Human resource management is one of the most important functional fields of business administration. It addresses about the human side of the business administration. Prof. HHDNP Opatha of University of Sri Jayewardenepura speaks about Human Resource Management and his current research.
Prof. Opatha developed and published a definition of Human Resource Management in 1995 as “the efficient and effective utilization of Human Resources in order to achieve goals of an organization”. Any manager in any organization needs various resources to achieve goals of the organization. Among all, Human Resource is the most unique, because it has unique characteristics which are missing from all other resources.
Human resource is something alive and animate, while all the other resources are inanimate. It has the ability to think, feel, act and react, to organize in to groups or trade unions, influenced by the wage and has creativity & innovation. The human resource is the resource that establishes the objectives and mission of the organization. The human resource has the ability of making decisions regarding all the other resources. Therefore it is very unique, very important, critical, more interesting, dynamic field and of course now a popular field.
As traditional perspective of Human Resource Management is concerned, it has certain functions such as job design , job analysis, Human Resource planning, recruitment , selection, hiring, induction, perform evaluation, training and development, carrier management, incentives management, welfare management, management of employee movements, management of employee discipline, management of employee grievances, labour relations and etc.
Professor Opatha is a Senior Professor in the Department of Human Resource Management (HRM) and his current research interests are concerned on how to develop & enhance the morality of employees. One of his research concerns about how to avoid presenteeism. Presenteeism is a serious modern problem in the context of Human Resource Management. Presenteeism means, the tendency to be present at work even when employees are not supposed to come and work. For instance, when employees are sick, they still come to work while being sick. Studies have shown that it is a serious problem because cost of presenteeism exceeds the cost of absenteeism.
Another one of his current research areas is work-family balance. Especially how to create and enhance work-family balance among dual career couples.
Green Human Resource management is another one of his specific area of research. It’s about how to enhance “greening” within employees, especially towards achieving sustainable development of the organization.
– Binoy Abeywickrama
