Human Resources: -- Know where to find resources to support you in your decision-making. -- Demonstrate HR professionalism in your role. Understand the value of good HR practice 1. What is HR? 2. What does the HR department do? 3. Different perceptions of HR. 4. Understanding the different views of HR. 5. What and who does HR represents? 6. HR roles in small organisations. 7. HR roles in large organisations. 8. The professional principles: i) Work matters ii) People matter iii) Professionalism matters 9. Types of HR practices. 10. Importance of data. 11. HR analytics & Predictive Analytics. 12. Ethics of data collection. 13. Examples of how HR can use data more ethically.

1. HUMAN
RESOURCES
PRESENTED BY:
SALONI AGARWAL

2. WHAT IS HR?
HR (Human Resources) means different things to different people,
and different organisations will also view HR in different ways. At
its most simple, HR could be thought of as the team or person
responsible for the people in an organisation.

3. The size of the organisation will influence what is involved in
that function. For a small organisation it might be hiring new
staff, helping with performance appraisals, payroll, holiday
management and more. In a larger organisation it might be
that some of those tasks are outsourced or carried out by
managers, with the HR function more specialist in some areas
like employment law, while providing general support and
advice to managers.
You may find HR called Personnel too, or another name such
as “People Operations” but the name is less important than the
impact of the work that is done and the ways of working
displayed by people in that role.

5. DIFFERENT PERCEPTIONS OF HR
There are many reasons why people have these different opinions: it
might be their past experiences of working in HR, or perhaps the
service they have received from HR themselves. A senior manager, or
supplier (such as a recruitment agency) will probably have a different
perception from that of an employee.
Not all perceptions of HR are necessarily clear or positive, but all of
them provide an opportunity to understand what HR is to different
people.

6. UNDERSTANDING THE DIFFERENT VIEWS OF HR
We know that the views people have are as varied as the
organisations they have worked in, that they change between
groups e.g. employees and senior managers, around what HR’s
purpose or priorities ought to be.
HR originally came from a need to protect workers from being
treated poorly, but later became a labour management function,
focused on recruitment, dismissals and industrial relations of
unionised workers.
Then, as the value of the function became more clear to
organisations, HR changed to become personnel administration, a
highly administrative function responsible for policies and
procedures.

7. Whatand who HR does represent?
HR can be seen by some to be very transactional, i.e. it does
the everyday tasks of the business and has no part in the
important decisions or strategic planning. Equally, in some
cases HR can be viewed as too focused on serving the needs
of the business, and perhaps not challenging unethical
decisions as much as it should.
These two views may appear to be opposite to each other, but
they show the unique position of HR within an organisation; it
touches everyone, and needs to work closely with, and be part
of, management, as well as supporting and understanding the
wider workforce.
As a result, attitudes to HR can be affected by what is
happening in an organisation - for example, if an organisation
is downsizing or the economy (and recruitment) overall is
going down, HR will be seen less as adding value and more as
an administrative function dealing with the costs of the
employees.

8. Whatever the context, in HR we need to understand the
organisation, its dynamics, and the challenges and needs of the
workforce in human terms. We need to balance judgments and
decision-making for the short and long term, and check them
against key principles well beyond thinking of people just as
cost.

9. HR ROLES INSMALL ORGANISATIONS

10. HRROLESIN LARGEORGANISATIONS

11. THE
PROFESSIONAL
PRINCIPLES
 Work matters
 People matter
 Professionalism
matters

12. Work matters
 Work can and should be a force for good – for organisations,
workers and the communities, societies and economies they’re
part of.
 Good work is purposeful; it is designed to help everyone use
their skills and talents effectively and find personal meaning in
the work they do.
 Good work is safe and inclusive; it recognises contribution in a
fair manner and values human connection.
 Good work exists for the long-term benefit of individuals,
organisations and society, and balances economic needs with
social accountability.

13. People matter
 People are fundamental to businesses and organisations; they
are unique and worthy of care, understanding and investment.
 People should have access and opportunity to work, and be
provided with the support, development and resources to be
effective; in turn, individuals have a personal responsibility for
their work, development and behaviour.
 People deserve to be treated fairly and have a meaningful
voice on matters that affect them, in addition to their rights and
protection under law.

14. Professionalism matters
For the people profession this means:
 Being ambassadors for the profession by acting with integrity
and championing better work and working lives in all we do.
 A commitment to continually develop, and to make decisions
which are principles-led, evidence-based and outcomes-driven.
 Bringing our expertise on people, work and change, together
with our understanding of how business creates value for all, to
balance the risks and opportunities inherent in any organisation
and understand the implications of our decisions beyond the
interests of our own organisations, for the good of wider
society.

15. HR practice can be:
 Principles-led
Principles enable us to make good decisions based on a clear purpose. As the world of
work evolves, we’ll encounter more and more situations which are completely new and
might not fit under our current policies, processes and rules. There are also plenty of
situations where you can follow the rules, but not do the ‘right’ thing. Principles trust
us to use our situational judgement to make that call, focusing on what we stand for
and believe in.
 Evidence-based
It’s important that we base our decisions on strong evidence and dispel the myth that
evidence is about hard numbers alone. Evidence should combine: data which gives
meaningful insights into your workforce a deep understanding of human psychology
and behaviour learning from the relationships we have with people from around the
business outside evidence, such as independent research and surveys.
 Outcomes-driven
Work must balance economic needs with social accountability, and consider impact in
terms of the organisations we work for, workers and wider society. The Standards
guide people professionals to be driven by human outcomes alongside business ones.

16. IMPORTANCE OF DATA
HR data can be both quantitative and qualitative:
 Quantitative data will be numbers and so is measurable. For example,
the number of people who leave your organisation in one month.
 Qualitative data can’t be measured and is the ‘why’ behind the
numbers. For example, the reasons given for why those people leave.
In order to make sure that HR has a good overview of the whole
organisation it is important that HR data is looked at with other types
of data in your organisation. This could include customer satisfaction
data from the sales team, which when looked at with HR data about
employee engagement might show you that teams which score their
manager highly also have the highest customer satisfaction.

17. HR ANALYTICS
Improving employee morale: Instead of having the costs of losing
employees, organisations can help prevent them leaving by measuring their
happiness and well-being and working to improve them both.
Driving business performance: Workers with strong leadership skills can
be found through analytics, leading to better recruitment of job applicants or
promotion of existing staff to the right positions.
Improving retention (people staying within the organisation):
Understanding why people leave means that HR can make suggestions of
what to do to help keep them.
PREDICTIVEANALYTICS
Understanding why people leave means that HR can make suggestions of
what to do to help keep them.

18. ETHICS OF DATA COLLECTION
HR records need to comply with local legislation for
collecting, using and retaining data.
HR records can be stored on paper or electronically but
it’s important for organisations to keep the information
well-organised and in an appropriate system so that is
lawful and can be easily retrieved when needed.
Many countries have data protection legislation which
guides how data should be protected on a day-to-day
basis. Compliance as HR practitioners is essential to the
role we have in our organisations as well as our ethical
judgement.
However, it’s important that we not only treat
employee data in accordance with data protection laws,
but also in an ethical way.

19. EXAMPLES OF HOW HR CAN USE DATA MORE ETHICALLY
 Insights gained from employees as a group are trends, they don’t
necessarily represent the truth about individuals. Insights can
inform HR initiatives, but should not be used to unfairly target
individuals.
 Biases can creep into the way that HR data is collected and
handled. Ethical use of HR data involves being wary of amplifying
these biases. Similarly, decisions can be made from incomplete
data, which can accidentally exclude certain groups of employees’
i.e. part time employees or contractors might not be included by
mistake.
 HR should set clear expectations as to how data is collected,
stored, analysed and used. Equally, there should be a way in which
employees can voice their concerns or objections.
 Finally, it’s important to consider how use of employee data may
contribute to the organisational culture. For example, do
employees feel they’re being watched unfairly? Is there a culture
of a transparency?