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Human Resources continues to be one of the most important business areas within many companies.
HR is responsible for hiring, handling employee concerns, and so much more.
While it is a very detailed field that involves a lot of duties and responsibilities, there are a few basics that every HR professional needs to know and be aware of.
If these basics aren’t learned by a professional, they will not be as valuable to their team as they could have been.
But just what are these basic things that every HR professional should know? Read on to find out!
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As a varied field, there are many different types of jobs you could have under the HR bracket.
There aren't many other departments with such an extensive list of different job titles. Here are some of the most common:
One of the main duties of an HR professional is to handle payroll.
Employees want to be paid in full and on time, and HR is responsible for ensuring that is the case. The compensation you offer employees needs to be satisfactory for them to be happy and fulfilled at the office.
You need to pay amounts that your company can afford and that are in line with their goals, but also figures that are attractive enough to bring in some talented workers.
The benefits you offer are another thing that HR is tasked with handling. They need to work to ensure a benefits package is both fair and acceptable for the company and the employees.
These people may also need to work directly with healthcare providers to negotiate plans.
Of course, there are other benefits HR professionals need to think about outside of healthcare.
What employee benefits should be in a benefits package?
HR professionals also need to do their research to make sure they are going about things in the most efficient way.
For example, there are many different approaches to PTO software, so be sure to take time to find one that works for you.
HR professionals also need to organise their employees' annual leave calendars.
Taking time off is so important for employees, so it's equally important that there is an individual taking full charge of the process.
There are many different ways to track annual leave, but each HR professional will need to find a software or method that works well for them.
If you want to learn more about annual leave, check out our detailed annual leave calculator!
Another primary responsibility of HR is to train and develop new employees.
New hires need to be shown the ropes, and you need to prepare them to become a functioning member of your team. If the training efforts that have been implemented are low-quality, new workers might not be getting the information they need to thrive.
While the initial onboarding process is likely the most important, your training shouldn’t stop there.
You should offer various programs and/or courses that allow people to build their skills or knowledge throughout their careers.
By doing this, you not only help workers be more productive and skillful, but also loyal to the company. If an employee sees you putting time, effort, and money into building their skills, they are sure to appreciate it and will want to work hard for you!
Before you can hire and train people, you need to recruit them.
Recruiting the right team is a crucial element of being a successful HR professional. These professionals are responsible for advertising open positions, using tools to sort and observe the candidates, and then choosing some to interview and eventually hire.
HR pros will also be responsible for checking any references, administering assessments, setting up interviews, and communicating with interested candidates.
If a HR professional isn’t well-versed at hiring effectively and knowing good interview tips, it can hurt their company in a variety of different ways. It can waste a lot of time, and making bad hires can be expensive, as training new people only for them to quickly leave is costly.
An incredibly underrated part of the job that every HR employee needs to be well-versed in is succession planning.
This is all about having a plan in place for when key members of your team retire or move onto new opportunities.
This process includes pinpointing and developing the employee or employees who can step in and fill these roles.
In general, you want a pool of interested and qualified individuals who can quickly step into these senior or management roles, without a lot of downtimes or additional training. This will ensure there is a smooth transition, and not one full of roadblocks and confusion.
If this type of planning isn’t done, the loss of an executive can have a major and lasting negative impact on the company, and finding a suitable replacement can take a lot of time.
By preparing and planning ahead of time, you can ensure your company can continue to grow and succeed without a major drop in inefficiency.
Last but certainly not least, another basic that HR workers should be aware of is managing performance.
It is often up to HR to monitor employees and make sure they are performing adequately. If no one is managing the performance of workers, it can be hard to know whether the team is being effective and efficient or not.
Performance management is all about helping workers be their best, and providing them the appropriate tools and feedback along the way.
The importance of feedback cannot be overstated. It can help to clarify expectations, build confidence, and simply help workers perform their tasks better. If necessary, this can be facilitated within a mentoring programme.
Each employee will have a certain list of duties and responsibilities, and you need to ensure they are completing these in a satisfactory manner.
This can often be done by performance reviews, general feedback, or even things like peer evaluation in some cases.
Generally, employee performance will be evaluated a couple of times a year. Any issues should be addressed, and a plan of attack should be created to get the performance of the employee to the level it should be.
Communication and postivity are important during these times, as well. The last thing you want to do is publicly call out a worker or make them feel like a failure - employee mental health should be safeguarded at every stage.
Constructive criticism and finding ways to improve performance without tearing them down should always be a goal.
In conclusion, while HR can be a complicated profession, we hope that this article has helped you learn some of the basics in HR management. Without these, HR professionals will not have the fundamentals that they need to succeed in their job.
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