This is something that few people in human resources want to think about. Like many, they would like to just come to work, put in their time, and go home.
Just what happens in a typical day in the HR department? Some recruitment, the odd health and safety problem, and maybe a bit of discipline. Here's the difficulty: teams and/or line managers, or even agencies can handle recruitment. In most cases, they can document sick leave, holidays and vacations. Even discipline falls within their domain, as well as dismissal, which may involve a senior manager.
And what about the rest of it? Career management has been given to those who work in the organization. Personal Development Plans, after all, are personal.
Benefits and pensions, depending on what part of the world you're in, can be their responsibility, too. Portable pensions are all the rage, and tailored benefit packages are being offered to the extent that different people receive different offerings. These benefits are often administered by the Finance office, since company money is required to pay for them.
Employment law is often handled by line managers or the company lawyer or solicitor. Increasingly, this, too, is being outsourced. HR tends to get involved because they’re available; not because they're experts.
HR may also deal with industrial relations; but union membership is at its lowest for 60 years, and is 40% lower than it was in 1980. Notwithstanding periodic recessions, there is a skill shortage. The time to judge this, of course, is not during a recession; but this shortage will become increasing acute during your career. Unions probably won’t disappear altogether; but it’s unlikely that they will ever regain the strength they once had.
So there you have it: A day in the life, so to speak. The tragedy is that many who work in HR are often nothing more than administrators who just happen to be assigned there. Looking after the needs and interests of people is not in their blood, or more importantly, their soul. And that's why CEOs often believe that that department is of no particular value. Administration is something anyone can do, and it doesn't require an entire department to do it in any case.
In order for HR to be valuable to today’s organizations, it must create and implement a talent management strategy that focuses on retaining talent. Given enough money, anyone can attract talented people, and effective interviewing can enable you to select the best ones; but holding onto them is much more difficult. It takes more than just giving some effective performance appraisals. Strategic talent management is essential to HR’s new role in the changing world of work.
How can the HR department be valuable to a company, a firm, or an organization? It's not by doing a job that anyone can do. It's by doing a job that no one else can do.
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