Human resource management is defined as a strategic approach to manage employment relations with an aim to improve people’s skills and capabilities in order to achieve organisational objectives through distinctive set of integrated employment policies and practices.
Personal Management could be defined as administrative discipline of hiring and developing employees so that they become more valuable to the organisation (http://www.businessdictionary.com, 2007)
As the definitions suggest, both HRM and PM work towards achieving organisational goals and objectives. But HRM has a more strategic approach where a lot of planning is done to ensure that all goals are achieved at the best interest of the employees and the organisation. This means that HRM foresees issues and works towards resolving them in a proactive way compared to PM.
HRM has a proactive approach towards dealing with its functions which are,
• Attracting/ Attaining
• Developing
• Retaining
A company with HRM thinks ahead, and plans ways to better meet the needs of its employees, and for the employees to meet the needs of the company as well. This is done by improving everything from hiring practices and employee training programs to assessment techniques and discipline. HRM uses sophisticated recruitment policies to hire all employees. This is a long and tedious process with several stages such as,
1. Manpower planning,
2. Identification of the vacancies,
3. Job Analysis,
4. Budget preparation and Screening and Interview etc.
In PM this is not the case. Sophisticated hiring practices are used only to recruit senior staff. This clearly indicates that HRM has a proactive approach since they recruit highly skilled workers so that they will become the managers of the company one day rather than spending a lump sum on hiring new employees for senior positions. This is known as work force planning which is a proactive practise.
HRM works