Formation and Major Roles of an HR Department
This paper examines the formation, major roles, and organizational importance of a human resources (HR) department. It begins by defining human resource management and outlining the broad range of functions HR professionals perform, from recruitment and onboarding to compliance and talent management. The paper then details how HR contributes to employee performance, workplace culture, compensation strategy, and legal compliance. Finally, it analyzes how aligned HR strategies enhance business competitiveness, drawing on historical context from the turbulent business environment of the 1980s and 1990s and the skill-driven competitive economy of the 2000s.
- Introduction to Human Resource Management: Defines HRM and describes HR professionals' core responsibilities
- Major Roles of the HR Department: Covers recruitment, evaluation, culture, compliance, and communication
- Importance of Human Resources to Organizations: Explains HR's strategic value for talent and organizational change
- HR Contributions to Productivity and Competitiveness: Links aligned HR strategies to business performance and competitive advantage
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What makes this paper effective
- The paper moves logically from defining HRM and its functions, to specific departmental roles, to broader organizational value — a clear funnel structure that builds understanding progressively.
- It consistently supports claims with citations from multiple sources, lending credibility to each major point about HR's contribution to business performance.
- The historical case study of the 1980s–1990s business disruption grounds abstract HR concepts in a concrete real-world example, strengthening the argument for strategic HR management.
Key academic technique demonstrated
The paper effectively uses synthesis across multiple scholarly sources to build a unified argument. Rather than presenting each source separately, the author weaves together findings from Blaga (2020), Joshua (2019), Bartram et al. (2017), and Noe et al. (2017) to construct a cumulative case for HR's organizational importance, a technique characteristic of well-integrated undergraduate literature reviews.
Structure breakdown
The paper is organized into four sections. The introduction defines HRM and describes the operational scope of HR professionals. The second section identifies the major HR functions, including recruitment, performance evaluation, culture development, communication, and legal compliance. The third section explains HR's broader strategic importance for talent management and organizational cohesion. The final section provides historical and economic context to argue that strategically aligned HR departments create measurable competitive advantages.
Introduction to Human Resource Management
Human resource management (HRM) encompasses all operations that handle employee-related matters, including employment, training, compensation, policy development, and retention strategies. HRM has undergone significant changes over the last twenty years, making the field much more important to organizations today (Blaga, 2020). Within an organization, the HR department performs the following functions: human resource planning, job analysis, recruitment and administration of job interviews, appointment of personnel, orientation, training, compensation, assignment of benefits and incentives, employee evaluation, employee retention, career planning, quality-of-work-life improvement, employee discipline, sexual harassment eradication, HR auditing, maintenance of industrial relations, employee welfare, and ensuring compliance with city, state, and federal laws (Joshua, 2019).
HR professionals plan and execute all HRM practices. For example, HR professionals design a company's selection process by choosing among multiple selection exercises or adopting a sequence of activities to identify qualified candidates. Such a sequence might involve asking applicants to complete an application form, sit for an employment test, and then be invited for an interview with the HR professional and the line manager. The HR professional also orchestrates each activity within the selection process — creating the application form, sourcing selection tests from test publishers, and devising interview questions (Joshua, 2019).
HR professionals also evaluate the effectiveness of all HRM practices by monitoring and assessing all executed programs. For example, an HR professional will assess the usefulness of employment tests, the success of training programs, and the cost-effectiveness of all HRM practices. HR professionals complete performance appraisals, deliver formal training programs, and serve as consultants to other parts of the organization, advising line managers on HRM matters such as managing a problematic employee (Bartram, Cavanagh & Hoye, 2017).
References
Barnes, E., & Adam, C. (2017). The importance of human resources in a globalized economy: A conceptual framework. Canadian Journal of Applied Science and Technology, 5(2), 134–142.
Bartram, T., Cavanagh, J., & Hoye, R. (2017). The growing importance of human resource management in the NGO, volunteer, and not-for-profit sectors.
Blaga, P. (2020). The importance of human resources in the continuous improvement of production quality. Procedia Manufacturing, 46, 287–293.
Itika, J. (2011). Fundamentals of human resource management: Emerging experiences from Sub-Saharan Africa. African Studies Centre, Mzumbe University.
Joshua, F. A. (2019). Assessment of the role and functions of human resources department in small and medium scale enterprise companies in Ile-Ife, Osun. Journal of Human Resource Management, 7(2), 32–40.
Naznin, H., & Hussain, M. A. (2016). Strategic value contribution role of HR. Vision, 20(2), 135–138.
Noe, R. A., Hollenbeck, J. R., Gerhart, B., & Wright, P. M. (2017). Human resource management: Gaining a competitive advantage. McGraw-Hill Education.
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