Structure of HR Department

Rockie

I need some feedback from you guys on how your HR Department is structured. What tasks do you actually perform vs. what you have your assistant do (if you are so lucky as to have one).

Also,have you run into the problem that I have with assistants not being as judicious about attention to detail as they should be. For example, when you give them something to do, you expect it to be done, correct? Why should you have to constantly go back and check to see if it has been done or worse, when you put your trust in someone to do a task, you find it hasn't been done and it's still languishing on their desk. Their response is something akin to "Oh, well!". I wish this attitude was the exception rather than the rule. I think I have had one good, conscientious assistant in the last 5 or 6 years that I could really depend upon to do what I asked them to do without having to check up on them. I am begining to think my expectations are too high!

Anyway...I digress. Really, if there was a perfect structure in your HR Department, what would you consider it to be?

Janet

In a perfect world, you'd think that employees would perform as expected. Being in HR, we know better than anyone else how hard it is to hire and keep good help. I don't know what you're paying your assistants, but I wonder if it's competitive to get good employees? At our company, we KNOW we don't pay competitively and believe me, we pay the price in quality of employees. Anyone worth his salt goes somewhere else.

Pork

Rockie,SC
Good afternoon hope ya'll soon will send us some of that precious stuff called water!

For the first time in my 25 years of HR work I have reached a point of having the super star in our company with whom I hope to train and have her succeed me as the Director of HR. She was hired as the accounting assistant working for the Office Manager/Accounting Manager. She was trained and given the accounting function of Payroll. Finally, I convenced the owners and General Manager that I should have Payroll under me.

I got the top accounting assistant and payroll. She has been training me to be her back-up in payroll and she has taken over all of the administrative funtions and paper drills I used to do daily. The paper drills cover our entire gamit of things: OSHA,enrollments, personell actions and payroll, garnishments, court orders,terminations, benefit alerts, W/Comp, FMLA, etc. I have kept recruiting for management and I get involved jointly with recruiting and placement of labor. Additionally, I handle all unemployment hearings, and defenses of EEOC, and legal personel concerns, counseling we do jointly with me getting the more serious ones when she feels uncomfortable. I do the company personel investigations in any department. I am often the third party witness to counseling sessions within our company. Since, I have a company car I deliver "just in time supplies" and "paychecks" when there is no other way to get the employee his/her check within the time limit. I still do the enrollments at 15 remote sites. (We have gone to the direct deposit system this summer and that has given me back one entire day.) I do all of the leadership training courses and my assistant is helping as she becomes proficient in the modules. When I retire in 6 years she'll be ready.

I maintain very high standards of conduct of business and I am transplanting that characteristic in her. She is also self driven to profection which is the real starting point in HR. You can not except less or you'll end up committing the company to a salary or wage rate that was wrong but is right because you or she/he allowed it to become law the written document. Attention to details is a requirement in HR and if you are not getting it, you need to reward pure performance with an exit.

It sounds like you should look inward at your acceptance of low standards and correct your "acceptance of poor performance". In my 35 years of leading others I have seen many good people allowed to produce "_ _ _ _ pure results" and subsequently get waxed. People/workers/leaders will rise to our level of expectations if they are physically and mentally otherwise capable. People do not enherently, want to fail or produce a bad product! However, laziness is a found trait coming from our "TV LA La" land and fast communication arena is distroying our way of life and performance in business.

This comes from my "Leadership in the year 2002" module #1 course of instruction for supervisors and managers-in-training. By the way my assistant is now making $11.50 per hour and is worth every penny of it. Just in training alone we are saving big bucks by me do the teaching, which I could never do before when I was tied down to all the HR admin. As you can tell from this forum both Don and my self have reached a level of freedom to respond to numerous forum issues. We could not have this time available if we had less than totally great employees in HR. Don't let the poor performers enter your arena, it should be a real privilege to work in HR, but it requires commitment to higher expected levels of professional performance. Hope this help! Pork

Rockie

Hi Pork!

We got some rain last week, but we are in a five year drought with our rivers drying up. My brother's pontoon boat is sitting on sand and has been for weeks!

Anyway...back to HR. You are so lucky to have someone working for you like you do that is obviously a person who cares about the product they produce. I have recently started sharing an Executive Assistant with the CEO. Both of us are perfectionists and I believe this person will probably be able to handle what we need. (She used to be an HR Manager). The assistant I had before thought she knew more than anyone else (her words) and wanted to be paid an Executive's salary. (She also wanted to be off on the average of 2-3 days a month). She has since gone on to be another unfortunate person's Administrative Assistant.

We pay above market for most of our positions because our area is so competitive in health care workers and also good administrative type people. Our Executive Assistant makes $35,000/year and most of our Administrative Assistants make around $14.00/hour. We could not begin to hire anyone at $11.50/hour and you are doubly lucky in this respect.

Thanks for letting me vent about my dispair at what the new generation will be like.

Nat

We are a small company with about 140 employees. Our HR department consists of a Staffing Coordinator who handles all of our non-exempt recruiting, Orientation, record keeping, etc.; a Benefits Coordinator who handles all of the administrative tasks related to benefits such as enrollments for insurance, retirement, etc. and handles our worker's compensation such as tracking cases, get employees back to light duty, etc. Because we have these two positions, (a luxury I have never had until this job - it's usually a one man show), I am able to concentrate on retention, policies and procedures, management training, exempt recruiting (although we have very little turnover in exempt positions). I am fortunate that my staff are very competent in their jobs and do pay attention to detail, probably more than I. One thing that my staff have had to get use to is an HR Manager who knows how to do their jobs as well as the Manager function. My predecessors had come from corporations where they just did the Director functions and knew nothing or very little about benefits or recruiting. Having been the only person in HR at my last two employers really helps them since I have working knowledge about their jobs as well as mine.

Natalie

Lori B

Hi Rockie

We have 500 ees, multi-state locations. Our HR Dept handles HR functions in addition to payroll, benefits inc'g the retirement plans, work comp, safety, assist with charitable events, and legal. Thankfully, we do very little recruiting. We have 4 FT employees as follows: Director of HR/in-house counsel (that's me), HR/Benefits Administrator, Payroll Admninistrator, and an Admin Asst. We also have an accounting ee who works one day a week in our dept to do the payroll bank account recs and assist with retirement plan administration.

This scheme works for us, but we always seem to be swamped. The more we develop infrastructure and good policies, it seems the more efficient we become though. (Our dept has gone through major overhaul, including new HRIS system, in last few years.)

My asst is an ace. I hate to tell anyone that for fear you will all start trying to recruit her away from me. She was fresh out of college with an HR degree. She was desperate to get her feet wet and learn all she could about HR at the entry level. Our company has been a great training ground for her and she has developed into a tremendous asset. I know there may be concerns about the younger vs. older generations and work ethics. That could be an entire dialog in itself. In our case, our "young" asst has brought a lot of fresh ideas and even helped us design our own HR website in house. She was probably the best investment we made last year. I guess my point is that good assts can be found at the entry level, you just need to find one with the right motivation and desire. Granted, the truly motivated, won't stay entry level for long, but I see that as a reasonable tradeoff. I could run and ad tomorrow and get hundreds of resumes for that position in this market now.