Human Resources Management - A means to attain industrial harmony

INTRODUCTION – Human Resources Management

Human resources management is a function in organizations designed to maximize employee performance in service of an employer’s strategic objectives. Human Resources Management is primarily concerned with the management of people within organizations, focusing on policies and on systems.

Firstly one of the industrial relation strategic functions of human resources management is managing and maintaining the employment relationship, which involves handling the pay – work bargain, dealing with employment, providing employees with a voice and communicating with employees.

The term employment relation encompasses the relationships between management and trade union, involving collective bargaining, collective agreements, dispute resolution and dealing with issues concerning the employment relationship and the working environment.

According to John is Kelly 2002, good industrial relations are approaches of the employers and employees towards each other with regard to achieve a mutual relationship give and take.

In other to improve productivity, human resources management have to create and maintain good and acceptable relations between employees, and were not calculated but the opinions are recorded and were used for result.

As an experience, industrial relation and labour management manager, I will use the following approaches so as to attain industrial harmony in Federal Polytechnic Nasarawa.
1) Unitary approach
2) Pluralist approach
3) System approach
4) Radical approach

1) Unitary Approach: This views the industrial enterprises as a team moving toward a common objectives. Unitary approach recognize every work organization as an integrated and harmonious, whole that exist for a common purpose. It emphasizes the co-dependency of employees and employers each worker identifies with the objective and mission of the organization.

Industrial relations is based on mutual cooperation between employees and management, a cohesive set of participants demand to be part of the same team. Collective bargaining and trade unions are perceived to be anti-social serving only to precipitate unnecessary and destructive industrial conflict in the federal polytechnic Nasarawa and also between parties in the institution.

2) The Pluralist Approach: This accepts that conflict is inherent in society and can be accommodated through various institutional arrangements, this recognizes, the existence of more than one ruling principle, and allows for different and divergent views from both management and trade unions, also achieved through negotiation, concession and compromise.

This approach to industrial relations reinforces, the value and legitimacy of collective bargaining between the management and trade unions as conflict resolving and rule making processes. This approach should be apply in federal polytechnic Nasarawa in other to attain good industrial relations and harmony, the approach is also found in businesses with a large number of employees such as a retail store chain or hotel chain

3) The System Approach: Organization are made up of numerous component sub systems working together harmoniously so that the large system succeed. It consider three key factors in the management labour relationship, environment, interaction and rules.

4) The Radical Approach: The radical approach, often called the maxian approach, it is based on the premise, that differences in economic power between computing social groups, can be changed by class conflict, the radical theory perceives industrial relations as a necessary result of workers seeking to protect themselves from powerful, profit – hungry corporations, that have no regard for the employees other than what they are legally obliged to do.

REFERENCES

1) Elements of human capital management (HCM) and Industrial Relations by Musa Salihu and Umar Suleiman Gunu.

2) Contemporary Management Principles and Practice by Suleiman Umar Gunu.