Role of Human Resource or What does an HR do In Company?

Human resources management has today become an integral part of every organization, be it small or big. A few years back no such specific department existed in the organization and there was a question what does an HR can in a company, or even if HRM exists, it did not hold such importance as of today. The rising Role of Human Resource and importance of HR has been seen due to companies’ requirements for highly skilled people to compete globally. The Role of HRM is as like as the famous biologist Charles Darwin said, “Struggle for existence, Survival of the fittest”.

This article tries to throw a light on the crucial role of Human Resource play in today’s world and what does an human resource do in a company and how it helps in Managing people in an organization.

What do Human Resources do?

To begin with the role of HRM is about developing HR policies and procedures, building a work culture and creating a best workplace for all the employees working in an organization and establishing the fact that what does an HR do in a company and value its participation. HRM defines what all activities HR Executive is to carry out such as recruitment, training and performance appraisal of the employees etc. It also talks about the employee’s relationship with their work, whose aim is to bring them all together to develop a successful organization.

HRM is that part which develops the human aspects of the organization and consistently work to prove that what does an hr can do for the betterment of an employee. HRM directly or indirectly contribute in achieving organizational goals. Many times, HRM is defined as a method meant to develop potentials in an employee so that they feel satisfied with their work and put their efforts towards achieving the goals of the organization.

An organization will always consider its worker an asset along with his skills and abilities. It takes a lot of planning in order to manage people. A successful organization will always try to optimum utilization of such valuable resources. For this, various strategies are adopted such recommendation process, feedback on the work, solutions to internal and workplace environment issues.

Human Resource Management active role helps organization to always keep improving. For instance, Google believes in keeping its employees happy and provides them tons of perks, benefits, day-to-day facilities, flexible workspace. Google offices are said to provide in-house sports activities like hockey, volleyball, etc.

With the changing world the role of human resource also has changed, the new terms evolve for the same concept. The term ‘human capital’ is quite trending these days. Other terms could be personnel management, people at work, human assets, and social capital. Also, those human resources are much inter-dependent and inter-related with each other. They interact socially and psychologically with each other as well. Whereas some might say that HRM is meant to achieve individual, organizational and social objectives through tasks such as planning, organizing, directing, controlling and integration.

All these definitions lead to one conclusion, that role of HRM is nothing but to the management of people within the organization through various policies and tasks like recruitment, planning, organizing and directing to achieve organizational and individual goals leading ultimately to the growth and development of both the organization as well as the individual.

Top 8 tasks where the Role of HR is most Important

The role of HRM is just not limited to become a cost minimizing or cost cutting department for the organization. Rather it has become an investment department given the important roles to play. Here are the listed tasks where the Human Resource contributes the most:

Here are some of the crucial role played by the Human Resource in an organization.

1. Recruitment and staffing

The very basic function of HR is to recruit people and hire the right person for the right job with the right skills and talent. It doesn’t end here, HR needs various policies and strategies to manage people and comply with their organizational needs and requirements.

The recruitment and selection or staffing is about developing the ability of the organization to search the new talent and recruit new employees and help an organization in improving the quality of the human capital working in the organization. An effective recruitment process brings the best talent in company. 

2. Compensation and benefits administration

The simplest meaning of compensation is to pay the worker for his work. The role of HR here is to see that timely and fair compensation is given to the employees. It includes health benefits, retirement plans, stock purchase plans, etc.

3. Training and development

One of the most crucial tasks is training and development, in this increasing, global competitiveness that pushes the organizations to adopt expansionism policies, the right job training as well as behavioral training has seen quite a trend in the last 5-10 years. Organizations are ready to invest in the training of their employee to meet the technical and behavioral requirements of the business operations.  Training and skill development is a regular need of the business as the technology is being used not only to build and operate plant and machinery but it also very much exists and keeps changing day by day to perform any of the official tasks. 

There are different types of trainings and training methods an organization can use to train their employees. This internal and external training program includes: 

• Technology and Technical Training
• Quality Management Training
• Skills Development Training
• Soft Skills Development Training
• Professional Training
• Legal Training
• Team Building Training
• Managerial Training
• Health & Safety Training

For Example, Amazon has a month-long training course and allows employees to train new positions. It believes in making employees independent by making them take the ownership of the products and services from the very beginning.

4) Employment laws

Every country has its own set of labour and organizational laws that the companies need to strictly follow. It’s the job of the HR department to see it the organization abides by these laws. For instance, In India, there are various laws such as the factories act, mines act, industrial employment act.

Nowadays, with increasing female workforce in the country, the government has also come up with laws to protect them such as the equal pay act, maternity leave act, whistleblower act, etc.

5) Grievance Redressal

Grievance is basically some kind of dissatisfaction an employee is experiencing with the working environment, company policy or simply with his/her colleagues.

 The reason such authority is with HR is because they are aware of the employees past records, their behavior pattern and also that hr itself is capable enough to solve such grievances peacefully.

It is a kind of win-win situation in grievance redressal. One, the employee is satisfied and happy with management taking interest in his issues and resolving them. Secondly and most importantly, HR becomes aware of the changing behavior pattern and needs of its employees. The industrial disputes act and the factories act are few such examples wherein grievance redressal mechanism exits at the national level also.

6) Employee Testing

HR simply cannot hire a person on the basis of an attractive resume or due to some person’s reference. Non-technical posts candidates are tested on the basis of their qualifications, experience, interview performance, whereas technical post candidates need to give an extra test related to their field such as iq test, work sample test, etc.

What has become important now is the background check of the candidate or in simple terms his behavior, impression, attitude in the past organization. Such reference check gives a rough to the hr whether a candidate is eligible in all terms to be hired or not.

7) Promotion

Promotion means moving employees to higher positions. The promotion policy does not just include seniority or higher pay, but also look at many duties and responsibilities performed by an employee. From the HR perspective, it is the optimum utilization of a person’s skills and abilities as well as pushing his/her limits for better work performance, higher outputs and increased knowledge.

HR promotes an employee on the basis of his previous performance charts, organizational behavior, leadership and other such factors. The HR is also equipped with the mechanism of demotion. It is moving down the position of employee from his current one. These can be due to his incapability of performing a job or many a times his indecent behavior.

8) Job rotation

Job rotation means giving employees different tasks. The sole purpose of Job Rotation Policy is to make the employee multi-skilled and giving a change do something extraordinary or different from the regular normal work. Sometimes such activities help employees find their talents or work in which they are very good at and motivate them to do the job more speedily and productively. It also expands their overall knowledge and experience.