Line and Staff Aspects of HRM

HR managers probably involve in different activities of a business like recruiting, interviewing, selecting, training, promotion, staff compensation, etc. These all activities comes under the umbrella of line and staff aspects of HRM. Let’s check below one by one all these activities in detail that deals with the line and staff aspects of Human Resource Management.

Line and Staff Aspect of HRM

1. Authority

The right to make decisions is the authority or it is to give orders and to direct the work of others. The managerial position has the inherent rights to give order and expect the order to be fulfilled.

Read Also: Human Resource Management Environment

The main tenet of the early management writers was the authority, the glue that keeps the organization together. It was to be assigned downward to manager at lower-level.

Every management position has particular inherent rights that incumbents get from the title or rank of position.

Authority ignores personal characteristics and is related to one’s position. The authority remains with the position when a position of authority is vacated.

Following are the two forms of authority have differentiated by early management writers.

• Line Authority
• Staff Authority
• Functional Authority

Line Authority: Work of an employee is directed by manager and is entitled as line authority. From top to bottom the employer-employee authority relationship is extended in the form of line authority.

Works of employees are directed by line manager who makes particular decisions without confer with anyone. Line managers are differentiated from staff managers sometimes by the term “line”.

Line stresses managers whose organizational function give directly to the accomplishment of organizational goals.

Staff Managers and Staff Authority: Staff authority is owned by staff managers. On the basis of goals of organization, a manager’s function is classified as line or staff.

As the organization becomes bigger and more complicated, line managers ascertain that they do not have expertise, time and resources to perform their duties effectively.

They make staff authority functions to assist, support, advice and usually minimize some of informational burdens they have.

Functional Control: As a coordinator of personnel activities, the authority exercise by personnel manager is refer to as functional control. In this case the manager behaves as the “main arm of top executive”.

2. Line VS. Staff Authority

Line managers are authorized to manage the tasks of their assistants. Staff managers are authorized to advise and help line managers in achieving their fundamental objectives.

HR managers are usually staff managers. Many managers are responsible for coordinative functions, line functions and some staff functions.

3. Cooperative Line and Staff HR Management

In hiring & recruiting, it’s usually the responsibility of line managers to stipulate the qualifications employees require to fill particular positions.

After that HR staff assumes. They conduct initial screening interviews and build sources of qualified applicants. The appropriate tests are administered by them.

Then the best applicant is referred by them to the supervisor, who interview and chooses the one he/she desires.

4. Line Manager

They are always someone’s boss because they are authorized the work of their assistants. In addition, line managers are responsible for achieving the organization’s fundamental objectives.

Following are the responsibilities of line managers’ human resource management.

• Placement
• Training
• Orientation
• Improving job performance
• Interpreting policies and procedures
• Gaining creative cooperation
• Controlling labor costs
• Creating and maintaining departmental morale
• Developing employee abilities
• Protecting employees’ health and physical condition

5. Staff Managers

Staff managers are authorized to advise and assist line managers in fulfilling their basic objectives. HR managers work as staff managers.

Staff managers’ advice and aid line managers in execution of their basic objectives. In order to be successful, they are required to work in partnership with each other.

Some examples of HR responsibilities of staff managers contain help in hiring, evaluating, training, counseling, rewarding, promoting & firing of employees and the administering of different advantageous programs.

6. Human Resource Manager

A person who generally behaves in a staff capacity or advisory, working with other managers to assist them deal with human resource affairs known as Human Resource Manager.

Read Also: Human Resource Management Functions

There is one general trend that an enhancing number of employees are serviced by HR personnel. The human resource manager is mainly in charge for coordinating the management of human resources to assist the organization accomplishes its objectives.

There is shared responsibility between human resource professionals and line managers.

The identification of HR as a legalize business unit has made it more critical to accomplishing corporate goals and highly strategic in nature.

In order to succeed, complex organizational design must be understood by the HR executives along with being able to ascertain the capacities of the work force of organization, both recently and in future. It is assured that organizations mission is supported by human resources by HR involvement in strategy.