Summary
Human Resource Department plays a critical function in creating possibilities for career growth and success in the company. In addition, it is their primary role to assist the employees in utilizing and maximizing their full potentials to gain knowledge and skills from the adequate training they receive coming from the HR’s functions. Some employees think that HR department becomes inefficient due to the inevitable tendency for HR to become complacent in performing their duties and function; in effect, the employees start to doubt the HR’s credibility. Further, it is objective say that having HR department could both be advantageous and disadvantageous for businesses. It can either harness or increase the business’ production or it may result to the opposite: company loss and liabilities. It is therefore imperative for HR personnel to develop their skills in managing the talent employees and the system process for the benefit of both employer-employee relationship.
Human Resource Critical Functions
Introduction
What is the human resources? How does the Human Resources Department function to facilitate productivity and success in the business of companies and organizations? These are some of the questions that this paper intends to answer along its course. The investigation and measurement of having an HR Department in a company is to be objectively questioned and discussed at the same time in this paper. This paper then, shall focus on determining such critical functions of effective Human Resource personnel as it serves as the “core” of every business to determine its direction and likelihood for growth, productivity, success, and organizational development.
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Moreover, to better understand the critical functions of an HR department in every organization, one must first identify what Human Resources is all about and what roles does it play in major or even in small businesses.
Body
What is Human Resources?
Human resources are the personnel of a certain department responsible in playing a crucial role in determining the success of a company. It is comprised of the staff whose duties and responsibilities are mainly in recruitment, selection, hiring, industrial/organizational development or training, career enhancement, maintaining the management of the talents, and placement of the potential employees for the organization. Human resources select prospect candidates to fill the position which is currently in need to meet the goals of the company. It is the human resources who ensure that the employees to be hired are fit with the skills, attitude, and experience required for the job that currently needs to be filled and completed. Upon understanding what human resources really mean, determining their roles and functions should also be put into account (McNamara, 2008).
What are the roles of Human resources?
Aside from the aforementioned general duties and responsibilities of human resources, HR fulfills the role of managing, supervising, and guiding the employees to assist the latter in their concerns and to guarantee that their hired employees comply with policies and regulations implemented in the company. It is mainly the HRs’ task to guarantee the correct distribution of salary and provision of incentives in order to sustain the job motivation and satisfaction of current and incoming employees. Moreover, it is also the role of the Human Resource Department to minimize costs of the company by maximizing resources for increased talent retention and decrease instances of job turnovers (Bentley, 2008).
What is an effective HR Department?
An effective Human Resource department in order to be considered as “effective: should be able to help the employees, management and the organization itself to meet its congruent goals and objectives. According to Kathy Hagedorn, self-assessment through asking questions regarding the attainment of planned goals should be measured by the outcomes and results. Assessment must be regularly executed by the human resource personnel to objectively measure the capabilities, costs, and outcomes of improvement and organizational development programs for the overall benefit of the company and its employees. Moreover, recruitment is being more “in demand” nowadays since the fast ever-changing and modernizing technology increases the demand for obtaining high-potential and qualified employees to maximize and bring companies large gains, assets, increase in productivity, and desirable, progressive results. In so doing, it is practical and strategic to improve and enhance every company’s human resource department for it is the “core” of every company. A successful and an effective Human Resource Department shall inspire the employees to commit to their jobs and be devoted to help them attain their individual as well as the organizational goals (Hagedorn, 2008).
What are the critical functions that the HR Department has to play in order to be regarded as effective?
As discussed earlier, Human resources play a crucial role in every organization for likelihood to attain success in career enhancement of an individual and in meeting the target of organizational endeavors for the company’s business. Relatively, this paper shall discuss the critical functions that an effective Human Resource Department has to accomplish. Initially, it is imperative for an HR department to fulfil its critical function of maintaining psychological contracts with employees. This maintenance of employee-employer is possible by continuous communication, feedback, and performance appraisal conducted by the Human Resource department to the employee. One good example of winning the employee’s loyalty, devotion, and trust is by management or human resources’ effort in monitoring whether establishment of values and agreement done during the exchange of psychological contract were carried out well. It would be measured if the former expectations of the company with the employee, and the expectations of the employees themselves in the company were met during the period of employment (Walters, 2006).
What are the current issues faced by the HR functions globally?
Currently, the Human Resource Department has been dealing with various unending grievances and procures negative feedback from most if not all of its employees. Apparently, a columnist named Luke Johnson appeared in the Financial Times and wrote about the human resource personnel in UK and generalized them as “evil” and also, considers the human resources as a “pain in the ass” for hardworking employees. According to Johnson, the HR is losing its accountability for acting complacent and rigidly not thinking out of the box. There is more to HR functions than just the routine “staffing” and administrative paper works of maintaining file 201 and contracts. It is for the Human resource personnel to strategically develop ideas and innovations to bring about individual, system, and organizational improvement in the workplace (Bentley, 2008).
What are the advantages faced by a company in having an HR?
So, what are the instances that a company may consider themselves “lucky” for having Human Resources Department to operate in their organization? Obviously, productive results brought about by an effective and strategic organizational development account for the “thumbs up” of top level management in a company. If the Human Resource Department was able to maximize its resources, gain assets and reported its minimal cost, it is observable that the HR fulfilled and accomplished its critical functions for the company. Moreover, the HR Department shall also serve as role models for the employees in practicing commitment with one’s job in congruence with the company’s values. In this way, the employees would set the HR as an example of effective and productive leaders. Employees on the other hand, shall internalize the values taught by the Human resources and they should practice leadership in themselves as well (Knowledge@Wharton, 2005).
What are the disadvantages faced by a company in having an HR?
With the advantages of having an HR department for a company, there are also existing equivalent disadvantages. Consequentially, it was reported from surveys among employees that HR has the tendency to be complacent and dwell on the 9-5 routine of in and out working attitude. Meaning, the human resource personnel tends to become overconfident that they have completely understood their tasks and responsibilities during working hours and they just forget about the depth of their functions by having such attitude. They do complete and accomplish their tasks for the day but they forgot about the HR’s major role of developing techniques and strategies for execution of quality performance and to increase possibilities for perceived success, growth and development in the company. Across times, when HR used to be the link for the top management and the employees, it is to be observed that the function of human resources in relaying the grievances of employees was gradually forgotten. These disadvantages pose to address the reminders for the HR personnel (Knowledge@Wharton, 2005).
How to struggle to maintain the accountability of HR functions and how to avoid conflicts in the department?
To avoid conflicts in the organization and therefore, maintain the accountability of Human Resources Department, the latter should fulfil their roles and complete their critical functions for the employees and the company. An effective Human Resource personnel should be oriented towards change for growth and development of the career of the employees and the advancement of the business process in the company. According to Kathy Hagedorn (vice president of Human resources in St. Louis University), Human resources should acquire 10 qualities and attitudes to have an effective Human Resources personnel: they should be 1) Innovative; 2) creative and tactical; 3) trustworthy; 4) open-minded; 5) rational; 6) competent; 7) has foresight; 8) detail-oriented; 9) optimistic and motivated; and lastly, 10) effectual (Hagedorn, 2008).
Conclusion
To sum it all up, Human Resource Department plays a critical function in creating possibilities for career growth and success in the company. In addition, it is their primary role to assist the employees in utilizing and maximizing their full potentials to gain knowledge and skills from the adequate training they receive coming from the HR’s functions. Some employees think that HR department becomes inefficient due to the inevitable tendency for HR to become complacent in performing their duties and function; in effect, the employees start to doubt the HR’s credibility. Further, it is objective say that having HR department could both be advantageous and disadvantageous for businesses. It can either harness or increase the business’ production or it may result to the opposite: company loss and liabilities. It is therefore imperative for HR personnel to develop their skills in managing the talent employees and the system process for the benefit of both employer-employee relationship.
References
Bentley, R. (2008). What is it about HR? Retrieved November 19, 2008, from
http://www.management-issues.com/2008/2/11/research/what-it-it-about-hr.asp
Hagedorn, K. (2008). Ten ways to know you have a great human resources department.
Retrieved November 19, 2008, from http://hrhorizons.nacubo.org/x201.xml
Knowledge@Wharton. (2005 August 10). Is your HR department friend or foe? Depends
on who’s asking the question. Retrieved November 19, 2008, from
http://knowledge.wharton.upenn.edu/article.cfm?articleid=1253
McNamara, C. (2008). Human resources management. Retrieved November 19, 2008, from
http://www.managementhelp.org/hr_mgmnt/hr_mgmnt.htm
Walters, C. (2006). Preparing for 2007: Critical challenges facing HR. Retrieved November
19, 2008, from http://www.hrworks-inc.com/art-oct132006.html
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