What are the Core Functions of HR? A Simple Guide

HR is one of the most important departments in a professional setting. In a small office of 20-50 employees, mostly there are 1-2 people that handle these HR tasks.
However, as the size of the company increases, there is a team of 7-8 people working in the HR dept.
But a common question that usually people ask is: What are the basic activities of this department?
Well, in this guide we will find that and discuss each of them in detail.
So, are you ready to deep dive into this guide? If yes, let’s go!

Top 5 Basic HR Activities

The five basic activities of HR are listed below:

1. Recruitment and selection
2. Compensation and benefits
3. Training and development
4. Workforce Safety
5. Employee relations and satisfaction

Recruitment and Selection

The widely known task for HR is to recruit and onboard new employees. In addition, they have to pick the right candidate that can add value to their company and bring something new to the table.

Here are a few points to that every HR must follow for recruitment:

1. Understand the recruitment requirements of various departments.
2. Make relevant ads or posts to reach out to the right target audience.
3. Review resumes and pick the right one from them.
4. Conduct various interviews.
5. Send the offer letter and receive confirmation.

Once they complete the recruitment process, it’s time to move towards onboarding. In addition, it allows them to do the necessary paperwork, provide them training, and help them to understand your company better.

Fact Check

• The HR uses various avenues to search for their candidates. These include social media platforms, online job boards, employee referral, and professional networking sites (Source Researchgate).
• According to findings, it’s best to craft well-written descriptions to recruit people with relevant skills and qualifications.

It’s interesting, right? Let’s find out the second activity!

Compensation and Benefits

Compensation and benefits are two most important tasks of the HR department. In small companies, the HR team often has to work on these tasks. However, for a large company, the team is divided into two groups to work on each activity.

1. Compensation: For this part of the job, the HR teams have to look at an overall pay structure of various companies to make their own. In addition, they also work with recruiters and hiring managers to make job descriptions.
2. Benefits: You may think of perks as employee retention strategies. In addition, these perks motivate candidates to join a company and the existing workers to stay. Moreover, payroll also falls under this category. The HR teams use various software to get automated checks of their workers.

Now that we know this point, let’s find out why providing training to workers is important. So are you ready to find out? If yes, read the section below.

Training and Development

In this dynamic landscape, people have to keep learning new skills to stay in the game. This is when HR conducts various training and development programs for their workers so they can polish and refine their skills.
Moreover, a team can also use skill gap analysis to create targeted training based on workers requirements. Once this step is completed, other necessary steps get decided. For example, the mode of course (online or offline), learning goals, course material, and others.

Do T/D programs teach technical skills? No!

In today’s world, it goes beyond technical skills. Now, managers and team leaders ensure that their team knows communication, team work, time management, and other important skills.

Crucial point: Pupils who are in HR degree programs learn about these important parts to work in this field. Thus, they are required to write various HR assignments to improve their knowledge.

Workforce Safety

It’s important to provide a safe working space to workers for various reasons. It’s not only because you care about your workers but also because it’s a compliance issue.
The OSHA requires employers to provide employees a safe place to work.
Thus, ignoring this Human Resources function can be costly. In addition, there are also criminal penalties for failing to comply with the government laws.

Incidents Occurred Due to Poor Care

• In 2012, the Ministry of Labor, Family, Social Protection and Elderly from Romania registered 3686 accidents at the working place from which 215 people died (Source Researchgate).
• A man was worked to death during his 14-hour work shift while performing physical hard labor in 2007.

Employee Relations and Satisfaction

It’s vital to keep the workers engaged and help them improve their relationships with the company. In addition, it consists of implementing employee-centric strategies to cater to their needs.
Moreover, the HR department is actively involved to develop a feedback system and workers recognition. Thus, they have to engage workers in various activities that can help them relax and perform better.
In addition, this only happens when HR creates a positive working space and upholds transparent communication with workers.

What are the Best HR Tips and Tricks?

1. Understand your people: It’s vital for Human Resources to know their people; it includes both personal (if they are okay with it) and professional lives.
2. Be tech savvy: In today’s world, it’s important for HR to be tech savvy. This helps to keep track of your employee’s performance, payroll, leaves, and other factors.
3. Increase your network: Working in the HR department means having a strong connection with relevant workers.
4. Communicate regularly: An HR person must be capable of communicating with their workers regularly and discussing their strong and weak areas.
5. Stay organized: Human Resources departments have to schedule interviews, communicate with their workers, and help them with their personal problems.In addition, they also have to plan, make, and implement business strategies.
6. Document the process: Consistency matters; rest everything is secondary. Therefore, it’s best to document your work and keep a solid track of it. Moreover, Human Resources pupils should know of the company’s culture.

Final Words

HR is one of the most important departments in any company. In this guide, we have discussed the five basic activities of HR that one must know to work with effortlessly.
These include recruitment, training, compensation, employee relations, and others. Moreover, they should also know some amazing and helpful tips and tricks to perform better at their job.
So, make sure to read and follow this guide to give the best possible work experience to your workers and develop excellent skills.