How an HR Department Can Help a Firm Succeed

¶ … HR departments are essential in a success organization because they can work to incentivize employees and maintain the organizational culture at the firm. Without a strong HR department, a firm is likely to have no real vision and a lax organizational structure that does not facilitate the achievement of organizational aims. Human relations is about building and fostering relations, so that the workplace becomes a strong, healthy and positive environment where workers want to be.

If an HR department cannot help to establish this environment then the organization runs the risk of failure due to poor employee morale, no development of employee loyalty, bad leadership, and negative attitudes. HR is connected with the idea of leadership because it is from HR that the sense or organizational unity and structure comes to workers. It is also from here that incentives hail.

HR can play a major role in incentivizing workers, whether it is through the helping of them to craft a health plan that works for them, or through acknowledging achievements of employees. Likewise, an effective HR team can appreciate how culture bears on an organization -- both internally and externally (Kissack, Callahan, 2010). Recognizing cultural differences, cultural relations, and organizational culture are all tools that an HR team can use to help boost a firm to the next level.

By focusing on all aspects of culture, an HR department can help the firm to pivot for success and develop employees who put the firm first. Otherwise, an organizational can quickly descend into chaos because there will be no unifying principle that brings so many different people together under one organizational culture. HR thus serves as an important facilitator of the firm's internal cohesiveness as well as an interpreter of the external culture that is likely to impact the firm as well.

At the same time, poor, neglected operations are typically vital to an organization's success as well. While new MBAs might not view them as attractive, strong operations are really part of the heart and soul of a company. Therefore, new MBAs should not view these areas as career-killers but rather as career-opportunities.

Companies that neglect their operations find themselves in serious trouble, after all, in the sense that workflow could become ineffective, inadequate and unsupportable; supply-chain management systems could break down and slow down a company's progress; and internal operations could suffer from a lack of communication that prevents departments from understanding where the other is at in the project process; information can get lost in the shuffle, and steps can be missed or done more than is necessary because of poor communications within the operations process.

All of this will impact the organization by causing a loss of revenue, and when profits decline, a company is in danger of going out of business. Thus, to enter into the operations aspect of a business upon entering the field is not a bad thing but rather an opportunity to see how a business should actually be run.