What are the Core HR Activities in a Company?

Managing employees involves more than interviewing, hiring, and creating work schedules. Human Resources involves creating an environment that will allow employees to flourish. This takes an incredible amount of time, effort, and focus.

Failing to deliver an effective HR system can lead to a negative impact on your bottom line. Creating an HR strategy that will lead to the fulfillment of the core HR activities in your company can become a troublesome task due to the amount of time and effort it will take.

Talent Acquisition

To build a successful business, you need a blend of different elements, among which people are one of the most important. Excellent employees are the driving force behind your operations. That means that hiring and retaining the right people is key to business success.

Talent acquisition is a long-term HR strategy that is centered around fulfilling your needs by convincing candidates in your candidate pool to bring their talents to your company. Searching for this type of talent takes a significant amount of time and effort. It can be easy for a company to become overwhelmed with the talent acquisition process and in turn, start neglecting some of its core HR activities. 

Attracting top talent requires building a strong employer brand. Your company's workforce is your most important ambassador. Focusing on your current employees’ success and ensuring they are working in a positive environment is key to building and maintaining a strong employer brand. The current state of your employer brand may motivate future candidates to apply for open positions. 

Employee Relations

Employee relations refers to a company's efforts to create and maintain a positive relationship with its employees. By maintaining positive employee relations, your company will be able to keep employees more engaged daily.

To maintain positive and constructive employee relations, your company will need to view employees as major contributors to the company rather than people who are receiving payment for doing a job. When you take this approach, executives and those in management positions will begin to seek feedback from employees, ensure employees know their input is valued, and consider the employee experience when making any decision that will impact the entire workplace.

If employees are satisfied with their job responsibilities, they will generally remain positive and happy. Positive work environments will generally result in fewer conflicts, and employees will develop feelings of trust and loyalty. 

HR professionals must cater to every aspect of employee relations within a company. From the recruitment process to exit interviews, HR team members take on the responsibility of ensuring employees have positive experiences. Unfortunately, HR teams can become weighed-down with the administrative tasks so that they cannot effectively address the human element in the workplace.

Training and Development

The steps that are taken right after the initial hiring process are crucial. Employees will look to the company to provide the necessary onboarding experience. Effective training and development will include more than providing information about the company culture, organizational systems, and conduct. Onboarding training can help new hires and your company through:

• Retention
• Productivity
• Cultural adaptation

In a previous study, 37 percent of employees stated they would quickly leave their current position if they were not offered the necessary training to develop a new skill. This shows that there is still a growing need for companies to invest in their employees through training and development. When you tap into onboarding expertise, your company will be on your way to transfer key information to employees in ways that will help them adapt quickly. 

Benefits Administration

A company's HR team will usually bear the weight of administering employee benefits plans. HR is responsible for core activities that are necessary to administer an employee benefits program that is compliant and effective, regardless of the size. 

Employee benefits are one of the most essential features that can be used to attract and retain the top talent. However, managing benefits should not be a burden. Health care costs are on the rise, and this can result in higher costs of health care coverage for employees. In this type of landscape, companies will need to make adjustments to their benefits services to ensure they are offering plans that can keep the rising costs away. 

Legal Compliance

Another responsibility that falls on HR is making sure the company meets every legal obligation as it relates to compliance. HR departments will need to remain compliant with every relevant law and regulation, from the Affordable Care Act to the Fair Labor Standards Act. 

Human resources compliance is a key to success for any company, but achieving and maintaining compliance can be elusive goals for companies that fail to realize the challenges that come with remaining compliant. Outsourcing HR compliance can help streamline HR compliance procedures. Outsourcing HR compliance can make each responsibility achievable while giving companies the peace of mind that everything is being handled properly.

Maintain a Safe and Healthy Work Environment

HR is also responsible for ensuring employee health and safety, including ensuring OSHA standards are followed. Many companies are not sure whether they comply with OSHA standards and others may not realize they are not in compliance. 

Whether a company is short-staffed, does not have the time, does not have the funds, or is non-compliant, outsourcing occupational health and safety responsibilities can ensure that employee concerns are heard and addressed.

HR outsourcing can relieve the burdens related to human resource administrative tasks, and the HR team will be free to refocus attention on the business of doing business. HR outsourcing can strengthen your company by empowering you to retain talented workers, respond quickly to problems, and respond proactively to employment law changes.