Human Resources Department's Activities
When we think about what the Human Resources department does, a thousand activities come to mind and a thousand others we remember along the way. The 'HR' also deals with leave and absences and recruitment and salaries and absentees and with the 'new ones' and the 'those who leave' and much more… meal vouchers, gift vouchers , the 'performance bonus', the disciplinary convocation and the 'Six Sigma training', these are all things that the 'HR people' seem to be doing, aren't they?
Yes, HR deals with this in one way or another; they either plan, implement, verify, centralize or evaluate or all of these together. Although the activities are many and varied, they can still be divided into several broad categories:
- Administrative and salaries
- Recruitment, selection and employment
- Training and development
- Motivation and loyalty
- Performance evaluation and succession plan
- The exit process
Under the umbrella formed by these six categories, all the human resources activities are piled up or ordered, depending on the strategic note given to the HR approach and materializing in all the human relations that are established within the organization.
Human resources specialists cover a maximum of two categories, as they specialize in several processes from all those covered by these fields, while HR generalists try to cover all six categories with knowledge. The trend seems to show that generalists, as a guideline, will lose influence, with software applications taking over the function of complex monitoring and reporting, whereas specialists are gaining ground, given that the skills and attitudes needed for each subdomain can not yet be replaced by applications.
