While most people generally tend to believe or are disguised with an outlook that HR function is solely responsible for dealing with human capital and people management issues, with the most visible outcome being recruitment of key hires and new talent. However, if you are thinking the scope of HR is far beyond recruitment, administration and human capital management issues, then what is the more that they need to accomplish everyday?
If you are keen on knowing more about HR functions or considering to pursue a career in human resources, then here are five challenges that HR professionals need to cope up with everyday:
See: 5 Ways to Assess Passionate Candidates During A Job Interview
Employee recruitment
One of the HR’s main tasks is to manage everything related to employee recruitment. When the company intends to go on an expansion spree, the demand for new hires is inevitable. Therefore, HR brings a crucial mission to ensure that the right talent is assigned to the right place, at the right time.
Long procedures need to be followed to achieve this goal. At first, they conduct a meeting with the senior managers to discuss upcoming job openings. When this is approved, they are required to post the job openings at the company’s official website and on other job portals. While it sounds trivial, this activity is time-consuming. On successfully posting job ads, HR leaders are required to review hundreds of resumes directed to the company mail box and screen applicants shortlisted for the interviews.
This process of screen through applicant profiles is undoubtedly tiring, but is also not easy, since HR leaders are required to have time management capabilities to ensure that they do not invest their time into resumes that are not worth it. After shortlisting candidates, they need to contact them and schedule interviews (both phone and face-to-face) and prepare for another round of tests.
Employee performance
Making sure that each employee arrives and leaves the office at the designated time is an essential task for HR. However, this task is often overlooked and taken for granted by many people. Whereas, keeping track of employee’s attendance and performance is one of the key points to support company’s growth. When employees show commitment to stay abreast with the changes and rules, the company’s goals can be easily attained within the expected time frame.
Besides gauging employee performance, attendance list is also used to count and calculate employee payroll. Hence, HR leaders must be very careful to analyse the data presented by the attendance software, since even the slightest of errors will impact on employees’ salaries.
Payroll management
When HR has successfully found new talents to fill particular job roles, it does not mean they can now relax. Instead, the other follow-up task is awaiting to be finished immediately. After providing offer letter to the new hires, explaining legal compliance, the company’s perks and benefits available to employees, HR leaders are required to feed in new employees’ data into the company’s system for automated payroll management.
From salaries, timesheets, medical leave, no-pay leave, change shifts, overtime, bonuses, day-off, to vacation hours, HR leaders must prepare for all paper works of payroll management carefully. They should ensure that employees get their portions accordingly, so companies can function smoothly.
Training and development
HR leaders should provide continuous coaching and training to ensure both professional and personal growth, so employees always give their best performance. They should be able to evaluate and analyse each employee’s performance to find out what skillsets and competencies need improvement.
While it is true that training programs are not conducted every day, this needs a decent preparation such that the project can be carried out successfully to produce concrete results for company’s development.
As the type of training, the trainer, and the person to join the training is already determined, HR leaders should contact the related parties and ensure that the training programs are conducted smoothly without any hiccups. When the training gets completed, HR should collect feedback from employees to evaluate the event’s sustainability and gauge its impact on employee performance.
Employee administration
Most HR tasks are identical to administrative tasks and there are at times, piles of paperwork awaiting to be done. Especially when onboarding new hires, numerous administrative files need to be prepared, such as contracts, access cards, new email address, vouchers, user acquisition, and other necessary details to support employees to perform their duties in the future.
The list of tasks entrusted on the responsible shoulders of a HR professional keep getting longer when they have to hire foreign workers, since this means they have to issue an official statement for work permits as well as other documents related to immigration of talents to international markets.
Further HRs are expected to take care of employee dismissal, when they submit resignations or even during layoffs with company restructuring plans. Besides reviewing their discharge, HR should provide suitable compensation to ensure that no problems arise in the future.
Human Resource department plays a critical role for sustainable performance and long-term business returns in the longer run. While this division does not have tangible outcomes compared to other divisions, both small and large-scale businesses need HR professional to make sure that every element in the organisation functions properly, smoothly and appropriately.
Read also: Developing HR Programs to Support Working Parents
