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The five basic functions are
planning, organizing, staffing, leading, and controlling. Planning activities include establishing goals and standards, developing rules and procedures, and developing plans and forecasts. Organizing activities include giving specific task assignments to subordinates, establishing departments, delegating authority to subordinates, and establishing channels of authority and communication; and coordinating the work of subordinates. Staffing activities include determining what type of people should
be hired, recruiting prospective employees selecting employees, and setting performance standards.
Leading activities include getting others to get the job done, maintaining morale and motivating subordinates. Controlling activities include setting standards such as sales quotas quality
standards or production levels, and taking corrective action as needed. Staffing is the function most readily related to human resource management. However, HR managers actually perform
all five
functions.
Human resource management is the process of acquiring, training, appraising, and
compensating employees, and of attending to their labor relations, health and safety, and fairness
concerns. HR management is important to all managers because managers can do everything else
right—lay brilliant plans, draw clear organization charts, set up world-class assembly lines, and
use sophisticated accounting controls—but still fail by hiring the
wrong people or by not
motivating subordinates. On the other hand, many managers—presidents, generals, governors,
supervisors—have been successful even with inadequate plans, organizations, or controls
because they had the knack of hiring the right people for the right jobs and motivating,
appraising, and developing them. The direct handling of people is an integral part of every line
manager's duties. More specifically, line managers must place the right person in the right
job,
orient and train new employees, improve the job performance of each person, gain cooperation
and develop smooth working relationships, interpret the company's policies and procedures,
control labor costs, and protect employees' health and physical condition.