Personnel management

Abstract

How the personnel function is organised in any form of enterprise can vary enormously. Like any other kind of management, that of personnel is not an exact science; and although there are some well‐charted routes to the conventional situations, it is nevertheless true that it is a discipline towards which men and women can gravitate from all kinds of employment. What path of study or even interest will lead to ‘personnel’ is almost impossible to forecast. One of the most successful personnel managers (in terms of the company's profit record in a very labour‐intensive form of production) I have ever met was in fact a contracts engineer, whose main job was that of securing orders for the firm; he accepted personnel management only as a side‐line. But then, I should add, many of the functions of personnel management in more conventionally organised undertakings were performed by specialist officers, which left the contracts engineer with three main tasks: to secure the labour each contract required, to negotiate rewards, and to handle industrial relations. These are functions at the heart of personnel management.