degrees of responsibility in a few, many, or all of these areas. In areas assigned to them, personnel departments exercise various levels of authority. Some officers and departments create policies and make major decisions and determinations. Some study and recommend policies and create and direct appropriate programs. The personnel vice president may be a member of the executive cabinet; he may be expected to assume leadership in and responsibility for all manpower management policy and programs. Other personnel departments are essentially "staff," or advisory; their activities are restricted to recommending, consulting, and providing such specified technical and professional services as are requested by operating managers. Among the most common examples, the personnel staff (when, as, and if requested and authorized by operating managers) analyzes jobs and prepares job specifications, visits sources of potential employees, conducts preliminary screening interviews, administers tests, supervises rating or appraisal programs, counsels employees, conducts training and development programs, negotiates agreements, monitors grievance settlements, maintains safety and accident control programs, administers employee benefits and services, prepares forecasts of future manpower requirements, recommends changes in organizational structures, supervises formal in-house communication, conducts employee attitude and morale surveys, and supplies other related services, sometimes including public relations.