Have you thought about professional recognition in the world of Human Resources? While HRs and recruiters do not directly contribute to the quality of a company’s product or service, the position isn’t a token one — it comes with a lot of power and an even larger load of responsibility.
But why are HRs so important? The short answer is, they fulfill an insanely large number of diverse jobs throughout almost every department (from accounting to recruiting positions). Human Resources are hired as a sort of Union servants for the workers of a company. These paper crusaders go above and beyond to defend employees from injustice and discrimination. You can go ahead and call them employee lawyers.
What is Human Resources (HR)?
Human Resources, or HR for short, is a division in a corporation that deals with a variety of duties. HR plays a key role in business expansion by maintaining the balance between low-level employees and top-level executives. The department was originally created as a way to control employee/employer relationships. Their main goal was to serve as a deputized union between those with power and those who worked below. In simple terms, the Human Resources department manages the employee life cycle (from hiring to firing) and everything in between.
Some of HR’s duties involve:
- Recruiting employees;
- Staff training;
- Staff benefit calculation;
- Disciplinary action;
- Committee selection;
- Employee health and protection;
- Employee vacation calculation;
- Inside office promotions;
As you can see, HR departments are diverse experts who cover a significant portion of jobs in a department. Their responsibilities on a daily basis can seem mundane, but no company can hope to be self-sufficient without a functional HR department.
Human Resources team size
While no law dictates the mandatory presence of an HR department in a company, most businesses have an in-house staff who do the job or hire outside assistance. As a result, the size of an HR team varies. The main rule of thumb is that there should be 4 HR employees for every 100 workers in a company. These numbers are over exaggerated, of course, but depending on the company size, it’s expected to have anywhere from 10 to 5 HR representatives split between 2 and 5 departments.
No doubt, as employee numbers grow so do the costs. When you need both a dedicated workforce and people who oversee it, it’s time to calculate costs. Many smaller businesses outsource their HR needs to dedicated Human Resource Management companies. This type of outsourcing is referred to as ‘per-hour’ HR and doesn’t conform to the typical hierarchy. Outsourcing provides companies with a team of experts that are trained in staff management who perform most of the roles of an HR team with half of the costs. Now you might ask: ‘Why doesn’t everyone just outsource?’. The answer is rather complex. While outsourcing HR needs to a company will lessen the burden of costs, it will also limit the influence an HR team would have over employees. This could be a good and a bad thing. Less influence means that employees will feel more liberated to express themselves without the constant thought of being monitored. On the other hand, monitoring your employees might be necessary to eliminate certain unproductive behaviors.
Core Functions of HR
As we’ve established, HR doesn’t conform to standard professional roles. To be productive, HR roles need to split over adjacent departments. HR conducts a wide variety of different tasks within an organization. However, there are core functions that are performed by every HR division, regardless of size. These are functions that are important to company growth and employee health, and these functions cannot be performed without specialized training. The core responsibilities are listed below:
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- Staffing
Staffing is the process of talent acquisition. Traditionally, when someone applies for a job, their application goes through the Human Resources department first. It’s a common misconception that a CEO or Vice president of a company does the new staff recruiting; in fact, HRs are responsible for over 90% of all recruiting activities within corporate America.
To meet the demand for fresh staff, the HR recruiting department is split into several recruiter levels.
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- Low-entry HR representatives deal with the recruiting and evaluation of entry-level positions such as maintenance and health. These positions are usually in lower demand and do not require specialized training. Some examples of low-entry jobs include Janitor and Lunch Prepper.
- Mid-entry HR representatives are responsible for the recruitment and evaluation of mid-tier employees. This is where the bulk of the workforce is located. The mid-tier can include anything from software engineers to vehicle operators. To better evaluate new recruits and acquire a high volume of applicants, mid-entry HR representatives go through extensive training.
- High-entry HR representatives are rare. One of the reasons for this is that High level recruiting is generally done within the company in the form of promotions or resources re-distribution. It’s very rare that an HR representative will be responsible for interviewing a high-level employee.
- Development
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HR representatives are responsible for the continued education and specialization of employees in a company. In smaller companies where employee size is manageable, HR can afford to pay individual attention to a larger portion of the workforce. It’s quite common to host company events and seminars which aim at further education and evaluation. In larger companies where there are 4 HR representatives for every 100 workers, special techniques such as presentations and off-board training seminars need to be prepared.
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- Compensation
Contrary to popular belief, the size of your salary and benefits is often decided by the Human Resource Management team. The scope of evaluation includes identifying appropriate compensation rates based on individual role and performance, as well as potential benefit packages for extra incentive or motivation.
Human Resources negotiate employee salary increase and decrease rates within a company on behalf of the employee workforce. The goal of the HR department is to reach a stable balance between employee satisfaction and company linear growth.
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- Safety and Health
One of the main goals of HR is to maintain a safe and rewarding work environment. This includes frequent psychiatric evaluations of employees, regular seminars aiming to improve and update safety measures, and implementing new strategies for fighting discrimination in the workplace. Basically, every employee dissatisfaction report gets processed by HR and sent to the appropriate department for enactment.
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- Employee and Labor Relations
Fighting for employee legal rights, ensuring an open dialogue with unions, and mediating disagreements between employee social groups is an important HR core function.
HR Job Titles and Positions
As we’ve established, HR does not conform to standard HR job titles. If anything, an HR department can transform to better suit a company’s present needs. This is an incredibly valuable skill to ensure linear growth in employee retention and brand recognition. Below you will find a list of HR roles, from entry-level positions to other, more specialized ones.
1. Entry Level Positions
Entry-level positions do not require a lot of previous experience. It is a position most frequently occupied by students or fresh graduates. The duties of entry-level HRs aren’t groundbreaking, but they are still important. Employees in such positions are expected to have a rudimentary knowledge of human psychology and employee recruiting. Most frequently, entry-level positions deal with low-tier to mid-tier employee recruiting.
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- Intern
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HR interns are at the bottom of the totem pole in the department. The job is mostly taken by high-school graduates and college students. The duties of an intern vary depending on the company, but the most frequent tasks that are assigned are coffee making, menial task completion, and meeting attendance. Interns don’t take part in the recruiting process, but they do attend the meetings. The goal of an intern is to soak as much information as possible and, hopefully, earn a permanent place on the team.
Many interns do not receive pay.
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- Trainee
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Trainees are interns who managed to earn a semi-permanent position on the HR team. Their duties involve similar tasks to those of interns, but with more seminar and presentation attendance. Trainees normally complete their training within six months. Many trainees do not receive pay.
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- Assistant
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The HR assistant role is very similar to the intern and trainee roles, except they have been integrated into the team. An assistant has received training to handle day-to-day administrative tasks and participate in the recruiting process as an educational material creator.
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- Associate
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An HR associate is a person groomed to take a higher role in the HR department. They’ve generally been with the company for at least one year and know the ins and outs. An associate generally deals with managing interns and trainees.
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- Coordinator
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If you’ve ever met an HR Coordinator, you would have noticed that they are always exhausted and occupied with work. The reason for this is that Coordinators deal with regulating relations between low-level employees, managers, and higher-level executives. Think of them as mailmen with the power to ruin your evaluation.
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- Recruiter
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Recruiters are the bulk of entry-level HR positions. Their goals are to supply a regular line of qualified new employees to an ever understaffed company. This position comes with a lot of responsibility since a recruiter needs to separate low from high qualified recruitment job titles and assign the appropriate expert for the job. HR recruiters mostly usually communicate with candidates over email. As such, they are very familiar with email extractors such as SignalHire. Incidentally, recruiters are specifically trained to vet out good applicants from bad ones.
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- Analyst
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Analysts are the information brokers of the HR world. They deal with analyzing employee performance data and coming up with new plans on increasing productivity. HR analysts are placed somewhere between entry-level and mid-level and, as such, are responsible for maintaining relationships between the two groups.
2. Mid-Level Positions
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- Manager
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HR Managers are responsible for troubleshooting problems that arise within the low-level department, such as power disputes and re-assignments. Managers serve as the bridge between low-level and middle-level management.
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- Administrator
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Similar to Coordinators, Administrators receive analysis reports about current trends in the workplace and build a plan of action. They are responsible for filing and distributing benefits from upper-level positions. Administrators help out with the development and implementation of recruiting training and employee re-education.
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- Sourcer
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Sourcers are a type of next-level recruiters. Think of them as team leaders. They are responsible for managing the recruiting team and implementing new strategies for employee education.
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- Trainer
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Trainers specialize in developing and implementing various training strategies. The difference between recruiters and trainers is that trainers can go through different HR levels and decide whether a certain department needs help with training.
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- Generalist
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As the name suggests, Generalists do a little bit of everything. They are the top of the mid-level position totem pole and, as such, take the bulk of responsibilities. Generalists are tasked with auditing teams and uncovering problems within the general workforce.
3. Upper-Level Positions
The upper-level HR is mostly employed within larger companies where one HR department needs to handle the well-being of more than 1000 employees.
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- Specialist Manager
Specialist Managers have different titles reflecting their background: Benefits Manager, Productivity Manager, Recruiting Manager, etc. As such, the position is very diverse. Specialist Managers are usually the head of their own departments within the HR ecosystem.
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- Talent Acquisition Manager
At the top of the recruiting totem pole, Talent Acquisition deals with micromanaging every recruiter in the company. The main task of a manager is to analyze what talents the company needs and then hire the appropriate staff.
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- Business Partner
This type of HR work is aimed at building relationships outside the company. The goal of a Business Partner is to build a bridge with another company and then upkeep communications.
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- Brand Manager
Brand Managers deal with establishing and maintaining the company’s unique message. The goal of a Brand Manager is to organize events associated with a certain product and to maintain the image of a company to a high standard.
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- Director
An HR Director is the highest-level HR employee who oversees the department. They are responsible for decision-making. Whenever a department needs some such as an acquisition or extra staff, the Director can accept or decline the request. In many companies, a Director and a VP are synonyms and perform the same duties.
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- CDO
Chief Diversity Officers are in charge of unbiased recruiting, non-discriminatory overviews in employee management, and bias-free employee reviews. In short, the CDO is in charge of keeping racism, sexism, or homophobia away from the workplace.
- Chief Human Resource Officer
The Chief Officer is the head of HR in a company. Every HR department reports directly to the Chief Officer, and in turn, the CO reports to the CEO of the company. The duties of a CO are to provide regular updates and reports to the CEO and make sure that each HR department fulfills its quota.
Finally, keep in mind that the exact definition of each HR role is meant to be flexible, but the core components don’t change no matter what company a particular HR department is associated with. If you don’t see a particular position on this list, but you know it exists, the reason for the exclusion is that many companies refer to their HR department titles in different ways. The keyword for HR hierarchy is flexibility.
Image source: pixabay.com
