Human Resources in Health Care
HCS 341
July 10, 2013
Functions of Human Resources
Human Resources, or HR, can at times, be something of a mystery if you have not had any reason to interact with the human resource staff. What do they accomplish in the human resources department? What is their contribution to the company? Every day the human resources department is making decisions that affect the employees. Wages and salaries, hiring and firing, handling employee grievances, and employee training are functions of the human resources department.
Wages and Salaries Human resources follows the patterns of other employers to help them determine what they pay the company employees. Competitive wages are important to employees when they are job searching or moving up within the company. According to the HR Council for the Nonprofit Sector, “Salary surveys are conducted with employers in the same labor market to determine pay levels for specific job categories” ("Wages," “n.d.,”, p. 2). Surveys are a function of HR to determine if they are offering competitive wages with other companies.
Hiring and Firing Hiring new employees is directly affected by human resources. Creating job descriptions and determining the skills needed to qualify for a position is a function of the human resources department. Job descriptions describe what is expected from the person applying for the position. This written job description also gives the human resources guidelines if discipline is needed in the future. Established expectations are used to coach an employee and if necessary fire the employee.
Firing
Firing an employee is not as easy as it may seem. Documentation is necessary to build a history of coaching an employee into the correct behavior. If the correct behavior is not reached a historical case has been created to support firing the employee. If the action or behavior violates company policy, immediate firing of the
References: Compensation and Benefits. (“n.d.”). Retrieved from http://hrcouncil.ca/hr-toolkit/compensation-wages.cfm Functions of a Human Resource department. (“n.d.”). Retrieved from http://www.dineshbakshi.com/igcse-business-studies/people-at-work/revision-notes/850-functions-of-human-resource-department