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An analysis of key functions of HR

October 10, 2023

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This article was written by Kalpana Verma pursuing Diploma in Labour, Employment and Industrial Laws for HR Managers and edited by Koushik Chittella.

This article has been published by Sneha Mahawar.

Table of Contents

Introduction

The HR department plays a vital role in any organisation, whether it is a small or a large-scale firm. It is just like the sun, and other departments are like planets that revolve around the sun. Although HR functions vary from company to company and depend on the business model of a firm, there are seven key functions that are similar in any organisation. These functions are end to end recruitment, onboarding, payroll management, policy formation, training and development, employee grievance management, and administrative responsibilities.

Seven key functions of HR

End to end recruitment

If you’re starting your career as a HR professional, you have to learn the foremost thing about this department, which is how to recruit talent for your company. Before learning how to recruit the right people at the right time, you need to build the goodwill of your company. This can be done in the following ways:

The company’s website– It is the first thing that a good candidate will search for. A company’s website must be attractive, professional, and informative. It should clearly state the company’s business model and its services, it should have a good SEO rating, and so on. Although it is the responsibility of the IT department of the company, HR must have basic knowledge of it in order to get it done from them.
The company’s GMB (Google My Business) account– The GMB must be regularly updated. It consists of the company’s address, contact numbers, working days, pictures or videos of infrastructure, employees, events, recognition, reviews, and fun activities. These are very basic things, but their impact is very beneficial for any organisation. This is to give you an edge over your competitors and attract quality people to apply to your company. In this era of digitalization, staying updated on the internet and all social media platforms is not significant, but it has become a necessity.
Social media presence– The number of active social media users in India is over 1.2 billion. It becomes very important to be present on all social media platforms for any company to enhance their business digitally.

After building a presentable online presence, HR should start the recruitment process. If one follows the steps in sequence, they will end up hiring talent for his/her company. Those steps are:

Step 1 – Designing job descriptions

Designing a job description (JD) should be done in a way that the right candidate can apply immediately after reading it. An appropriate JD consists of basic information like designation, location, salary, expected date of joining (DOJ), roles and responsibilities, and the most important element, a brief about the company’s business.

Step 2 – Selection of job portals

The right selection of job portals to post your job profiles is the next important task. It totally depends on your company’s investing capacity; otherwise, there are some free job posting options that are also available. For instance, on LinkedIn, you can post one free job post. If your account has good connections and you’re active on LinkedIn, this job posting can bring you a good number of resumes. The second most popular portal is Indeed, where you have both paid and unpaid options to post your jobs. If you use the right keywords, the algorithm will work pretty well to bring in an ample number of resumes, even for an unpaid option.
For more CVs or job postings of different profiles, you can go ahead with a paid option, which is very nominal.

Step 3 – Usage of platforms

Now don’t just wait for resumes; put your efforts into finding the right candidates. How will you do that? Use platforms like LinkedIn and Hirect. There are many other social platforms where you can directly message candidates. There are some limitations for every portal; adhere to them, and you can send 10-20 messages in a day, which eventually gives you good results.

Step 4 – Screen and schedule

Last but not least, screen the resumes you’ve received that fit your job profile parameters. And schedule an interview call either online or in-person.

Onboarding

Onboarding is the first process after hiring candidates to make them employees of the company. It includes orientation, which is the completion of paperwork and a background check on an employee, teaching them the business model of the company as well as making them aware of the company’s structure, culture, vision, mission, and values. This process can take 2 to 7 days, according to the profile, and it varies from company to company as per their business scale.

Onboarding is very important on the HR part because you, as HR, help a new employee to gel up with the new system and leave a lasting impact in order to bring enthusiasm and make them feel proud of joining your company. Many companies give welcome kits to new hires, celebrate their orientation as an event, and post it on social platforms. It helps companies enhance their goodwill at a fast pace.

Payroll management

Managing payroll is one of the significant functions of HR. It is a process of employees getting paid after calculating the wages of the month, which consist of employee database, bonus & gratuity, salary and increment, pay slip, leave & attendance, income tax, provident fund, employee state insurance, overtime pay, loans, advances, professional tax, and the National Pension Scheme (NPS). It covers everything from putting employees into payroll software to giving them their pay slips.

There are simple steps to payroll management in the system

Create employees master
Create payroll master
Create pay heads
Create salary details
Process payroll

Payroll software has been used to make payrolls comply with federal/state government taxes. Processing payroll can take a few hours; the more manual you make, the longer it will take, and the strength of the employees also matters.

Policy formation

Policies are the rules and regulations of an organisation that help run the organisation in a structured way. There are some basic policies that every company forms, such as the Leave & Time Off Policy, Recruitment Policy, Anti-Harassment & Non-Discrimination Policy, Employee Conduct Policy, Employee Safety Policy, Social Media Policy, and Disciplinary & Termination Policy. These policies should adhere to local, state, and Central Government laws. Every organisation needs policies to provide guidelines and a structured framework for its employment relationships.

Policies should be made based on the following guidelines:

Compliance with all local, state, and central government laws.
Clear, specific, and flexible enough to meet the required changes from time to time.
Keep in mind the vision, mission, and values of your organisation.
Keep in mind the purpose and objective of the organisation and form policies to attain all those requirements
Communicate the policy to the entire organisation via any mode of announcement.
Ensure the implementation and do training of employees in understanding it if required.

Training and development

Training and development is one of the most important functions of HRM. It starts right from the onboarding process and keeps on continuing to set up a systematic structure of the business, ensure policy adherence, and reunite all energies towards achieving the common goal of an organisation. It focuses on upskilling people and making them aware of all policies, work, technicalities, and so on.

The training takes place at different stages or levels; for instance, the onboarding or executive level of training will be different from the managerial level of training. We can say that training people is like introducing them to concepts for the first time, whereas development refers to upskilling the existing employees to achieve the desired goal, either behavioural or organisational. For example, training methods used for lower levels are job training,technical training, soft skills training, internship training, training via the process of job rotation, etc. and training at higher levels are lectures, group discussions, case studies, role playing , conferences, etc.

Training helps in identifying the talents within the organisation to whom higher responsibilities can be given for the further growth of individuals and the company. It reduces the habit of spoon feeding juniors, and managers can utilise time more efficiently and invest it in doing productive things.

Employee grievance management

A grievance is a formal employee complaint filed at the time of non acceptance of any policy by them, and office politics can be another reason for it. Some of the most common grievance procedures are individual grievance, group grievance, union grievance, and policy grievance.

The steps involved in handling employee grievances are:

Step 1 – Meeting with managers

It is the role of HR to suggest an employee talk to their manager before filing any formal grievance. It usually helps when people discuss over a table; it resolves the query most of the time.

Step 2 – Formal written grievance

If the grievance is not resolved after discussing it with the manager, it becomes significant to tell the employee to write a formal email to the management or higher authority about the whole matter with specifications like date, venue, incidence, etc.

Step 3 – Investigation

To conduct a formal investigation, you may need to interview the employee who filed the grievance as well as anyone else who was involved. Collect any evidence you can to help you come up with a resolution (e.g., email chains, witness testimony, receipts). You may also choose to appoint an independent investigator to conduct the investigation to keep the process fair and unbiased. Sometimes the police can also be involved in matters like sexual harassment, theft, physical fights , etc.

Step 4 – Resolution

After the investigation, the higher authority, HR, and managers announce a fair resolution verbally and in writing and try to do justice after finding the truth. If it’s still not satisfactory to the employee, matters go to an external party or with legal officers after the consent of both employee and employer.

Administrative responsibilities

Administrative role of HR vary at different levels of the position, like HR executive, who handles more ground level admin job like keeping record of employee, ensuring safety compliance at workplace, checking on basic amenities, maintaining database, compiling reports, assisting HR Managers in sorting data, assisting payroll department by providing relevant employee information, arranging travel accommodation and processing expense forms, answering employees queries about HR-related issues, etc. Whereas at the managerial level, the responsibilities are:

Preparing HR documents like employment documents, HR guides, etc.
Create an organisational chart.
Liaise with external partners, like insurance vendors, and ensure legal compliance.
Create regular reports and presentations on HR metrics.
Publish and remove job ads.
Develop training and onboarding material.

Conclusion

The importance of HR functions can be clearly seen and observed in many firms across the world. It can be said that HR is just like the sun, and other departments are like planets that revolve around it. But HR functions also depend on the type of industry and size of the firm. All the functions mentioned above are the most common and important responsibilities of HR. For the details of any functions mentioned above, refer to that single function over the internet. By following the seven steps mentioned above, any firm can successfully manage its HR functions.

References

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An analysis of key functions of HR

Introduction

Seven key functions of HR