When talking about organisations, their working, the business strategies, the importance of planning even to avoid conflicts while also planning feasibly, we need to take out time to separately talk about a crucial aspect/ branch/ department/ concept- Human Resource (HR) and Human Resource Management (HRM).
Human Resource is a department that was essentially considered to deal with all employees and operations related to employees earlier but now has a wider scope in terms of the role it plays and is considered to be the most important company resource these days. It is the department that is responsible for managing the employee life cycle (that includes recruiting, hiring, training, resolving issues and firing employees) and ultimately improving the performance of employees by developing a positive business culture along with the productivity of the employees.
Basic functions of HR include:
Recruitment
HR is responsible for understanding the needs of the organisation and recruiting members for new positions while ensuring that those needs are met. This process also includes attention to details such as managing budgets, advertising the role and goal of the position, analysing the market and candidates and lastly, ensuring the right candidates are selected/ recruited by the organisation.
Onboarding
This step involves getting the newly recruited employee familiarised with the organisation- its work, environment and culture, structure, vision, mission and values. Successful execution of this step can make a huge difference by laying a foundation for long term success for both- the employee and the employer by building loyalty and improving productivity.
Managing payrolls
It essentially refers to the administration of the employee’s financial records of organisations.
Employee benefits
Those include the additional benefits that employees can claim or are entitled to apart from their basic wages as well as salaries. Life insurance benefits, fringe benefits, medical insurance benefits, domestic partner benefits, pension plans and retirement benefits are some of the kinds of employee benefits.
Training and Development
It refers to all the extra educational or skill enhancing activities within a company that is created or hosted to enhance their knowledge and skills while providing information and experience on how to perform certain specific tasks better.
Safety compliance
It needs to ensure that the organisation complies with the safety regulations that are relevant to its industry while also being in accordance with the established regulations and standards. It also needs to maintain a safe workplace and promote activities to keep a healthy workplace environment.
Holiday Management
Vacations, sick leaves, disaster service leave, funeral leave, donor leave- all these are the kinds of holidays that employees may ask for which need to be managed and provided for while ensuring that the productivity of the company or working staff isn’t compromised simultaneously.
Quite recently the culture of outsourcing has been seen even in functions/ departments such as Human Resources too. The idea behind outsourcing the responsibility of managing the state of well-being of employees in the workplace is that organisations can hand over the HR responsibility to an outside agency where they would be responsible for the process of finding, hiring, managing and paying qualified workers, while the company keeps its focus strictly on developing its core competencies.
Few types of organisations that could handle Human Resources’ responsibilities include:
A. Human Resource Outsourcer (HRO)
A human resource outsourcer is a body that handles all HR activities but not the employees, so the organisations that like the idea of not losing focus but also not completely handing over all responsibilities and control of their organisation’s employee base would tend to prefer this option of an HRO.
B. Professional Employer Organisation (PEO)
Unlike HROs, these professional employer organisations (PEOs) take complete control and responsibilities over all the aspects and activities or issues related to the concerned organisation’s HR function (including finding, hiring, setting pay rates, resolving issues, granting leaves or even firing workers). The concept is something along the lines that the person hired or applying for your company/ organisation would have to end up working not just for the company/ organisation but also for the professional employer organisation (PEO)
C. E-services
HR platforms online can be a great asset to small businesses or small organisations when It comes to maintaining a record of their HR activities while leveraging technology to do it with more accuracy, precision and efficiency.
All in all, there are seven basic functions of HR that any organisation or company or business that wishes to be successful must maintain because it is the company’s content and hence productive working lot that greatly contributes to the success and growth curve.
The HR department needs to find, recruit and select the best candidates to come and work for the company/ organisation/ business. Finding the best fits (in terms of their goals, visions, missions and morals being aligned with that of the company) is a key task for them since they know that people are like the lifeblood of organisations. Using preselection tools could help them scoop out the cream off of the crowd when it comes to suitable candidates.
They need to ensure that these selected suitable candidates who are hired become the best version of themselves at work. Regular annual performance management cycles at workplaces (includes planning, monitoring, reviewing and rewarding performances of employees) is seen to help in categorising employees into high vs. low potential employees and high vs. low-performance employees. This is essential to recognise the employees working to their full potential and contributing to the growth of the organisation to reward them and help them do more; while also to recognise those who are constantly underperforming for they might not be fitting into the company culture or their role and may need to be let go of.
Providing opportunities to encourage constant learning and honing of skills is another basic function of HR along with features like succession planning to avoid chaos/ unplanned scenarios where vacancies arise, providing employees with compensations and benefits in various aspects to ensure the employee feels safe and cared for and is motivated to stay loyal and do better, maintaining an HRIS (Human Resource Information System) and storing and analysing data to take steps for improving the performance of the company.
All businesses need to manage their human resources if they ever wish to have a booming business. Human resources constitute the most valuable assets and must be taken care of and managed well in any workplace.
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