Human Resources sector
Human resources are the set of people, the human capital of an organization. HR is the sector that manages these people and, increasingly, uses technology for its analysis and decisions. In this article we will provide you the information about the Human Resources sector.
The Human Resources sector is one of the best known within a company. Basically, every contractor needs to go through HR.
Despite this, not everyone would be able to explain for sure what Human Resources is or what it does.
Not only for workers, this is an important understanding for any entrepreneur, as the global view of how a company works is crucial to good management.
We can say that human resources are all the people who are part of a company. To avoid confusion, it is common to refer to people as human capital .
Speaking specifically of the sector to answer the question about what is HR, we have that Human Resources is the main area responsible for managing people in a company .
This management, in turn, is carried out through a set of techniques and methods that allow the organization to make the most of its human capital, also adding value to these professionals.
Increasingly, companies have come to understand that people are their most valuable asset. Taking care of them well and strategically is crucial to success.
Have you noticed how we’ve paid more attention to non-technical skills? The so-called soft skills have a strong appeal to the human side and the counterpart must also exist.
The structure of the Human Resources sector
As we introduce more and more about HR, you’re likely to start looking at this industry more strategically.
With that, depending on the possibilities of your company, you may be thinking that it may be necessary to improve your organization’s Human Resources structure .
For that, first of all, you need to understand what this structure is. In other words, knowing what makes up HR.
1-Professionals involved
First of all, it is important to clarify that a company does not need to have professionals in each of the possible roles for HR.
We’ll present a complete picture, but it’s always important to stick to the possibilities and needs of your organization.
1-human resources analyst
The human resources analyst is the professional who will manage the sector’s processes, articulating the actions that are part of the HR routine.
The responsibilities of this professional can range from the recruitment and selection process to the adoption of strategies for the development of employees and teams.
Thus, it may be that the role of analyst is performed by a single professional or by a group of them. In any case, the specifics are described below.
- Recruitment and Selection Analyst
He is responsible for the admission process from the announcement of the vacancy, through recruitment and interviews until the hiring process.
It is the analyst who studies the professional profile of candidates, defines the tools to be used in the selection process and is responsible for promoting cultural fit for each open position.
- Job and salary analyst
Among the duties of the Human Resources department is to define and review the existing positions and the salaries practiced by the company.
Thus, this analyst is the one who studies the roles and responsibilities of each position, as well as market practices, especially in relation to remuneration.
The objective is to ensure that the company offers a competitive salary that is adequate to the requirements of the position.
- human development analyst
Have you ever heard that the Human Resources department is responsible for creating people training and development programs ?
To do so, the analyst needs to monitor the company’s employees and bet on tools such as performance evaluation .
The idea is to discover difficulties and improvement points that need to be worked on.
From there, the analyst can study the possibility of offering courses, lectures, integration events, team dynamics and others.
- benefits analyst
Still, it is up to the analyst to manage benefits strategically.
Understand that this management is the way to manage the benefits offered to workers. Good benefits attract and retain talent, leading the company to reduce costs, gain productivity and improve the organizational climate.
With this, a company needs to choose well what it offers, considering the real needs of each employee and, of course, the impact that this offer has.
2-Recruitment and Selection Coordinator
It may also be that the company has a coordinator to take care of the recruitment and selection processes .
In addition to creating vacancies, this HR professional has the task of coordinating the sector team that participates in profile analysis, contact with candidates, application of tests and dynamics, etc.
Also, the coordinator is the one who issues reports about the selection processes so that the company becomes more and more assertive. Sometimes, he is also the one who carries out the dismissal interviews.
3-HR coordinator
As we will see later, the Personnel Department may be one of the subsystems of the Human Resources sector.
When the situation is defined in this way, a company can count on a coordinator whose function is to coordinate all the administrative bureaucracy that is in charge of the DP .
In other words, we are talking about the professional who will make sure that the rules and labor laws are being properly followed. What goes from hiring to dismissal, through contract renewals and retirement processes.
4-HR Manager or Manager
While Human Resources as a whole manages the company’s personnel, the HR manager manages the HR personnel .
Have you ever wondered what a Human Resources manager does? Its responsibility is to manage the routine of the sector, define which policies will guide the performance of HR, articulate the activities, manage the costs of the sector and more.
5-HR Director
In the Human Resources sector, a company may also have a director whose main mission is to look after all the company’s employees .
This means, among other things, that this professional will monitor performance, promote courses, verify the need for motivation or integration actions, and so on.
In addition to ensuring well-being, its objective is to create the best possible conditions for employees to perform well.
6-Business Partner
Companies that bet on a more strategic HR performance may choose to also count on a professional Business Partner .
The business partner is nothing more than an internal HR consultant who will analyze and guide the policies established by the company .
Its objective is to direct internal practices in favor of better results for the sector and for the company.
7-work safety technician
In some cases, companies are required to have an occupational safety technician on their staff.
When this obligation does not apply, an HR professional may assume responsibility for implementing programs and ensuring compliance with rules that prevent work-related injuries.
It is also this professional who has the task of keeping the company’s areas properly signposted, alerting to risks and reinforcing safety guidelines.
2-HR Subsystems
In addition to professionals, the Human Resources sector may have subsystems that may represent divisions in practice or just in the field of ideas.
Thus, it is possible that the HR of a company is formed in the following way. Follow up!
1-Personal department
Remember we said that DP could be one of the subsystems of HR? So it is.
By now, you already know that the Personnel Department is the one who handles the bureaucracy related to hiring and contracts signed by the company.
2-Recruitment and selection
The recruitment and selection process is possibly the best known among the Human Resources department’s assignments.
As we have seen, a company can count on a group of professionals just to take care of this task, so it is natural that it exists in the form of a subsystem as well.
3-Remuneration
Also, if there is a professional who will take care of positions and salaries, there may be a specific subsystem whose focus is the remuneration of workers.
You already know the objective: to ensure that the company has a remuneration system that is adequate to the functions performed, to the hierarchical levels and to the market.
4-benefits
Benefits management goes beyond choosing a fuel voucher for those who have a car and, therefore, do not use transportation vouchers .
What a company needs is for the Human Resources sector to act continuously to always ensure that the chosen benefits are really adequate.
With different job profiles within the organization, different benefits may be required and therefore there may be a subsystem that has this role in HR.
5-Union relations
With changes in labor legislation in recent years, Collective Agreements and Collective Bargaining Agreements prevail over the CLT .
Thus, the Human Resources of a company needs to establish and maintain good relations with the unions, considering that there are other instruments that regulate the relationship between employers and workers.
The idea is not just to ensure that the labor union reaches agreements with the company. It is also to ensure that the employers’ union defends the real interests of the organization in negotiations.
6-Workplace safety
Finally, we saw that HR can be responsible for safety measures at work . When this is the case, a specific subsystem can be created.
It is worth bearing in mind that it is not just accidents that need to be on the Human Resources sector’s radar.
The development of occupational diseases , including psychosomatic illnesses such as anxiety and depression, must also be prevented.
The main functions of the HR sector
HR is responsible for internal relationships. After all, it deals with people and the way they behave individually and in interpersonal relationships.
Thinking about this leads us to talk about the main functions or main routines of the sector. Something that will help you better understand the importance of Human Resources in a company.
1-Recruitment and selection
You already know that the recruitment and selection process is HR’s job. More than filling vacancies, the sector’s mission is to form a team of highly qualified employees aligned with the company’s culture .
This means that, to fulfill this task well, the Human Resources sector needs to be prepared to go beyond the raw analysis of resumes.
The professionals involved in this mission need to know the organization well, its values and its objectives. Only then are they able to select candidates who identify with the company .
The inappropriate choice of new employees can increase turnover, in addition to harming the organizational climate and generating other setbacks that can be costly.
In turn, the right choice allows the company to hire talent, retain them and, even more importantly, extract the best performance from them.
With this, all the work that Human Resources has to do on a day-to-day basis becomes simpler if the sector is assertive in the recruitment and selection process.
2-Integration of new employees
Onboarding new hires, also called onboarding , is on the list of HR roles. We can define onboarding as:
“The process of welcoming, training and monitoring new employees in the company, aiming at their adaptation and the achievement of expected results . All this keeping in mind the company’s culture and ideals”.
The idea is that, no matter how qualified and aligned with the organizational culture new employees are, a strategic “push” for their adaptation is welcome.
To do this, HR interacts with other agents within the company, mainly because the leaders of each team have closer contact with the employees.
Thus, when working on onboarding , the Human Resources sector develops strategies considering not only newcomers, but the profile of their leaders, the dynamics of their teams, and so on.
3-Performance evaluation
HR deals with people and people are impacted, positively and negatively, by factors both internal and external to their work all the time. This means that your behavior and performance may vary.
From a top management perspective, employee productivity is a top concern, and performance appraisal can be like an X-ray for that issue.
Evaluation is a tool that Human Resources has to measure employee productivity and, from there, make decisions.
If everything is going very well, the performance evaluation can serve to indicate that it is possible to bet on bolder goals. If something is not going well, the assessment may indicate that it is necessary to take a reading of the situation at the moment.
The idea is that HR can identify if there is an individual problem and what can be done to solve it, or if there is a collective problem and how it should be addressed.
Therefore, it is necessary to know the different types of performance evaluation and use them strategically.
4-development and training
Imagine the following scenario: your company hired a high-quality professional and, for a long time, was quite happy with their performance.
It turns out that, as is common in life, this professional’s area of activity has undergone changes and evolutions and the company began to notice a certain lag.
What to do? There are two options that we want to highlight:
- dismiss the employee and lose a good professional who knows the company’s routine and culture well;
- understand how valuable such an employee is and invest in development programs for their professional improvement.
One of the functions of HR is to create or seek people development and training programs , knowing that their application is not only in onboarding .
Strategies that focus on professional development help the company to have more qualified professionals and retain great talent .
This idea is valid not only when someone seems to be falling behind, but also when thinking about the career path of workers and the demands of the organization.
5-benefits management
Some benefits that companies offer their employees are provided for in labor legislation, some are not. In any case, it is up to HR to manage it.
A company can offer different types of benefits , choosing them based on the profile of its employees and in order to have them as a competitive differential.
In order for you to better understand this role of the Human Resources department, consider that, for some employees, a culture voucher may be more interesting than a discount at the gym close to work.
Understanding needs and making appropriate choices, as well as reviewing them from time to time, is HR’s job.
6-Strengthening organizational culture
Organizational culture is the set of values and internal practices of a company that is reflected in its employees, uniting daily processes and the way they are presented.
It is this culture that forms the work environment and that, almost inevitably, directs the behavior of those who are part of the company’s routine.
If you think your company doesn’t have a well-defined organizational culture, pay attention! Cases like this open a gap for even the best professionals to feel lost and have their motivation impaired.
A company needs to know what kind of culture defines it so that it can count on professionals aligned with its mission, vision and values .
In addition to this definition, HR has the role of adopting strategies for the dissemination and strengthening of the organizational culture.
Something important for the alignment to be greater and produce better and better results, in a more natural way.
7-Strategies monitoring
From recruiting to cultural empowerment — and even the firing process, which we’ll talk about later — HR needs to be critical of its strategies.
The Human Resources sector is dynamic and that means that the way you do each of your functions may need significant adjustments or changes.
A company that adjusts its selection process can spend a lot of time being successful in hiring until it starts to have problems.
This may be an indication that new adjustments need to be made to keep up with the evolution of the universe of work and, of course, of people.
Remember when we talked about what a Human Resources manager does? This professional plays an important role in identifying failures in the team itself and in its routines.
8-Employee dismissal
Finally, we need to talk about contract termination processes.
Yes, the care with the documentation is in charge of the Personnel Department, but that does not mean that the Human Resources sector does not have responsibilities.
If there is a recruitment and selection coordinator, he may be tasked with conducting an exit interview . Something that allows HR to collect feedback that can be valuable for promoting internal improvements.
