HR Department Functions: Recruitment to Knowledge Management

Posted on Feb 20, 2025 in Tourism

Item 4: Human Resources Department

The HR Department comprises a group of people who seek to achieve the following objectives:

  • Select and train people who meet the company’s needs.
  • Provide workers with the necessary means to carry out their work.
  • Motivate workers to perform their jobs better (try to ensure that employees meet their needs).

To achieve these goals, the department has developed the following functions:

  1. Organization and Planning of Staff
  2. Selection and Recruitment of Staff
  3. Administration of Staff
  4. Training of Human Resources
  5. Labor Relations
  6. Personnel Control
  7. Knowledge Management

1. Organization and Planning of Staff

Consists of planning templates, i.e., designing the workplace to identify the characteristics, functions, and responsibilities of each job, determining pay, and establishing the system for internal promotion.

2. Selection and Recruitment of Staff

This task is divided into five stages:

  1. Set the profile of the ideal person for the position.
  2. Recruit nominations of persons either from within the company or externally. Companies often run ads in the press or use employment agencies or temporary work agencies.
  3. Perform the selection process among different applications. This involves analyzing resumes and conducting training tests.
  4. Choose the person who has proven most suitable for the job.
  5. Perform the hiring of the chosen person.

3. Personnel Management

Consists of managing all judicial and administrative procedures related to personnel; among others, these are:

  • Preparing contracts (first, choosing the right one).
  • Processing payroll and social insurance.
  • Controlling the rights and duties of workers (schedules, permits, holidays, etc.).

4. HR Training

Consists of providing the necessary resources so that workers can adapt to technological changes and perform their jobs better.

5. Industrial Relations

These are the activities associated with company employees through their representatives (works councils, trade union delegates, and staff links).

The main functions are:

  • To carry out collective bargaining.
  • Resolving potential disputes.

Collective bargaining is the process of reaching an agreement between workers and employers about the conditions under which the work will be developed.

Labor disputes occur when workers do not agree on some aspects of the employment relationship. This conflict can occur in three ways:

  1. Collective Labor Conflict: A manifestation of reasons for the discrepancy between employers and employees. To resolve it, an agreed schedule of meetings is used, for which the solution can be:

    • Agreement.
    • Reconciliation: The parties agree that a third party will intervene without providing solutions.
    • Mediation: In this case, the parties agree that a third party will intervene and could offer proposals for a decision.
    • Arbitration: When the parties agree to submit to the decision of a third party that imposes a solution to the conflict.
  2. Strike: The interruption of work by employees in order to impose certain working conditions or to protest.
  3. Lockout (cierre patronal): The closure of the workplace by the employer in case of a strike or any irregularity in the collective work regime. It can only occur in cases of danger of violence, illegal occupation of the workplace, or to prevent irregularities in the normal production process.

6. Personnel Control

This task or function implies the following:

  1. Controlling workers who perform activities (absence, overtime, staff movements, etc.).
  2. Management of staff motivation (today, staff motivation is not just about compensation, but also other factors such as time and recognition of work).
  3. Evaluation of results and correction of errors.

7. Knowledge Management (Know-How)

Consists of converting the experience and knowledge of employees into a resource that can be used by whoever needs to act appropriately at all times. It focuses on identifying, capturing, retrieving, sharing, and assessing knowledge across the company through forms of work, processes, creation of databases, user manuals, etc.