2024

13 Important HR Duties in 2024

HR duties are crucial for the success of any organization. This statement explains why most companies often look to hire experienced HR managers. For instance, LinkedIn advertises more than 12,000 job opportunities in the human resource department.

In any case, HR management is an excellent career choice for anyone interested in equal employment opportunity. Yet, it is best to understand all the tasks necessary for an HR specialist to get started.

The crucial functions of a human resources manager are business administration, organizing, managing, directing, and planning the entire human resources management in a company. Thus, they need strong project management skills. This article provides insights into most crucial HR duties and responsibilities.

Let’s dive in.

Fundamental HR Duties and Responsibilities in 2024

Here’s a list of fundamental HR duties and responsibilities to look through:

1. Future Planning

Human resource managers focus on long-term organizational and labor relations planning. For instance, they can cater recruitment plans around the talent types that the company requires to succeed on a long-term basis. The recruitment plan is vital in other human resources functions like employee onboarding, succession planning, and performance management.

A strategic human resources plan should be apt and unique to its business models and specifications. They should make all the decisions based on the long-term company’s missions and objectives. Thus, the human resources manager must collaborate with all other departments within the company to attain successful planning.

Technical HR skillsIn other words, the HR managers are not just marketing guru or sales experts. They must also foster necessary relationships with the sales leadership staff to create a conducive environment for communication and production. This approach will enable the human resources team to gain more insights into relevant data, analytics, and performance metrics to shape the planning stratagem.

2. Talents Recruitment

All HR professionals should master skills in hiring suitable talent fitting to the company’s requirements and situations. They are responsible to attract the best applicants into interviews. Besides, they should master how to evaluate participants, weigh their skillsets and choose the most productive talent for the new employee orientation.

Most importantly, human resources departments must decipher if the applicants’ experience and personalities match the current business economics and value. This step may entail hiring someone with an affordable price and less experience yet more potential for performance. In general, it is necessary to acquire an attractive and robust employer branding strategy to attract the best talent to apply for your job posts. Similarly, it is mandatory to craft a well-detailed and authentic job description to attract the right potential.

Best practices for employee onboarding

Therefore, the human resources manager must collaborate with the marketing department in crafting a strategic and alluring recruitment campaign. Luckily, they can access numerous tools to help them screen for applicants during interviews. For instance, some companies use chatbots.

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In other words, offsetting recruitment can cost a lot of money. Yet, the loss is worse if they hire candidates who do not deliver results. Although the turnover rate is lower for offsetting recruitment, it is best to mention that it can become more productive if it matches the company with the suitable candidates.

3. Career Planning

One of most important roles of human resource management professionals is to identify performing talents in different positions and entry-level positions. This strategy is crucial since it impacts the company’s long-term vision. Hence, they can formulate a plan to foster talent and employment growth within the company.

Modern human resource leaders can invest in options such as internal promotions, which are often fruitful over time. Research indicates that about 61% of external hires have more chances to outright terminate or leave the company via layoff within the first two years. Thus, it is way better to opt for succession planning rather than hiring new staff.

An experts’ study in 2010 indicates that about 54% of companies’ boards intend to groom a specific CEO successor. Yet, about 39% of these companies cannot select the right internal candidate with adequate starting skills.

4. Evaluating Job Roles

The HR department is responsible for weighing every job position within the organization that features various functions and factors. The human resource department can assess these roles by determining the overall job value, economics, responsibilities, work schedule, location, availability, quality, and qualifications.

The human resource departments offer an evaluation to dictate similar jobs based on a shared reward system. Some crucial factors to consider in evaluating these functions include job ranks & categories and other critical factors such as skill demand, specialization, experience, and education. The HR department also focuses on ranking, which involves vetting all functions throughout the work process, discerning & comparing tasks in terms of value, and discipline-specific expertise regarding the importance of the position to the company.

Employee evaluation methods

Another crucial point in evaluating job functions may include how much a particular position contributes to the company’s overall productivity. It also features awards points such as business sense, innovation, influence, communication skills, technical knowledge, and problem-solving.

5. Rewards and Incentives

Workers need incentives and rewards to motivate them towards performing better in their positions. Though they already earn from their jobs, rewards might motivate them even further. Therefore, the HR department invests in career opportunities, work-life balance, employee recognition, employee relations, culture, and status to reward employees.

6. Internal Marketing and Employee Engagement

The human resources department is responsible for cultivating a workplace that enables workers to stay more active and productive. Thus, they plan numerous retreats to allow the company to nurture internal networking. They ensure workers remain plugged and informed about various relevant factors within the organization.

Employee engagement benefits

The modern trends in the human resource department are treating the workforce just like customers. They strategize to promote and motivate the top talents. The work of the HR department is to establish a productive mentality and work environment in the company.

7. Employee Wellness

Research indicates workers in any company are 63% likely to opt for a sick day and 2.6% more likely to look for another job. If they are not looking for another job, it means they are less confident in their productivity. Furthermore, the employees are 50% less willing to discuss their performance objectives with their leadership.

Other roles of human resource management professionals are to investigate any burnout signs such as conflict management and implement mandating strategies to prevent it. Besides, employee wellness should go beyond physical health by focusing on personal wellbeing and mental health. Thus, it should step in whenever employees deal with emotional crises or any matter that impacts their workplace wellbeing.

8. Human Resources Manager General Administration

The human resource department is responsible for any administrative functions that divide into information systems and personnel procedures. Personnel procedures involve harassment, diversity, regulations, performance improvement, disciplinary proceedings, and managing promotions.

These issues impact practices and standards that will help to offset lingering problems. The human resources department should store employee performance information to enable informed decision-making.

9. Workers Off-Boarding

The company should not suffer a negative impact whenever a top-performing talent leaves. They must ensure a pleasant and smooth transition in such cases. For instance, employees departing should leave a positive impact by passing down the expertise to their replacement.

Also, former workers who had a positive experience at the company will refer candidates and customers to the company. Another possibility is that the leaving talent can come back to the company with new and more productive skills and experiences. Such employees understand the company’s foundation and know what can bring value to the company.

10. Health and Safety Standards

The HR departments are responsible for ensuring smooth and safe health regulations. That is the HR primary role, and it implements rules to protect the company and workers from potential disasters. Therefore, they should write rules and regulations to help protect their employees from any possible accidents. For instance, they should purchase the right wears to keep them safe.

11. HR Department Information Sharing

Another vital role in the HR department is to share crucial information with the employees. They can opt for magazines and newsletters to update everyone about what’s happening in the company. Sharing information can also provide access to details about acquisition, mergers, announcements of layoffs, employee training, and safety procedures. In any case, the company must share ideal, straightforward, and clear information to boost successful organizational building.

12. Performance Management

In general, performance management is crucial to ensure employees remain engaged and productive to the company. A good performance management plan focuses on welcoming feedback, clear goal-setting, and sound leadership. Some tools to use for this case include the annual performance evaluation to review employee and manager performance.

Performance Management Process

The annual summit can provide a 360-degree feedback platform where clients, subordinates, directors, and peers evaluate workers’ performance. It allows the company to close the present and future gap to ensure fruitful overall business performance. Most importantly, the human resource department can allow performance management to build the future workforce through L&D (Learning and Development).

13. Human Resources Policy Formulation

Human resources managers plan and formulate policies. The company requires tested and tried policies and sensitive and up-to-date plans. The guidelines should be well-defined and reasonable enough to cover significant business operations and structures. It is best to ensure a strategic planning for policy formation since they can control proper communication, procedures & implementation, standardized methods, and participation.

Conclusion

The human resources department has numerous functions and oversees several operations from initiatives and branches working under it. It is a crucial department in any business organization that is similar to the nervous system in the body for controlling communication and cooperation. A company that has the best HR employees have more chances to become successful.

Human resources jobs are very marketable, but it is challenging to land a well-paying job with the pool of talents out there. For that reason, you should opt for certification and skills from a renowned university. HR university offers various online courses to help you advance your skills and earn a credible certification. Are you ready to enroll? Click Here Now!

FAQs

Here’s a list of frequently-asked questions and their answers regarding HR duties:

1. What are the Crucial HR Duties?

The human resources department is responsible for managing the workers’ life cycle at the company. This department performs functions such as hiring, training, onboarding, recruiting, and firing employees. They are also responsible for administering employee benefits.

2. What are the Three Main HR Duties?

The three main categories of HR duties include:

  1. Designing/defining work for employees
  2. Employee benefits & compensation
  3. Staffing and Recruiting

In simple terms, the primary function of the human resources department is to maximize productivity through optimizing workers’ effectiveness.

3. Is it a Must for a Company to Have a HR Department?

The decision depends on the CEO and management. Nevertheless, an in-house human resources department is crucial for workers to know when and how to access the HR functions. It provides a platform where they can run to for safety, health, and other suchlike grievances.


If you are new to Human Resources and are looking to break into an HR role, we recommend taking our HR Certification Courses, where you will learn how to build your skillset in human resources, build your human resources network, craft a great HR resume, and create a successful job search strategy.

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Josh Fechter
Josh Fechter is the founder of HR.University. He's a certified HR professional and has managed global teams across 5 different continents including their benefits and payroll. You can connect with him on LinkedIn here.