Introduction

Hi, my name is Jeroen Meijerink and I am an assistant professor of human resource management at the university of Twente. In the previous sessions you learned about different HRM activities like compensation, training, recruitment and selection. You also learned that these HRM activities have to be fitted together within HRM systems for different employment groups. And this is important to realize desired outcomes such as employee productivity or employee creativity. To realize these outcomes, HRM activities also have to be executed and they need to be put in daily practice. And it’s tempting to think that HR professionals are solely responsible for doing this. After all, they are the HR specialists, but this is not the case.

In many organizations, a collective of actors is responsible for implementing HRM activities. So, it is a range of individuals within and outside the organization that execute HRM activities. Together, these individuals make up the HRM function. And the HRM function refers to the collective of actors that are responsible for executing HRM activities like recruitment and selection, training, appraisal and compensation. And in this session, you will learn more about the HRM function. Specifically, you will learn three things. First of all, you will learn who are these actors. Secondly, you will learn which actors are responsible for which HRM activities. And lastly, you will learn how to make sure that these different actors collaborate effectively.