Chapter 1, Activity 4 – What HR Managers and Departments Do Today

The assignment was to read several business publications, review their contents, and from that compile a list of what HR managers and departments do today.

It’s easy to understands that HR managers and departments have a mired of completely different tasks they need to effectively perform. I had several takeaways from both the text and publications I read. The first was how extraordinary each HR representative must be in order to maintain efficiency and must have excellent multi-tasking skills; especially in smaller departments. Even to manage the outsourcing of some of their responsibilities still requires the knowledge and know-how to ensure it’s done correctly.

The numerous articles I read support the varying topics HR managers need to track and many of them are constantly changing and/or evolving with new insights to consider. Here is the list I put together.

“What HR Managers and Departments Do Today” 1. Defend its HR department business practices. 2. Advise senior leadership and managers. 3. Counsel and/or mediate with/for managers and employees. 4. Diligently keep up on new labor relations and compliance laws. 5. Employee training: new hire, diversity, EEO, etc. 6. Employee personal development, to include wellness programs. 7. Personnel and production analytics review. 8. Manage performance employee reviews, to include promotions and firing. 9. Execute and/or manage company benefits and health insurance programs.

Each one of these topics have multiple layers of understanding to execute and evaluate as it is applied to their specific organization. The most interesting thing I came across was how often HR gets a bad reputation and more often than not in positions to defend its contributions. I immediately found myself recalling my previous