Employment category diversification and personnel management problems

Many Japanese firms classify their employees into various categories as a way of making effective use of personnel and these do not consist simply of regular and non-regular employees, but of a number of categories within these two employment classes. This diversification of employment categories requires new human resource management to deal with new problems. The first question is how to integrate different personnel management measures and the nature of duties assigned to individual employment categories within general personnel management policy. The second is how to maintain a balance of wages and other rewards among different employment categories. This article, based on interviews and questionnaires addressed to human resource managers at Japanese firms, aims to shed light on the current diversification of employment categories and consider the tasks of personnel management in light of the current situation.