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What does HR actually do? 11 key responsibilities
Reading time: about 7 min
Posted by: Lucid Content Team
HR might be the most confusing department in your whole organization—everyone knows they’re important, but very few employees know why.
So what does HR do?
There’s a massive difference between a healthy human resources department that contributes to the growth of the organization and a distant HR that exists somewhere near the basement archives and only pops up once a year for the company holiday party.
Here’s an in-depth description of what the HR department does (or what they should be doing) to meet the needs of employees.
What is an HR department?
In simplest terms, the HR (Human Resources) department is a group who is responsible for managing the employee life cycle (i.e., recruiting, hiring, onboarding, training, and firing employees) and administering employee benefits.
What does human resources do?
Ask any employee what an HR department is, and you’ll get an answer that primarily deals with the most uncomfortable aspects of work: HR violations, layoffs, and firing. But the truth is that human resources is there to support employees. It’s quite literally a resource for humans.
Here are some of the tasks your HR department is busy completing every day.
1. Recruit candidates
HR needs to understand the organization’s needs and make sure those needs are met when recruiting for new positions. It’s not as simple as just throwing an ad up on Indeed: you’ll need to analyze the market, consult stakeholders, and manage budgets.
Then, once the role is advertised, more research needs to be done to make sure that the right candidates are being attracted and presented. Recruiting is a massive—and costly—undertaking; the right candidate can revitalize an entire organization, but the wrong candidate can upend operations.
Plan a more effective recruitment process with these 6 essential steps.Learn how
2. Hire the right employees
Human resources is in charge of arranging interviews, coordinating hiring efforts, and onboarding new employees. They’re also in charge of making sure all paperwork involved with hiring someone is filled out and making sure that everything from the first day to each subsequent day is navigated successfully.
3. Process payroll
Payroll is its own beast. Every payday must have taxes calculated and hours collected. Expenses need to be reimbursed and raises and bonuses need to be added in as well. If you think it’s a chore doing taxes just once a year, imagine what it must be like to be in HR and make sure they’re properly deducted every pay period.
4. Conduct disciplinary actions
This responsibility may be why HR tends to get a bad rap. When navigated inappropriately, disciplinary actions can lead to the loss of a valuable employee and can even result in litigation or a poor reputation. But when handled appropriately, disciplinary action can result in the success of an employee.
For instance, if a company notices that a particular employee is routinely late and continues being late even after the employee has received several warnings, HR could step in and investigate the reason for the tardiness. It may be an opportunity to extend benefits such as counseling to the employee or offer additional resources to help the employee learn to be on time. Instead of taking on the cost of firing and then recruiting a replacement for that employee, it could be a learning opportunity that could enhance that employee’s career.