From the course: Understanding Business

Human resources basics

From the course: Understanding Business

Human resources basics

- Human resources or HR is about cultivating an organization's most important asset: the people, its employees. But building a great organization is not just about having strong leaders, it requires excellent employees from top to bottom. Building this team of great people is not easy though. Just like in sports, building a winner in business requires finding talented people at every level and in every position, providing them excellent coaching, giving them good tools and building an excellent culture. Here are some of the primary responsibilities of the human resources team. First, HR is responsible for hiring employees. Hiring requires posting open positions in a way that attracts some of the best applicants. HR is responsible for developing job descriptions, communicating salary and benefits packages, and working to develop and grow an organizational culture, all things that are important to the top candidates. As applications are submitted, HR might also assist functional managers in groups like finance or marketing, during the interview and the selection process and also once job offers are made and accepted. Consider also that all companies deal with retiring employees, people that leave for other jobs and employees that are terminated. Therefore, recruiting new employees is something growing companies and their HR teams do almost continuously. Once employees are hired, HR then assists with documentation and training. HR helps collect a new hire's personal information and assists in setting up payment and benefits. Once the new employee is officially hired, HR might assist in onboarding, teaching the employee about the business as well as the company policies. HR may also provide assistance in training them on their new role in the organization. Once HR helps find document and train a great employee, HR then works to retain the employee to keep them in the company. So how do you keep your best people? Develop a good work environment, give employees interesting and challenging jobs, allow employees to have a nice work-life balance, show people that you appreciate their efforts and give them career growth opportunities. This is why HR might work to develop fun activities and events during work hours. They might even give out awards and they may also develop programs to help employees improve their work skills. In sports, many teams win championships, but only the teams with an excellent team culture and a management team committed to finding and improving talented players can win multiple championships. The best businesses are no different, they count on HR to develop a culture of success built around a great team of people.

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