Human Resource Management II: Training and Development, Performance Management, Job Evaluation, Compensation, Employee Benefits and Incentives, Managing Careers, and the New Trends in HRM

Training is the systematic improvement of the knowledge and skills an employee needs for the present job; development is the growth of the whole person for future roles; education builds general understanding. The training process begins with training needs analysis at three levels (organisational, task or operational, and individual, the model of McGehee and Thayer, 1961), then designs the programme, delivers it and evaluates it. On-the-job methods include job instruction training (developed in the United States during the Second World War: prepare, present, try out, follow up), coaching, understudy, job rotation, apprenticeship (in India under the Apprentices Act 1961) and internship. Off-the-job methods include lectures, case studies (developed at Harvard), role play, business games and simulations, the in-basket exercise, programmed instruction, vestibule training (a replica of the shop floor set up away from it, used for machine operators and bank tellers), sensitivity or T-group training (from Kurt Lewin's work at the National Training Laboratories, Bethel, 1947) and e-learning.

Donald Kirkpatrick's four-level model (1959) is the standard framework for evaluating training: reaction (did participants like it?), learning (did they acquire the knowledge and skills?), behaviour (do they apply it on the job?) and results (did productivity, quality, safety or turnover change?). Jack Phillips later added a fifth level, return on investment. Hamblin's model (1974) has five levels ending in ultimate value.

Performance appraisal is the periodic evaluation of an employee's performance and potential; performance management is the continuous cycle of which appraisal is one step: planning performance (agreeing goals and standards), monitoring and coaching, reviewing and appraising, and rewarding and developing. Traditional methods are straight ranking, paired comparison (each employee compared with every other; n employees give n(n − 1)/2 pairs), forced distribution (fixed percentages in each category, the "bell curve" or "rank and yank"), graphic rating scales, checklists, the critical incident method (Flanagan, 1954), essays and field review. Modern methods are management by objectives (Drucker, 1954; developed by George Odiorne), behaviourally anchored rating scales (BARS, Smith and Kendall, 1963), behavioural observation scales, the assessment centre, 360-degree feedback (from superiors, peers, subordinates, customers and self) and the balanced scorecard (Kaplan and Norton, 1992).

Job evaluation is the systematic determination of the relative worth of jobs within an organisation, as the basis of an equitable wage structure; it rates the job, not the job-holder (that is appraisal). The non-quantitative (whole-job) methods are ranking (jobs arranged from highest to lowest) and grading or job classification (jobs slotted into pre-defined grades, as in government pay scales). The quantitative (factor) methods are the point-rating method (compensable factors such as skill, effort, responsibility and working conditions, each divided into degrees with points; the total points place the job) and the factor comparison method (devised by Eugene Benge in 1926), which ranks key jobs factor by factor and allots money values to each factor. The International Labour Organization's account of job evaluation stresses that it removes inequities but does not by itself fix the level of wages, which is settled by the labour market, bargaining and law.

Compensation management designs the whole reward package: base pay (wage or salary, often in Indian industry basic pay plus dearness allowance linked to the consumer price index), allowances (house rent, conveyance, shift, city compensatory), incentives, bonus, and benefits and services (provident fund, gratuity, pension, insurance, medical care, leave, canteen, housing, transport, education). Benefits are called fringe benefits because they began at the fringe of the wage, and many in India are statutory. Pay structures may be graded, broad-banded or skill- and competency-based; wage surveys fix the market rate, and the internal ladder comes from job evaluation. Cafeteria benefits let employees choose from a menu within a fixed cost.

Incentive (payment-by-results) plans relate earnings to output. Individual plans based on time saved include the Halsey premium plan (F. A. Halsey, 1891), under which the worker is paid for the time taken at the guaranteed hourly rate plus a premium usually of 50 per cent of the time saved (the Weir system used a third); and the Rowan plan (James Rowan, 1901), under which the premium is the proportion of time saved to time allowed, applied to the time taken, so that the bonus rises at first and can never reach double the time wage. Plans based on output include Taylor's differential piece rate, Merrick's multiple piece rate (three rates, stepping up at 83 and at 100 per cent of standard output), Gantt's task-and-bonus plan, Emerson's efficiency plan (bonus from two-thirds of standard efficiency) and the Bedaux point plan. Group and organisation-wide plans include the Scanlon plan (Joseph Scanlon, 1930s, a labour-cost ratio with suggestion committees), the Rucker plan, Improshare, profit sharing, gain sharing and employee stock option plans.

Career management is the joint effort of employee and organisation to plan and develop the employee's progression. Donald Super's career stages are growth, exploration, establishment, maintenance and decline (disengagement). Edgar Schein's career anchors — the self-perceived talents, motives and values a person will not give up — are technical/functional competence, general managerial competence, autonomy/independence, security/stability, entrepreneurial creativity, service or dedication to a cause, pure challenge, and lifestyle. Organisational tools include career paths and ladders, dual-career ladders (a technical ladder parallel to the managerial one), succession planning, mentoring, and career counselling. The career plateau is the point at which further promotion is unlikely; the "protean career" (Douglas Hall) is one managed by the individual rather than the organisation.

The environment of HRM has changed with liberalisation after 1991, globalisation, technology and a younger, more mobile and more female workforce, and with the labour codes of 2019–2020. The challenges are retaining talent, managing a multigenerational and diverse workforce, flexible and contract employment, the gig and platform economy, remote and hybrid work, the automation of routine jobs, and managing downsizing through voluntary retirement schemes. The emerging concepts are employee engagement (William Kahn, 1990: the harnessing of the self to the work role, physically, cognitively and emotionally), talent management, competency mapping, HR analytics and people analytics, e-HRM and HR information systems, employer branding, the HR business-partner model (Dave Ulrich, Human Resource Champions, 1997, with the roles of strategic partner, administrative expert, employee champion and change agent), work–life balance, flexi-time, diversity, equity and inclusion, and green HRM, which enlists HR practices in environmental goals.