Lessons 1,2

Definition of Personnel Management

It is the part of management that is concerned with people and their relationships at work. Personnel management is the responsibility of all those who manage people. Personnel managers advise on, formulate, and implement personnel policies such as recruitment, conditions of employment, performance appraisal, training, industrial relations, and health and safety. There are various models of personnel management, of which human resource management is the most recent.

In any organization, there has to be someone concerned with the welfare and performance of persons who are a part of the operation. When an individual or a team of individuals takes on this task of seeing to programs and setting policies that impact everyone associated with the company, they are engaged in the process of personnel management, sometimes referred to as human resources management.

Personnel Management falls within the Administrative function of the enterprise.

Depending on the size of the organization, it may be possible for one person to handle the personnel management functions. As a company grows, it may be necessary to expand from a single personnel manager to a full-fledged personnel management, or Human Resources team. By understanding the needs of the company at each point in its growth, management can readily see to the addition to the Human Resources team over time.

Human Resource management is based in the efficient utilization of employees in achieving two main goals within a corporation or other type of organization. The first goal is to effectively make use of the talents and abilities of employees to achieve the operational objectives that are the ultimate aim of the organization. Along with realizing the goals of the organization, Human Resource management also seeks to ensure that the individual employee is satisfied with both the working environment and the compensation and benefits that he or she receives.

Importance of Personnel Management

The effectiveness of any organization in general is a direct function of the quality of the individuals who make up that organization. The knowledges, skills, abilities, and commitment of the members of the organization together constitute the most critical factor in the development and implementation of work plans and the delivery of products and services. Without the full commitment of its employees, an organization cannot accomplish its objectives. Consequently, the attraction, organization, development and motivation of employees -- the personnel function of management --is a central responsibility of all levels of management, from the chief executive to the first line supervisor.

The presence of employees when and where needed, in the numbers and the type needed, who are willing to commit their energy to the goals of the organization cannot be left to chance.

The Scope of Personnel Management

1) Organizational Staff Requirement Assessment
2) Job Analysis and Writing of Job Description
3) Recruitment
4) Testing and Screening
5) Selection
6) Employment Processing and Hiring
7) Pre-Work Training
8) Deployment
9) Training and development

Motivational Theories

The word motivation is coined from the Latin word "movere", which means to move. Motivation is defined as an internal drive that activates behavior and gives it direction. The term motivation theory is concerned with the processes that describe why and how human behavior is activated and directed. It is regarded as one of the most important areas of study in the field of organizational behavior. There are two different categories of motivation theories such as content theories, and process theories. Even though there are different motivation theories, none of them are universally accepted.

Also known as need theory, the content theory of motivation mainly focuses on the internal factors that energize and direct human behavior. Maslow's hierarchy of needs, Alderfer's ERG theory, Herzeberg's motivator-hygiene theory (Herzeberg's dual factors theory), and McClelland's learned needs or three-needs theory are some of the major content theories.

Of the different types of content theories, the most famous content theory is Abraham Maslow's hierarchy of human needs. Maslow introduced five levels of basic needs through his theory. Basic needs are categorized as physiological needs, safety and security needs, needs of love, needs for self esteem and needs for self-actualization.

Hierarchy of Needs - Abraham Maslow
One model of motivation that has gained a lot of attention, but not complete acceptance, has been put forward by Abraham Maslow. Maslow's theory argues that individuals are motivated to satisfy a number of different kinds of needs, some of which are more powerful than others (or to use the psychological jargon, are more prepotent than others). The term prepotency refers to the idea that some needs are felt as being more pressing than others. Maslow argues that until these most pressing needs are satisfied, other needs have little effect on an individual's behaviour. In other words, we satisfy the most prepotent needs first and then progress to the less pressing ones. As one need becomes satisfied, and therefore less important to us, other needs loom up and become motivators of our behaviour.

Maslow represents this prepotency of needs as a hierarchy. The most prepotent needs are shown at the bottom of the ladder, with prepotency decreasing as one progresses upwards.

SELF-ACTUALISATION - reaching your maximum potential, doing you own best thing
ESTEEM - respect from others, self-respect, recognition
BELONGING - affiliation, acceptance, being part of something
SAFETY - physical safety, psychological security
PHYSIOLOGICAL - hunger, thirst, sex, rest
The first needs that anyone must satisfy are physiological. As Maslow says:

"Undoubtedly these physiological needs are the most prepotent of all needs. What this means specifically is that in the human being who is missing everything in life in an extreme fashion, it is most likely that the major motivation would be the physiological needs rather than any others. A person who is lacking food, safety, love and esteem would probably hunger for food more strongly than anything else".

Once the first level needs are largely satisfied, Maslow maintains, the next level of needs emerges. Individuals become concerned with the need for safety and security - protection from physical harm, disaster, illness and security of income, life-style and relationships.

Similarly, once these safety needs have become largely satisfied, individuals become concerned with belonging - a sense of membership in some group or groups, a need for affiliation and a feeling of acceptance by others.

When there is a feeling that the individual belongs somewhere, he or she is next motivated by a desire to be held in esteem. People need to be thought of as worthwhile by others, to be recognised as people with some value. They also have a strong need to see themselves as worthwhile people. Without this type of self-concept, one sees oneself as drifting, cut off, pointless. Much of this dissatisfaction with certain types of job centres around the fact that they are perceived, by the people performing them, as demeaning and therefore damaging to their self-concept.

Finally, Maslow says, when all these needs have been satisfied at least to some extent, people are motivated by a desire to self-actualise, to achieve whatever they define as their maximum potential, to do their thing to the best of their ability. Maslow describes self-actualisation as follows:

"A musician must make music, an artist must paint, a poet must write, if he is to be ultimately happy. What a man can do, he must do. This need we may call self-actualisation ... It refers to the desire for self-fulfilment, namely the tendency for one to become actualised in what one is potentially. This tendency might be phrased as the desire to become more and more what one is, to become everything that one is capable of becoming.

The specific form these needs take will of course vary greatly from person to person. In one individual it may be expressed maternally, as the desire to be an ideal mother, in another athletically, in still another aesthetically, the painting of pictures, and in another inventively in the creation of new contrivances. It is not necessarily a creative urge although in people who have any capabilities for creation it will take this form."


Just like Maslow's hierarchy of needs, ERG theory explains existence, relatedness, and growth needs. Through dual factors theory, Herzeberg describes certain factors in the workplace which result in job satisfaction. McClelland's learned needs or three-needs theory uses a projective technique called the Thematic Aptitude Test (TAT) so as to evaluate people based on three needs: power, achievement, and affiliation. People with high need of power take action in a way that influences the other's behavior.

Another type of motivation theory is process theory. Process theories of motivation provide an opportunity to understand thought processes that influence behavior. The major process theories of motivation include Adams' equity theory, Vroom's expectancy theory, goal-setting theory, and reinforcement theory. Expectancy, instrumentality, and valence are the key concepts explained in the expectancy theory. Goal setting theory suggests that the individuals are motivated to reach set goals. It also requires that the set goals should be specific. Reinforcement theory is concerned with controlling behavior by manipulating its consequences.