Regardless of the size of the organisation, every organisation relies heavily on people to ensure that the business is running smoothly and that capital is managed adequately. Therefore, organisations tend to have a special department that overlooks all processes involving the employment, training, compensation and termination of employees. Over recent years, human resource management (HRM) has undergone significant changes from being an administrative role to a strategic one - viewed as a paramount for the success of an organisation. 

It is important to remember that not all organisations have designated departments for HRM, as it may be expensive to do so. This is extremely common in startup companies and smaller organisations who train managers with the roles related to HRM. In addition, most managers tend to be the first point of contact for employees when dealing with compensation, motivation or any issues related to the workforce. 

What are the different human resource management roles?

As mentioned previously, HRM roles tend to be integrated within different business departments. Within the business industry, experts believe that the HRM takes on seven role in particular. These are as follows:

1. Staffing

The term ‘staffing’ refers to the process of actively recruiting the workforce through job posting and negotiation of salary packages. Here is a step by step guide to staffing:

1. Staffing plan: The main purpose of the staffing plan is to give the HRM the guidelines within which they should adhere to when hiring and discussing revenue expectations. This allows them to recognise the gaps within the workforce and how they can best fill them. It ensures that they do not go over the organisational budget set for human resources.

2. Multicultural policies: In recent years, there is a stronger emphasis on ensuring that organisations are more culturally inclusive of different people. This requires HRM to have a strong understanding and empathy towards diversity and how to avoid any hiring biases when recruiting new employees. Diversity in the workplace is extremely important because it gives varying people the opportunity to grow and for the business to have new perspectives from employees with different lived experiences. Desrcimination within the workplace is still a prevalent issue that we as a community strive to change. To learn more, read this Business Kitz blog on workplace rights. 

3. Recruitment: This refers to finding employees to fill vacant positions in the workplace.

4. Selection: This includes the process of interviewing, selecting and discussing salary packages. Generally, this is followed by training the employees and retaining them by ensuring that motivation levels are high.

If you require any assistance, Business Kitz is an efficient and cost-effective solution to help you with employment or commercial contract. 

2. Workplace policies

In recent years, a greater emphasis and resources have been put on retaining employees long term. This requires the organisation to be fair and have equal opportunities for the employees which garners trust and loyalty, therefore reducing the likelihood of labour turnover. To do so, HRM is responsible for developing organisational policies concerning the workforce.

For example, an incident in the workplace may make HRM recognise that there is a need for changing the current policy. They will then therefore seek opinions on the policy, write the policy and then communicate the revised policy to the entire workforce. It is again extremely crucial to recognise that the HRM department needs to symbiotically work with other departments to ensure organisational success. The most common forms of policies in the workforce are ethics policy, vacation time and discipline process policies.

3. Compensation and benefits

To maintain fairness, HRM is also responsible for reviewing pay rates and ensuring that they meet the industry standards. Compensation plays an important role in retaining employees and ensuring that they are motivated. Typically, compensation is regarded based on the education, experience level, the number of years they’ve been with the organisation. Organisations need to ensure that their compensatory packages are competitive with other organisations in the industry. Compensation is inclusive of pay, health benefits, stock purchase incentives,  bonuses, sick leave and tuition reimbursement. 

4. Retention

While compensation plays a major role in retaining employees, There are other factors that impact labour turnover. These are as follows:

1. Issues pertaining to the performance of their job role;
2. Conflict within the organisation (eg: manager);
3. Toxic or unhealthy workplace environment; and
4. Poor organisational culture fit.

5. Training and development

Once an employee has been hired, regardless of their skill level, they need to be trained in order to ensure that they understand the organisational structure and what is expected of them. This is to ensure that there is a higher productivity turnout. In addition, research suggests that employees with greater intrinsic satisfaction tend to be happier at their jobs are therefore are more likely to retain them. Typically, organisations provide employees with training programs periodically to ensure that they are up to date with the industry standard skills.

6. Employment laws

Whilst HRM employees aren’t necessarily lawyers, they need to have a comprehensive understanding of the laws affecting employment. As laws are constantly changing, HRM must be up to date with them and communicate the changes in the legal environment to the corresponding management concerned. Some of the common employment laws include discriminations laws, health-care requirements, minimum wage, worker safety laws, and labour laws. 

Keeping track of laws can be challenging. Our sister company, can Legal Kitz provide legal services to protect you and your organisation. 

7. Worker protection

Every organisation should have a strong focus on ensuring worker safety. Worker unions in conjunction with state laws can impact the requirements for safety in the workplace. These safety issues include but are not limited to chemical hazards, heating and ventilation requirement and employee privacy protection.

Legal advice

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