Is HR most undervalued department in any business ?

Having worked within HR since leaving university, I often get asked by friends and family, “what do you actually do every day?” and I usually respond “it depends, each day is different”, but in reality that doesn’t answer the question and to be honest, if you were to ask any HR professional, I’m sure many would struggle to give a specific answer. I’m guessing many managers could ask the same question to their own HR person or department.

Some businesses may not have enough employees to justify recruiting a full or part time in-house HR person, they may have appointed an external provider to support when necessary or, more likely you will have passed the responsibility to someone internally on top of their other responsibilities; this is often the Finance Director, Operations Manager or the PA. In this instance, not only do they have to dotheir day job but they are now responsible for some of the basics of HR such as recruitment, issuing contracts, collating payroll information and maintaining a personnel file. 

So if HR is not their area of expertise how do you know that what they are doing is compliant with UK legislation? Just because someone is responsible for the HR function doesn’t mean they’ll be doingthings correctly.

For most people, all they think of when it comes to HR is hiring and firing people but that is just the tip of the iceberg! In reality HR is so much more, In order to become a well-rounded generalist to be responsible for all areas that HR covers, I believe you need the following skills and qualities, not to mention a solid knowledge of employment law and HR processes: counselling, conflict management, commercial awareness, financial awareness, thick skin (in my experience HR gets the blame for a lot of things), communication, innovation, motivator, leader, decision maker, problem solver, negotiation, mediation, discretion and integrity. 

As you can see, HR has many hats that change on a daily or even hourly basis dependent on the needs of the business. In many organizations, the additional HR responsibilities given to someone or those that the HR department fulfil are overlooked or underestimated and in most cases taken for granted. 

So let me ask you, what would happen and how much would it cost your business if you don’t have the benefits of having someone responsible for HR, in some form or other? I can tell you confidently that itwould cost you a lot of time, aggravation and money to resolve issues when dealt with incorrectly and when you add them all up it is likely to outweigh the cost of having someone responsible for HR.

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