The Role of HR in a Company

Once upon a time, the role of HR was considered to be administrative. Many people believed HR were a necessary role or business function, simply to tick boxes, to be fun-sponges and to make sure everybody got paid. Well, we think that’s entirely outdated.

Whether you still think that this sounds like the role of HR, or you’re looking to understand a little more about what working with outsourced HR teams could look like, keep reading.

What Is the Role of HR?

In a nutshell, the role of HR is to be a vehicle for business growth and development, whilst protecting the company and its employees. The day to day responsibilities of HR are incredibly varied, from recruitment and role design to culture development, but overall, the duty of HR is to be a champion for the business; to create and promote boundaries, opportunities and align the human resources - the people that power businesses - with the overarching company objectives.

At HumanX, our role - or capacity - varies, depending on the engagement. For example, the role we take when we are conducting a workplace investigation is very different to when we are ongoing HR consultants, working very closely with the leadership teams.

However, every partnership we take on, we always bring our core values to the role. We deploy a team with specific skill sets and experience to meet the brief.

The Role of HR Is Two-Fold

When we talk about ‘what is the role of HR’ - we are distinguishing ‘role’ from ‘responsibilities’.

Responsibilities are what you’d find on a job description. They can be incredibly varied - just check out our service list to get an idea. However, the role is the purpose of the job. It describes how that job or department contributes to the entire business.

For HR, the role of the job is two-fold. You have your day-to-day work, which we call tactical HR. But you also have your strategic HR.

The responsibilities of tactical HR are critically important; from managing performance, the employee review process, implementing and promoting HR policies and perhaps low level complaints or disputes. They may also be responsible for recruitment, onboarding and are a go--to for business questions; managing the relationships between the business and talent.

When an organisation reaches a certain size or stage of growth, it will not be able to function effectively without the role of tactical HR. HumanX regularly carry out this role on an ongoing basis, most often when we operate as an external HR team for a company or when in house HR teams have too much on their plate.

Then, there is strategic HR, which definitely has a lower awareness level. The role of strategic HR is to understand business goals, then identify gaps and opportunities between achieving those goals and the organisation's current position from a personnel and skills perspective. The role is then to create and implement strategies to bridge those gaps. This could be developing employee value propositions to better meet the needs and expectations of teams. Alternatively, it could be introducing leadership coaching and development programmes, to promote and upskill existing team members. Or, it could be a strategy on a far bigger scale, for example managing mergers, acquisitions and consolidations through integration strategies, analysis and so much more.

A Modern Approach to the Role of HR

At HumanX, we believe that you need a blend of both flavours of HR. This way you’re able to create structure and stability for your employees, but also constantly strive for growth. You’re able to create a quality workplace environment that retains employees, become a destination workplace and have a highly skilled workforce.

It is very unlikely you will be able to have all those HR skills in your in house HR managers. This is an incredible breadth of skills and specialism to find in one or two people. It’s also a very high workload.

That’s where HumanX comes in. Our HR agency operates as an extension of your in house team, in whatever capacity you need. We facilitate, by allowing everyone to stick to their biggest strengths.

What Does Your Business Need the HR Role to Look Like?

This is the biggest question you need to ask yourself. HR shouldn’t be prescriptive or one-size-fits-all. Yes, there are compliance requirements and boxes to tick - but that isn’t the sole purpose of HR. The role of HR is to understand and fulfil the business needs.

For more information on working with HumanX, get in touch with our team today.