Analysis of Human Resource Management at TRAX: Report on HRM Approach

This report delves into the critical role of Human Resource Management (HRM) within organizations, emphasizing its significance regardless of size, industry, or nature. It explores the core functions of HRM, such as recruitment, training, performance management, and employee relations, highlighting their contribution to organizational growth and development. The report contrasts the HRM approach with the traditional Personnel Management approach, detailing their differences in strategy, focus, and objectives. Using TRAX, a small Irish company, as a case study, the report examines the practical implications of HRM, even in organizations with limited staff, and underscores the need for a dedicated HRM department to support expansion and e-commerce operations. The analysis covers various aspects, including job design, employee relations, and the overall impact on organizational performance, concluding with recommendations for TRAX to enhance its HRM practices for future success.

Running Head: Human Resource Management
TRAX
Human Resource Management

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Table of Contents
Introduction.............................................................................................................................................................. 2
Human Resource Management as a part of management function....................................................2
Analysis of Human Resource Management approach vs. Personnel Management approach. 3
Personnel Management................................................................................................................................... 3
Human resource management...................................................................................................................... 4
Conclusion................................................................................................................................................................. 6
References................................................................................................................................................................. 7

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Introduction
Human resource management is considered as the most vital element for every
organization irrelevant to the nature, size and industry type of the organization. Human
Resource Management performs various functionalities in order to accomplish
organizational goals. With the help of HR functions, an organization could easily move
towards sustainable growth and overall development. Human resource management is also
considered as the crucial part of management function as the primary objective of this
department is to appoint the employees along with providing the appropriate training so
that their efforts could be moulded as per the organizational requirements. Apart from this,
human resource management is also responsible for retention of employees for a longer
period of time by fulfilling their needs and wants along with giving them regular
opportunities to grow along with the organization as well as to build reliable image
amongst the employees towards the organization.
In this report, the significance of HRM and its functions in TRAX will be discussed. It is a
small company based in Ireland with its stores located in Port Laoise, Carlow and
Tullamore. The company operates in music CDs, consumer electronics goods, mobile
phones, etc. The company also provides repairing facilities but their major focus is on
mobile phones. TRAX does not a separate human resource department as the total number
of employees across its all stores is just 15 but as the organization has created separate
websites for selling smartphones and for providing repairing services to its target
audience, the requirement of human resource department could be observed.
Human Resource Management as a part of the management function
The functionalities of human resource department and management are quite different to
each other because management of an organization manages all the operations of the
organization whereas, human resource department acts as a part of an organization which
recruits, appoints, trains and rewards employees to meet the organizational needs. Thus, it
could be considered that HRM is a part of the management function. Major functionalities

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of human resource management are recruitment & selection, performance management,
reward, employee relations, etc.
Human resource management is considered as an inherent part of management as this is
executed by almost every manager in an organization rather being performed by any
particular department. This is because when a manager wants to attain its desired goals
and objectives, he should select the best employees amongst the available options in order
to accomplish designed objectives for the success of a particular project. Human resource
management is also considered as the universal function of management in the
organization as it is performed by every manager irrelevant to the level they work at.
However, all the functions are not performed by the manager himself and for some tasks,
he asks his subordinates who are experts in managing the functionalities of organization
and majorly these types of tasks are assigned to the human resource management for the
objective of attaining positive outcomes (Bratton & Gold, 2017).
There are many functions of human resource management in relation to the management
of human resources at the workplace. Planning, manpower, placement, employment,
appraisal, training & compensating employees are some of the major functions of human
resource department in terms of handling the employees and in order to execute these
activities in an effective manner, a separate department is being created in corporations
named Personnel Department.
With respect to the context of TRAX, the requirement of human resource management is
not yet felt by the organization due to less number of people. But as the organization is
operating on e-commerce platform which is capable enough to expand the organizational
functionalities in both domestic as well as in international markets, thus, separate
department should be created in terms of enhancing workforce along with enhancing the
organizational functionalities for the purpose of enhancing market share of the
organization in the target market (Brewster, et. al., 2016).

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Analysis of the Human Resource Management approach vs. Personnel Management
approach
In an organization, a number of employees work together with a common objective of
attainment of organizational desired goals. In relation to this, the organization needs to
align its employees’ efforts in one direction to reach to the desired destination and
ultimately, it helps the organization to move towards sustainable growth and overall
development.
TRAX is a small company based in Ireland with only 15 employees in its three stores and
the company offers all types of smartphones from top brands through its e-commerce
platform. One of their websites is https://refurbiphones.ie/ and on this website, the
organization offers the variety of refurbished smartphones to its target audience
(RefurbiPhones, 2017). The organization also provides warranty on these phones with the
objective of developing a reliable brand image amongst the customers along with the
objective of retaining their target customers’ interest within the organization. TRAX has
another website: https://ipads4schools.ie/ and this website provide services to schools
across Ireland in order to enhance the learning of students. In order to manage these
functionalities, the organization needs to create separate human resource management
team in order to manage the functionalities of the organization along with boosting up the
demand for the services by performing the core functionalities of HRM in an effective and
efficient manner (Ipads for School Ireland, 2018).
For the objective of managing organizational functionalities, the organization will adopt the
following two approaches:
Personnel Management
Personnel are known as the people working in the organization and their management is
considered as an administrative function which focuses on fulfilling the duty and
responsibility of appointing right candidate on the right position. This helps the
organization to accomplish desired goals along with generating opportunities for
enhancing the organizational performance. Personnel management is treated as the main
attraction of traditional approaches under which employees are managed as per the

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policies and guidelines of the organization. Job analysis, planning, performance appraisal,
recruitment, training, and compensation management are some of the primary activities
concerned with personnel management. Apart from this, personnel management also
focuses on managing labour relations along with considering employees’ grievances
(Armstrong and Taylor, 2014).
Human resource management
It is considered as the contemporary approach of dealing with the people at workplace and
the major focus of the organization is on acquisition, utilisation, development, and
maintenance of employees. The process of this functionality is to combine the strengths,
and the energies of human resources in terms of human competencies (Brewster, 2017).
Thus, human resource management is considered as an effective policy which ensures the
appointment of qualitative as well as quantitative employees. Although, core functionalities
of both personnel management and human resources are quite similar, thus, the basic
difference is in the approach of managing them (Bailey, et. al., 2018).
Thus, it could be said that both the activities address same organizational activities and
there is only one difference which is linked with the approaches used for addressing the
fundamentals such as planning, job analysis, recruitment and selection, hiring, rewarding,
appraisals, compensation management, etc. Businesstopia, 2018). The following table will
show the difference between human resource management and personnel management:
Basis of difference Personnel Management Human Resource
Management
Meaning This is considered a
traditional approach for
managing personnel at the
workplace
This is considered as
modern approach and it is
executed by all managers at
all levels
Nature Routine function Strategic function (West,
2015).
Focus Management is being given
priority
Needs and wants of
individuals are given

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priority
Function Labour relation, employee
welfare, and personnel
administration is considered
as primary functions
(Collings, Wood & Szamosi,
2018).
Development, acquisition,
and utilisation of human
resources are considered as
primary functions
Objective Personnel are managed as
per the organizational goals
Policies are developed in
accordance with the
employees’ needs in order to
align their efforts with the
organizational goals
Perspective Employees in the
organization are considered
as basic input to attain the
desired output
Employees are considered as
valuable resources for the
production of desired output
Job design On the basis of division of
labour, jobs are designed
On the basis of teamwork,
jobs are designed
Interest Organizational interest is
kept on priority (Brewster,
Chung & Sparrow, 2016).
Both organizational, as well
as employees' efforts, are
harmonised
Orientation Disciplined, directed and
controlled function
It provides appropriate
opportunities to the
employees to grow and for
enhancing performance
Communication Limited or restricted
communication
Open communication
Benefits Disciplined employees and
high productivity
Increased productivity,
increased profitability,
quality of work, flexible

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towards change, etc.
Outcome Along with the attainment of
organizational goals,
employers’ goals are
attained
Along with the attainment of
organizational goals, both
employees, as well as
employers, are satisfied
(Storey, 2014).

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Conclusion
It can be concluded from the aforesaid discussion that both human resource management
as well as personnel management acts substantially in the workplace. Although, personnel
management is not much used in today’s business environment as its modified version has
been launched as HRM. In this essay, the significance of human resource management has
been discussed along with analysing whether human resource management is a
management function or not. Further, the essay has discussed regarding the significance of
the HRM with regards to the operations of TRAX. Although, the organization has not made a
separate department for managing human resources due to less number of employees at
the workplace. In relation to growth and development of the organization in near future, it
is required for the organization to create HRM for the objective of enhancing organizational
performance.

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References
Armstrong, M. and Taylor, S., 2014. Armstrong's handbook of human resource management
practice. Kogan Page Publishers.
Bailey, C., Mankin, D., Kelliher, C. and Garavan, T., 2018. Strategic human resource
management. Oxford University Press.
Bratton, J. and Gold, J., 2017. Human resource management: theory and practice. Palgrave.
Brewster, C., 2017. The integration of human resource management and corporate
strategy. In Policy and practice in European human resource management (pp. 22-35).
Routledge.
Brewster, C., Chung, C. and Sparrow, P., 2016. Globalizing human resource management.
Routledge.
Brewster, C., Mayrhofer, W. and Morley, M. eds., 2016. New challenges for European
resource management. Springer.
Businesstopia. 2018. Personnel Management v/s Human Resource Management [online].
Available at: https://www.businesstopia.net/human-resource/personnel-management-vs-
human-resource-management [22/11/2018].
Collings, D.G., Wood, G.T. and Szamosi, L.T., 2018. Human resource management: A critical
approach. In Human Resource Management (pp. 1-23). Routledge.
Ipads for School Ireland. 2018. Trax Media Technology [online]. Available at:
https://ipads4schools.ie/ [22/11/2018].
RefurbiPhones. 2017. Certified Refurbished Smartphones & Tablets [online]. Available at:
https://refurbiphones.ie/ [22/11/2018].

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Storey, J., 2014. New Perspectives on Human Resource Management (Routledge Revivals).
Routledge.
West, M. 2015. Nature of Human Resource Management [online]. Available at:
https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/nature-human-resource-management-monty-west
[22/11/2018].