Human Resource Management: Functions, Challenges and the Assessment of the Methods of Enhancing Employees Performances and Preventing Industrial Conflicts to its Bearable Minimum in an Organization

Management as argued by Gullick and Urwick, involves the act of "planning, organizing, staffing, directing, coordinating, reporting and budgeting”. However, in order to achieve the above functions, the human is needed because management cannot practically carry out its self without people that can make it happen. That is to say, the human is needed to carry out and apply the act of planning, organizing, staffing, directing, coordinating, reporting and budgeting that is required to achieve the set goal of the organization. Nevertheless, people are important in every business organization as they are the major tools used by the organization in coordinating other activities of the organization towards actualizing the national goal. The department set aside to also manage these people and their activities in every organization is refers to as the human resources management department, and it is also seen as a branch of management that is seen as the most important branch of an organization. It is in view of the above that this paper examined the importance, functions and challenges of the human resources manager or department as a branch of management and a department of an organization. This paper adopted the human relation theory and the Maslow hierarchy of needs, as the paper emphasized greatly that workers welfare is very germane, and seen as the best method to motivate workers and increase productivity, while data are retrieved from textbooks, journals articles, and internet materials as they are used in the justification of the position of this paper. The paper finally proffers workable solutions to the challenges of conflicts in an organization. This paper also emphasizes on the fact that the certification method of selecting applicants for an interview is not the best, as many applicants with higher grade certificates are found not being able to defend those certificates during the interview.