Government legislation and court decisions have had a major influence on HR policies and practices. More recently, concern for productivity improvement, employee desires for balancing family and job demands, and desire of workers for more equitable treatment have added to the responsibilities of the HR manager. These influences have thus required HR managers not only to be more knowledgeable about many issues but also to be more versatile in handling several activities.
The major activities for which an HR manager is typically responsible are as follows:
- Policy initiation and formulation. The HR manager generally proposes and drafts new policies or policy revisions to cover recurring problems or prevent anticipated problems. Ordinarily, these are proposed to the senior executives of the organization, who actually issue the policy.
- Advice. The HR manager generally counsels and advises line managers. The HR staff is expected to be fully familiar with HR policy, labor agreements, past practices, and the needs and welfare of both the organization and the employees in order to develop sound solutions to problems.
- Service. The HR manager generally engages in activities such as recruiting, selection, testing, planning of training programs, and hearing employee concerns and complaints.
- Control. The HR manager generally monitors performance of line departments and other staff departments to ensure conformity with established HR policy, procedures, and practice.
The HR manager’s authority in carrying out these activities is restricted to staff authority (policy initiation and formulation and advice giving) and functional authority (service and control). Within the scope of functional authority, the HR manager generally has the right and is expected to issue policies and procedures for HR functions–i.e., selection, training, performance evaluation, and so on–throughout an organization. The only line authority the HR manager has is over subordinates in his or her department.
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