Roles and Responsibilities of Human Resource Department

Human resource (HR) department deals with wide range of activities from strategic planning level to the day to day operations level. Therefore defining roles and responsibilities of HR manager is a quite complex task but some of the functions carried are summarized below.

Involvement in the strategic planning process

HR manager gets involved in the strategic planning process of the organization and identifies HR as a core competency of the organization. When HR is assumed as a core competency HR becomes a competitive advantage for the organization and HR manager is responsible of developing the HR of organizations to bring the stated competitve advantage to the organization.

Forecasting the labour requirement

The HR manager holds the responsibility of forecasting the labour requirement of the organization in the future based on the future level of sales/production level of the organization. The labour forecast may identify the need for need for hiring or firing employees.

Recruitment Once the labour forecast is done organization can identify the need for more labour in the organization if the existing workforce is not sufficient to handle the future workload. In such a situation HR manager has to recruit new potential candidates to fill the vacancies. Recruitment is the process of creating a pool of potential candidates who can be employed to fill the vacancies.

Selection Selection is the process by which the most suitable candidate is selected from the recruited pool of candidates. Selection is done by carrying out various types of tests and interviews. HR department/manager is responsible of selecting the most suitable employees to fill existing vacancies.

Induction

Induction is the process by which new employees are made familiarized with the organizational environment. Once the employees are selected they need to be introduced to other staff of the organization and they should be given necessary guidelines about the organizational culture and the procedures.

Training Once the employees are done with the induction they become an employee of the organization but the skills they possess may not be adequate to carry out required tasks. The need for training arises when the there is a gap between expected level of skills and the current level of skills of an employee. If a there is a training need HR department has to design training programs and execute them.

Motivation HR manager is responsible of motivating employees to carry out their duties of a timely and accurate basis. Performance Appraisal

This is where the employees performance are evaluated based on expected level and the actual level of the performance. HR department needs to design performance appraisal systems to appraise the employee performance on a fairly manner.

Rewarding employees

Once the employee performance evaluation is done HR department needs to design good employee rewarding packages to reward well performing employees. These rewards could be of monetary or non monetary in nature.

Managing Carrier Growth of employees/Promotions HR department is responsible of managing the carrier growth of employees where they needs to promoted in the carrier ladder if they are suitable to fill existing vacancies in high ranks of the organizational structure.

Managing redundancy When the organization decides that thy no longer need the service of certain employee they need to be sent to be given the redundancy notices and have to be paid the redundancy charges. HR department has to manage this process.

Managing employee grievance

HR department needs to accept the grievance and complaints submitted by the employees about their problems. HR department need to listen to grievance and should come up with solutions to solve problems.

Managing complains about employees

There can be complaints about employees regarding poor performance, bribery, misbehavior and so on. HR department needs to hear those complains and make necessary steps (advising/punishing employees) to solve those issues.

The core roles of human resource management are PLANNING AND ORGANISING FOR WORK, PEOPLE AND HRM Strategic perspective Organisation design Change management Corporate Wellness management PEOPLE ACQUISITION AND DEVELOPMENT Staffing the organization Training & development Career Management Performance Management Industrial relations ADMINISTRATION OF POLICIES , PROGRAMMES & PRACTICES Compensation management Information management Administrative management Financial management

1. Manpower Planning 2. Recruitment

3. Compensation & Salary Administration 4. Benefits Development & Administration 5. Training & Career Development 6. Labor Relations & Disicipline Management 7. Personnel Movement 8. Performance Management 9. Payroll & Timekeeping 10. Organization Development

Role of R&D Investment

New product design and development is more often than not a crucial factor in the survival of a company. In an industry that is changing fast, firms must continually revise their design and range of products. This is necessary due to continuous technology change and development as well as other competitors and the changing preference of customers. Without an R&D program, a firm must rely on strategic alliances, acquisitions, and networks to tap into the innovations of others. A system driven by marketing is one that puts the customer needs first, and only produces goods that are known to sell. Market research is carried out, which establishes what is needed. If the development is technology driven then it is a matter of selling what it is possible to make. The product range is developed so that production processes are as efficient as possible and the products are technically superior, hence possessing a natural advantage in the market place. In general, R&D activities are conducted by specialized units or centers belonging to companies, universities and state agencies. In the context of commerce, "research and development" normally refers to future-oriented, longer-term activities in science or technology, using similar techniques to scientific research without predetermined outcomes and with broad forecasts of commercial yield. Statistics on organizations devoted to "R&D" may express the state of an industry, the degree of competition or the lure of progress. Some common measures include: budgets, numbers of patents or on rates of peer-reviewed publications. Bank ratios are one of the best measures, because they are continuously maintained, public and reflect risk. In the U.S., a typical ratio of research and development for an industrial company is about 3.5% of revenues. A high technology company such as a computer manufacturer might spend 7%. Although Allergan (a biotech company) tops the spending table with 43.4% investment, anything over 15% is remarkable and usually gains a reputation for being a high technology company. Companies in this category include pharmaceutical companies such as Merck & Co. (14.1%) or Novartis (15.1%), and engineering companies likeEricsson (24.9%).[2] Such companies are often seen as credit risks because their spending ratios are so unusual. Generally such firms prosper only in markets whose customers have extreme needs, such as medicine, scientific instruments, safety-critical mechanisms (aircraft) or high technology military armaments. The extreme needs justify the high risk of failure and consequently high gross

margins from 60% to 90% of revenues. That is, gross profits will be as much as 90% of the sales cost, with manufacturing costing only 10% of the product price, because so many individual projects yield no exploitable product. Most industrial companies get only 40% revenues. On a technical level, high tech organizations explore ways to re-purpose and repackage advanced technologies as a way of amortizingthe high overhead. They often reuse advanced manufacturing processes, expensive safety certifications, specialized embedded software, computer-aided design software, electronic designs and mechanical subsystems. Research has shown that firms with a persistent R&D strategy outperform those with an irregular or no R&D investment programme.