HR Roles and Responsibilities Essay

Human Resource is a field that has attained reasonable and due attention by many leading firms in recent times. Human Resource has been recognized as an important factor for achieving success in the global arena and in gaining a competitive advantage in the industry. Many leading firms put special importance on the behavior of their work force playing an important role in the success of the organization. To maintain this they have planned and organized their human resource function in such a manner that it provides them a competitive advantage in the industry they operate. If we talk about Human Resource Management which has been a dedicated field for improving Human Resource function of any organization puts special emphasis on certain important aspects to be taken care of regarding the employee to achieve success in formulating a successful Human Resource department. These factors are the compensation plans and strategies, Reward and incentives plan, Training and trainability of the employees, Hiring and Recruiting and Future or career development plans (Mathis and Jackson, 2007). All these factors play a strong role and go side by side in the formulation of a competitive Human Resource Department. Human Resource has recently achieved a huge amount of success due to the realization of its importance in the organizational environment. It has been identified as a competitive advantage by some of the organizations due to the importance of Human Resource in the related industry. Human Resource Management has also changed its shape according to the trends in the World and the factors that drive change. These factors include Globalization, Technology, Diversity, and Ethics. All these factors go side by side as the business spreads due to these factors (Dessler, 2007). Globalization has been due to the technological advancements and because of which diversity increases and more ethics related situations arise in an organization. The work of human resource at one hand increases due to globalization, diversity and ethics but on the other hand Technology helps them to resolve these issues. There have been recent trends of using more and more technological equipment in the Human Resource processes. The major work of the Human Resource is to provide the organization with quality people that become the work force of the organization. In this paper we would concentrate on two functions of the Human Resource Department and how they have changed according to the trends of the human society and development of Humans. First we would discuss induction which is a very common practice in the current scenario of any organization. Induction is basically the first step in which an employee gets to know about his or her workplace environment. This covers each and every activity that helps the employee in adapting to the environment and people around him at his or her workplace. Induction can also be termed as the process of building a relationship between the employee and the organization the nature of this relationship is of a two way communication process (French, 2006). Starting on a new position and with a new organization can be a process which might take some time for the employee and the organization to get settled with. There are many new things that need to be understood and get familiar with these include fellow employees, supervisors and managers to interact, entirely new processes that need to be understood and followed, new offices and buildings that are required to be navigated, learning to work on new software, new and unknown employment environment to understand and new tasks to learn. This transition or all the above mentioned activities are made easier and more effective for the new employee as well as for the employer if the induction schemes in the organization are effective and efficient (Mathis and Jackson 2007). There are obviously costs for implementing effective and efficient induction schemes but the benefits are more far reaching and long lasting if a comparison of both costs and benefits are made. Induction is a process that has been recently added in the organizational hiring and recruiting process by the Human Resource function. There was no concept of induction some 15 to 20 years back. As organizations tend to realize the importance of working environment, which factors affect the performance of an employee and the importance of organizational culture induction has been the solution or the bridge to reduce the gap between an employee and its surroundings in a new environment (Ivancevich, 2009). This not only helps the employee in speeding up the level of his performance in the organization but also reduces the time to know different people around the organization. Performance Appraisal is another important task that needs to be completed by the Human Resource Department. This task requires a great amount of analyzing and insight on the work an employee has been doing. The employee performance is not the only criterion that is considered while creating performance appraisals. Other aspects such as employee’s attitude towards his or her job, how he or she behaves with the colleagues and other aspects such as absenteeism and the following of ethics in the work environment are also criteria that need to be studied while making performance appraisals. All this is not an easy task as studying qualitative aspects of an employee and evaluating them becomes a very difficult task to do. Apart from that employee performance can only be evaluated through the direct supervisor or manager who the employee reports to (Mondy, 2007). This can bring in to play the personal feelings and impression of the supervisor or manager under which the employee works and can create biasness in the evaluation process. Apart from this judging behaviors and attitude is another complicated task. Performance Appraisals have now included a great amount of technological tools to be used for helping in this process. Organizations have online forms for employees, which reduces the time to gather data about the performance of an employee and even retrieving it hence helping in quick appraisals and employee satisfaction of his or her performance. Not only it has reduced time but also made the procedure very effective than before helping in the work of the Human Resource Department. To conclude this paper I would like to mention the fact that all the trends and advancements in the field of human resource management have helped the organizations in making the function more effective and efficient. Some organizations proudly say that their Human Resource department is the competitive edge they have in the industry. Especially in the IT industry it is very important to maintain a effective and efficient Human Resource Department due to the fact that it can provide competitive advantage to the organization.