The role of the Human Resource department is to ensure both the company and employees succeed. A company can only succeed when employees find success within the company. For this reason, HR personnel has been tasked with roles beyond policies implementation, recruitment, and onboarding. Additional roles such as positive employee branding increased employee engagement, and establishing a relationship that is beyond the company have been added to the modern HR practice. One HR role that is often overlooked is their capability to develop employees’ careers. As a matter of fact, career development and employees’ success are their areas of specialization. Below are a few reasons you might want to pass by the Human Resources office today for a brief career advice session.
- Help in Career mapping and counseling
It is every employee’s desire to grow. The HR department is best equipped to help an employee select career goals and guide on a path to these goals. This ultimately helps the employee achieve their career objective. Due to their position and the adaptation of the HR Information system, HR is able to identify future job openings and can better match an employees’ personal goals with the opportunities available. In line with effective career mapping, the personnel is also better placed to provide adequate and timely information regarding alternative career paths.
Career counseling is another area that HR personnel help employees succeed, especially those in the early stages of their careers. This entails listening to an employees’ interests and offering specific job-related information and/or advice. Some career counselors go the extra mile of helping employees figure out their interest by conducting aptitude, personality, and skills test
- Create opportunities for continuous learning and development
HR team helps employees achieve success and excel in personal development by fostering an environment of continuous learning and development. This includes internal and external training sessions, professional workshops, encouraging adoption of new technology, providing opportunities to apply for new knowledge, and mentorship programs at the workplace.
- Employee Support
The human resource department is the unsung hero when it comes to supporting employees. Support comes in many forms, ways, and times. One way HR supports employees’ is through encouraging creativity and innovation. They do this through;
- Creating conditions that are conducive to the two causes such as providing flexible opportunities to enable employees to embrace creativity and innovation into their daily work culture.
- Providing sufficient resources to support creativity and innovation, with the most vital ones being time and money.
- Recognizing and rewarding creative and innovative works.
- Communicating a shared vision of what the organization hopes to achieve and how each person’s role contributes creatively and uniquely to that vision.
- Matching individuals with tasks and assignments that challenge them enough to adequately tap into their creative and innovative side.
- Organizing the workforce into diverse workgroups with different perspectives and from different backgrounds. This cultivates fertile ground for new and fresh ideas.
Medical and personal support are other ways the HR department supports employees. Medical support ranges from simple tasks such as ensuring employees have a comfortable office seat- one that doesn’t leave them with back pains, to big tasks such as ensuring that employees have a medical cover for themselves and their dependant.
Personal support is limited to the issues related to the workplace. Issues such as sexual, verbal, and physical harassment are always brought to the HR attention who have systems in place to solve such issues. They are mandated by law to investigate and take the necessary actions to these and other sensitive cases to ensure a safe workplace.
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- Employee watchdog
The human resource department has an important role in ensuring a positive and safe workplace. Employees cannot be productive in an environment where disputes, discrimination, harassment, and rights violation are the order of the day. HR has a watchdog role and they execute it by;
- Performing regular audits to ensure employees are safe from any form of discrimination and harassment.
- Promptly conducting investigation and responding when a complaint arises.
- Keeping communication channels open. This makes it easier for employees to lodge a complaint and also protect the company from lawsuits.
- Keeping an ear on the ground by just talking to employees and finding out what they are uncomfortable or worried about
- Help to understand HR Laws
HR Practitioners are best suited to help employees navigate the complex employment laws. It is their job to understand the law and protect the rights of employees. Employment laws are broad, ranging from workers’ health and safety to salary and wages. To complicate the issue further, not all laws apply to all employers and employees. For this reason, depending on the need or the issue that arises, HR personnel have been known to have the knowledge to help employees navigate these laws. An issue like retirement benefits, the HR should be able to guide an employee looking to understand compensation issues in accordance with the guidelines stipulated in the Retirement Benefits Act.
Ensuring employees are statutory compliant is also another way the HR department helps in an employee’s future success. By ensuring your monthly PAYE, NHIF, NSSF, and HELB payments are done and on time, they ensure you are complying with the laws of the land while at the same time reduces the stress and hustle that would arise if you doing it on your own.
“To win the marketplace, you must first win the workplace.” -Doug Conant
- Motivate and inspire
No hard work should ever go unnoticed in any organization. For this reason, The HR department is always at the forefront to ensure hard work and employees are appreciated. Some of the ways HR departments have adopted to motivate employees include; rewards & recognition, Involvement in the decision-making process, promotion, emphasis on work-life balance, keeping communication channels open, and encouraging autonomy at work.
- Change agents
With the modern workplace being highly dynamic, the Human resource team has been tasked with the responsibility of being leaders of change. In the midst of any change initiative at the workplace, it is the role of HR to ensure employee engagement and satisfaction is taken into consideration. This is often done through ways like; prioritizing communication to reduce ambiguity, assessing employee readiness and risks involved, and providing special support where needed. When done effectively, it reduces cases of change resistance and employee unrest.
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