Humanist and Normative Approach

Soft HRM follows the harvard model – considers human capital as assets rather than resources. Hard HRM follows the michigen model – enforces the interests of the organisation rather than the progress of individuals. Humanist Approach – SOFT HRM (Harvard)  · Philosophy: A fair day’s work for a fair day’s pay. Organisational behaviour and the focus on corporate social responsibility. Companies see themselves as ethically conducted.  · Business objective: Increase productivity and profitability. Quality is secondary. They look to achieve optimum results Quality objective: Adequate quality to remain in business. Staff driven quality improvement approaches  · Information sharing: Limited information sharing as needed for job execution.  · Major decision makers: Manager, shareholders, customers, employees  · Employee involvement: Programme suggestions , plans individual employee awards, no formal system.  · Education and training: On the job t raining, feedback on the job performance – Results orientated, they measure results and evaluate them. Tend to look at the return on investment – hard to prove. g if in 2012 a company sells 600 products and in 2013 after training and development of staff this number increases to 1200, can we prove that this is in fact return on investment and due to the training.  · Reward structure: Design and administered by management  · Job security: Labour consider as a variable cost. Lay-off common during business downturn  · Use of symbols eg apple, Mcdonalds and Legal & General (Umbrella)  · Focus on personalities and attitudes- behavioural based. Encourages self assessment through appraisals. rawing up your own development plan and managers helping employees to achieve these or to make progress rather than managing people out when they are not meeting objectives. Source: http://www. shvoong. com/business-management/human-resources/1861903-comparison-traditional-human-r esource-approach/#ixzz2ONUzQ2fR Normative Approach – HARD HRM (Michigan) â€Å"The normative perspective of human resource management bases itself on the concepts of â€Å"hard HRM† and â€Å"soft HRM,† on which the foundations of human resource management rest. † [http://www. brighthubpm. om/resource-management/76151-exploring-different-perspectives-of-hr-management/]  · Concentration on strategic planning with vertical and horizontol integration of policy.  · Organisational culture with a key objective of retaining competitive advantage.  · ensuring all of the policies and procedures are current  · innovation  · Administration is become a lot more innovative – adapting/changing to current times. A lot of admin is now online using systems such as ADPs HR. Net – holiday etc is now requested and approved online rather than using a paper system. Employee benefit and reward often takes the form of welfare systems for example gym membe rships and paid sick leave  · Tend to have industrial relations eg trade unions and workforce representatives. Humanist approach tends to have more concern regarding employees progress, employee engagement and training/development of employees that may not necessarily directly improve the organisations output/productivity. Whereas a normative approach is more aligned with business strategy and integration of policy.