Functions of the HR Department

Human Resources Management

What is human resource management?

Human Resource Management (HRM) is the process of developing and hiring the employees so that they become more valuable to the organization. HRM includes; planning personnel needs, training, recruiting, evaluating performances and many others.

What is the primary function of human resource management?

HRM functions are carried out by the Human Resource Managers to fulfill the goals and objectives of an organization. The primary function of HRM is to increase the contribution and effectiveness of employees in order to attain the goals and objectives of an organization. Other primary functions include planning, developing and administering policies, along with programs designing.

(a) Planning

This is an effective tool which managers use in putting in place the strategic and operational decisions and undertakings within the organization. Planning involves predetermining the workforce programmes that are necessary for attaining the goals of organization. Strategic plan can be effective only if the planners are able to study various changes in the external markets. The HR departments always carry out research in planning process because the process requires the collection as well as, the analysis of information in order to predict the human resource needs that may be required in the future. This process involves various steps such as developing rules and procedures, establishing goals and objectives, as well as, determining the plans and forecasting techniques.

(b) Employee Evaluation

The other primary function of human resource management is employee evaluation. It is evident that, each organization requires a constant stock taking of their workforce as well as, assessing its performance in the existing jobs. Therefore, managers always ensure that they assess the work performance of their employees given that it improves the organizational performance through performance of individual contributors (Dias, 2014). Assessing employee work performance also provides an equitable method of linking payment to performance in the organization.

(c) Staffing

Staffing mainly emphasizes on the selection of human resources for the organization. For instance, managers usually recruit employees to assign them jobs in an organization. In other words, staffing deals with the identification of the potential applicants for the current as well as, future openings for evaluating so as to make a selection and placement decisions.

(d) Recruitment

Recruitment in organization is the practice of evaluating, and hiring new employees for an organization. The process includes four steps such as job analysis, sourcing, screening and selection along with on boarding. Recruitment is the most basic function of human resource management because the managers ensure that they are fair and justice when interviewing the recruited employees.

(e) Training

The human resources' training function tends to play a significant role in employment relationship. However, most organizations fail to realize that training help support the employers' goals for profitability. As a result, managers always ensure that they hire good people and train them so as to be the best since this helps in retaining employees and creating a productive workforce. However, even when the organization hires skilled employees, the human resource department on the other hand ensures that they provide on-the-job training to those recruited (Dias, 2014). This is because, each organization tend to perform their tasks in a slightly different way.

What is the role of human resource management in an organization's strategic plan?

The goal of any organization's strategic planning is to identify and exploit opportunities and mitigation risks by aligning the initiatives of an organization. This can be done by allocating appropriate resource in order to deliver desired results of its stakeholders. The following are the roles of human resource management in an organization's strategic planning.

(a) Staffing.

Staffing includes a development of an organization's strategic plan that determines how many people an organization might need to recruit or hire. Based on the organization's strategic plan, the HRM are responsible for performing the tasks of hiring process in order to recruit as well as, selecting the right employees for the right jobs. Selecting and recruiting the right people is the role of the HR department, therefore, decision making will be more effective if plans are workable right from the start (Bobinski, 2013).

(b) Basic workplace policies.

HRM in any organization has the role of developing policies which help in achieving the organization's strategic plan's goals. As a result, the HR managers work with supervisors to ensure that all the employees follow the basic workplace policies such as following flextime schedules.