This is something that few people want to think about, especially in the human resources department. 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're expected to document sick leave, holidays or vacations. Even discipline falls within their domain, as well as dismissal. Sometimes, such drastic measures involve a senior manager, but not always.
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, are often their responsibility, too. Portable pensions are all the rage. Even tailored benefit packages are being offered such that different people may receive different offerings. These things are often administered by the Finance office, since they involve money more directly.
Employment law is often handled by lline managers or the company lawyer or solicitor. Increasingly, this sort of thing is being outsourced. HR tends to get involved because their available; not because their input is required. The last function typically found in this department pertains to industrial relations. The fact is that union membership is at its lowest for 60 years, and is 40% lower than it was as recently as 1980. Notwithstanding the current recession, from which many countries are emerging already, there is a skill shortage. The time to judge this, of course, is not during a recession; but I expect this shortage to become increasing acute as national economies strengthen. It's premature to suggest that unions will disappear altogether; but I doubt 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 that department are often nothing more than administrators who just happen to work there. Human resources - people - are not in their blood, or more importantly, in their soul. And it's the reason why CEOs often believe that that department is of no particular value to their organizations. Administration is something anyone can do, and it doesn't require an entire department to do it.
So, it rather begs the question. How can the HR department be valuable to a company, a firm, or an organization? As you've been reminded already; it's not by just being an administrator. 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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