Core HR functions | A Comprehensive Guide
You will see, most organisations have an HR department that impacts every employee’s daily processes. The HRD may have one person or tens of professionals, depending on the organisation’s size and industry. The number of functions may also vary depending on the organisation. So, Core HR functions are important to allow employers to attract, develop, and retain top talent while ensuring compliance with regulations and maintaining a positive work environment. These functions include talent acquisition and recruitment strategies tailored to the Indian market, meticulous payroll management, and statutory compliance. Core HR serves as the backbone of your organization’s human capital management. By prioritizing employee engagement, performance management, and continuous learning, employers can create a thriving workplace culture that drives innovation and growth. Let’s discuss the following points w.r.tcore hr functions.
Index:
What is Core HR?
Core HR refers to the fundamental processes and functions within the HR department that are important for managing an organisation’s workforce. There are three distinct ways that core HR uses –
- The basic function of the HR department.
- Basic data captured of the employees.
- Software used to enable the above two.
Core HR Functions
There are the following core HR functions –
HR strategic planning and overview –
HR plays an important role in planning and making effective decisions for the organisation’s needs and success. With effort and time, as an HR, you can analyse the business requirements to determine the number and type of employees needed in organisation, including future projects, market fluctuations, and others. With a proper and strong planning, considering factors like globalisation, technology, hiring strategic and legal changes, you can achieve organizational goals and objectives effectively.
Recruitment and Selection Process –
It is most important to attract potential and talented candidates to select and fill the vacant position, which can help in organisational development. To attract the right candidates, you need to create a proper company brand that shows company culture, work ethic, and inclusion, promotes diversity, and ensures the growth and development of the employees. The brand should also be clear and concise. With the right channel and sourcing strategy, it is possible to attract the right candidates.
Employee performance management –
It is an essential core HR function that monitors and reviews the employee’s overall contributions towards the organisation and performance. It sets performance goals that help to define KPIs to ensure productivity and then creates individual training and performance plans that align with the organization’s objectives and goals. It is a profitable process in long run because it can boost employee and organizational performance, help to eliminate communication hurdles, mitigate conflict, reduce attrition rates and consistency.
Employee’s data management –
As an HR, it is important to manage employees’ data, such as their names, dates of birth, addresses, and other personal details, dates of joining, salary details, employment history, performance evaluation, benefits enrollments, deductions, and other relevant information.
Benefits and Compensation –
It is the key factor that can attract employees to join and stay with the organisation as well as retain existing employees. As an HR, you need to regularly monitor salary benchmarks of the industry, which include variable and fixed components, and manage insurance, retirement plans, leave policies, vacations and other benefits, which is offered by the organisation.
Compliances –
India has different and complex labour laws and regulations governing employment practices that include Employment and Establishment Act, minimum wages, social security, employment contract and others. As an HR, you should comply with these laws to avoid penalties and legal and financial risks also, you can create a fair and equitable work culture and environment that promotes employee satisfaction and trust. This can help you create a positive employer brand to attract and retain the top talented employees.
Learning and Development –
An organisation can succeed in the long run by identifying an employee’s training needs early on and providing a structured development plan. So, as an HR, you need to empower your employees to enhance their skill set that can generate productivity, better communication, and positive attitude toward the organisation at an individual level and that can help to improve risk management capabilities, reduce turnover rate and other.
Policy and procedure –
For every organisation, policies are key for efficient and effective business operations. A well-designed policy framework outlines a company’s working principles and procedures, ensuring consistent decision-making. So, as an HR, your responsibility is to develop HR policies and procedures to guide employee behaviour and ensure fairness across the organisation.
For example – A Manager can’t keep eyes on staff all the time, so policies are created to ensure proper task execution.
Payroll processing –
As an HR, your responsibility is to oversee the calculation and distribution of employees’ salaries, including tax deductions and benefits. You must also file timely returns with the government authorities and create proper payroll processing reports that can be proof.
Employee Relations and Grievance Handling –
It is necessary to create and encourage positive employee relations and address workplace grievances effectively so that you can conduct investigations, mediate between parties, and resolve conflict fairly by implementing resolution strategies. This can involve mediating conflicts, conducting employee satisfaction surveys, and implementing initiatives to improve workplace morale.
Administrative responsibilities –
One of the core HR functions is managing employee records and documentation that ensure the accuracy and confidently sensitive data, including paperwork documentation and compliance with legal requirements, overseeing the systems to ensure data integrity and accessibility to manage employee payroll data and operations.
Advantages of Core HR Functions
The following are the advantages of the core HR function –
- To view and store the important data of the employee in a centralised location.
- Streamline and automate the process of core HR.
- Helps to improve internal communication.
- It helps to save time through digital paperwork.
- Enabling ESS (Employee self-service) helps to increase productivity.
- Offers privacy and security.
Helps to maintain essential organisational data and, through data analytics, collects valuable insights.
What information does core HR typically include?
HR tasks like talent management, workforce planning, and learning management are critical for core HR. But, there are some important information that core HR includes –
- Each employee’s information, such as Employee’s name, designation, joining date, date of birth and others.
- Payroll information of employees.
- Training documentation/report.
- Employee enrollment data.
- Leave data of the employees.
- Updated compliance information
- Employee’s working hours and absenteeism
- Demographic-wise employee information
This concludes our discussion of Core HR functions. Please share your other questions and opinions on this topic by commenting below.
