HR is known as human resources or you may encounter it as human capital, people operation,talent management, employee experience etc etc In my humble opinion it is essential for every business out there, or at least the majority but i won't explain the "why" today... (sorry not sorry :p). I will try to explain though what exactly this department choose and in what sectors it is divided.

HR factions

Talent Acquisition/Recruitment 

So this faction is primarily responsible for the whole recruiting and recruiting process of the corporation or business. Not only the should recruit the right candidate but at the same time it must be done in  a cost effective way and in proper time schedule given the company needs and when i say company needs in a way it's what other employees need.

For instance, if you are supervisor let's say in the IT department and there is a new project going on that you deem way too hard for the current people in your department. After you talk with the management and hr you have to ok for one more person. HR comes in play and have to hurry and find that person as fast as it can and ofc with all the skills needed cause the project is still running! 

Compensation & Benefits Management 

So except the fact that this sector keeps the file of every employee as well as how much he gets payed, they also are responsible to determine along with the central management ofc what the pay rates will be for each role and position.

Also depending on the available funds the business has, they are responsible to come up with ideas of a set of benefits for each employee. This can be healthcare, bonus money, cards for shopping, cars, trips, free postgraduate degrees, parking spots and a lot more. This is quite crucial for keeping the employees at the company ofc given the fact that everything else runs at a normal pace. For example if you have all of the above as benefits but your supervisor or boss is the worst, most likely you will end up resigning.

Labor Law Compliance 

This is quite boring but once again crucial. You need to have strong knowledge of labor law cause this sector is responsible for the protection of the company and ofc its employees. Imagine that if something bad happen and nobody knows the labor law the company can lose way to much money! 

Training and Development

This is the sector that involves all the training and development of any individual employee. This can be done by seminars and many online and offline lessons that many would pay but for the employees are given for free. There are 2 reason behind this department's existence. 

The first one is to keep the employees in the company and happy. I for example would choose a company that offers me free seminars, free learning courses and even a postgraduate degree than a company that would offer me 100$ more. Longterm is saves me money and trouble. The second reason is to uplift any employee and "develop" him for the sake of the company. If you provide someone with training and thus he gain new skill or develop his old ones then we would be more productive. 

Performance Appraisal and Management 

Every employee need a feedback and ofc each company needs to know what exactly their staff are doing and how productive they are. That's what this sector does and it's responsible for finding ways to measure that as best as they can and ofc talk with the staff on how they can improve themselves. 

Did you know all these faction of HR?

After reading this, maybe you are doing some HR even without noticing it?

Do you consider it important or not?

All of the above factions can work perfectly and have great results when the upper management care about their employees and also there is cooperation between HR and other departments like Accounting, Marketing etc etc

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