In order for any business to run, you are going to need to bring together a range of different departments, all with their own important role to play. There is marketing, there is customer service and there will also be departments such as IT. You may not realise it, but one of the most important departments in any business, has to be Human Resources. HR is there to ensure that a number of all-important functions are performed and despite this they are often overlooked.
Want to know more about the all-important part that HR plays in any business? Here are the 5 main functions that any HR department performs each and every day.
Recruitment
In order for any business to grow and succeed, one thing is for sure, there needs to be the right staff working there. This is why recruitment is a key element to think about and one of the main responsibilities of the HR department.
Specific recruitment team members will be responsible for advertising any roles that are available within the business and ensuring that these adverts reach the right people. Not only this, but when those candidates apply, the HR team will need to sift through their CVs and make sure that they are invited to interview if they are a good potential fit for any openings.
Once the candidate has been interviewed and it has been decided that they will be awarded the job, then it is also the HR team who will send out the contracts, the offer letters and anything else that goes along with the recruitment process.
Performance management
Whilst it is important to find the right staff members during those early days, it is also incredibly important to ensure that the right staff perform to their best abilities. Which is yet another function that HR will take charge of.
Performance management and appraisals is important for making sure that all those people within the business feel that they are engaged with what they do. That they stay productive and focused. A good performance process will include either a bi-annual or annual review. This will enable the staff member and their manager to set goals, share open feedback and also forms a key part of good quality leadership.
Whilst the manager will be responsible for holding meetings with the staff members, HR will need to be on hand to put together the review paperwork and possibly offer the manager advice on the next steps to action the meeting.
Learning and development
If there is one thing that often comes out of performance reviews, it is the need for learning and development. Learning and development is there to ensure that the staff within the business grows and that in turn the business itself grows and it is something that HR will need to organise.
HR will work with training companies to ensure that they are offering the very best training courses possible suitable for the needs of the workforce, they will also then promote these to the staff members and ask them to sign up. HR will invite people to the training courses and once they are over, they will collate feedback on their success too.
HR will need to then feedback to the training provider whether or not their courses were a success and think about booking them in the future or adjusting the list of courses available.
Rewards
It is incredibly important that employees within any business feel that they are being rewarded for all the hard work that they do. Which is why more and more businesses are looking at the best ways to offer rewards for great performance.
These can come in the form of salary increases, career opportunities, recognition awards or even just amazing benefits that help to achieve a better work/life balance. HR will need to think about what rewards are going to have the best appeal with any business and ensure that these rewards and benefits are then cascaded down to the staff members who will receive them.
Communications
Whilst you may have a communications team that is responsible for speaking to customers and the wider network; for internal comms you are often going to need to rely on HR. Communication is a vital part of the function of HR and unfortunately it can be something that many businesses get wrong.
There are a wealth of ways that you can try to communicate effectively within a business. One of the simplest to use has to be an intranet or perhaps evolved and modern employee engagement software. It could be down to the HR team to keep this updated and to make sure that as many people as possible within the business are using it to access key policies and procedures, as well as communicate with one another.
As you can see, HR do so much more than you may realise. Which means that they should be recognised as one of the most important departments within a business. Give HR the support that they need and we can promise you that your business will grow and succeed more than you could have hoped.