The Human Resources department of a company is an absolutely essential administrative organizational arm. This article takes a look at some of the most important responsibilities held aloft on the shoulders of the modern Human Resources team.
Talent Management
Talent management is an area within the field of HR that is focused on the acquisition, development and identification of talent inside and outside of an organization. Creating accurate candidate profiles for future roles, engaging with promising talent within a company for promotion and analysing the strengths and weaknesses of new employees are all features of talent management. Modern talent management is extremely analytical and relies heavily on the collection of quantitative and qualitative personnel data.
Offboarding
Human Resources teams are in charge of offboarding staff that are coming to the end of – or terminating – their contracts. There are many reasons for contract termination: end of term, change of roles, disciplinary firing or redundancy are all common factors. Offboarding rarely involves simply cutting ties with an employee. HR teams are responsible for overseeing knowledge transfer, dealing with retirement paperwork and a whole host of other tasks that are necessary to complete during the offboarding of an employee.
Education
The responsibility for organizing and accounting for education within the workplace is often placed on the desks of the HR team. Education is essential in just about every workplace that values employee progression and long-term growth. Education is extremely important in the pursuit of employee retention. If employees are not offered the opportunity to improve their expertise, there is more of a chance they will quit their jobs. Static ‘dead end’ jobs really contain no imperative for employee retainment. Jobs that offer educational and career advancement opportunities, however, absolutely do.
Payment
Human Resources teams are responsible for the swift and accurate payment of all members of an organization. They work in collaboration with accountants and finance teams in order to budget for and correctly distribute money. They need to have a solid understanding of tax law and the ability to address employee disputes regarding pay. HR teams are often the first port of call for employees that have been paid incorrectly. Because they are also in charge of making said payments, this is one of the few truly just role-to-grievance relationships in the modern workplace.
Discipline
Perhaps the hardest part of the day-to-day activities completed by an HR department, discipline is unfortunately a part of the working world. Gone are the days when a large business would place the responsibility for disciplining staff squarely on the heads of middle managers. HR professionals typically take on disciplinary roles when official warnings need to be given. It is extremely important that HR professionals do not discipline staff members using their own emotions or morality as a guide. Instead, any discipline should be meted out in accordance with strict and fair protocols. Anything beyond a strict towing to protocol can rightly be seen as unfair by employees – who deserve a fair working environment.
