News Express Feature: Human resource management — Building corporate success through human excellence

September 2013 News Express | 中文版

Feature:

Human resource management
Building corporate success through human excellence

Over the past 40 years or so, the management of company personnel has evolved into a vital discipline for businesses seeking to maximise the effectiveness of their staff, boost performance and achieve their overall business goals.

In the 1970s the main task of the Personnel Department, as it was called then, was primarily staff recruitment, administering payroll, maintaining personal files and leave record.

By the 1980’s, however, as companies increasingly came to view staff as key assets rather than mere cogs in the corporate wheel, the job of the Personnel Department had evolved to include more strategic issues such as setting personnel administration guidelines, providing training programmes and performance appraisal.

The entire business environment was changing in the 90s. The globalisation effected revamp of the reward system. Internet had arrived and IT was becoming a key resource in most company’s tool kits. Mergers and acquisitions were taking place at an unprecedented level and a new digital generation of staff had arrived with different aspirations and needs. To handle all this, the Personnel Department itself had to change and evolved into the science of Human Resource Management (HR) where human asset management became a key element in business success.

A sophisticated science

In today’s knowledge-based, service-oriented business environment, HR has now evolved even further. Nowadays staff performance and engagement are often the critical factors in defining one company’s success over another or distinguishing one brand from another. HR, as a result, has developed into a sophisticated science using a variety of social and psychological skills to develop staff to their maximum potential and build value for the company.

Today HR is not just concerned with recognising and recruiting the most appropriate staff – a vital skill in itself – but also in retaining them, looking after their well-being, personal and career development, and above all planning staff strategies that enable the company to meet its organisational and business challenges.

The HR specialist today is more akin to a professional athletic coach striving to unlock the full talents of a sports star. But in this case it is not to win gold medals in a stadium, but to enable each staff member to achieve their potential in order to attain the maximum level of corporate performance.

A critical role in corporate success

HR today plays a critical role in any large company's success. As a result the HR executive must not only understand the finances of the company, but also corporate social responsibility, public relations and branding, business ethics, corporate governance and the role of the company in the market place.

He or she must be able to develop strategies to motivate and develop people to achieve corporate goals, reform business practices where necessary, optimise organisational effectiveness and define job competencies. An HR executive must also understand the business value chain and how staff add value to the company and help to both build, retain and sustain business.

Comprehensive courses

HKU SPACE has a long tradition of offering some of the best-regarded HR programmes - in conjunction with the University of Leicester in the UK, which is the only university to win 7 consecutive Times Higher Awards and was named “University of The Year” by the Times Higher Education Supplement in 2008/09.

With over two million students graduating since 1956, HKU SPACE offers a comprehensive range of HR related courses from the first professional doctorate in HRD in Hong Kong, to master’s level and the School’s newest bachelor HRM programme.

Each course is designed to offer a flexible supported distance-learning programme with face-to-face contacts with lecturers from the University of Leicester and extensive study support during the course. Local academic and administrative support is also provided by HKU SPACE.


	Doctor of Social Science (HRD)
	MSc in HRM and Training
	MSc in Performance Management and Workplace Learning
	MSc in Industrial Relations and Workplace Learning
	Bsc in Human Resource Management

An Information Seminar will be held in mid-November 2013. Online registration will be started from early October.