Hi Readers
In my opinion and experience I would like to share shortcomings / failures of HR department. However the points put forward are my personal and limited experience only, you may just relate to it some or all deficiencies / difficulties that are faced in your nature of job also.
Recruitment : Selection of right candidate finally rests with line managers and inspite of providing them with a line up of candidate who match with the job description, skill sets, qualification, attitude etc which are preliminary screened by the HR executive, this candidates are rejected or selected on trivial reasons which are not even documented properly, this could be personal bias, lack of interviewing techniques, egos and prejudice, favouritsm, lack of empathy etc. Line managers end up hiring wrong guy for the wrong job. so lack of understanding between HR and Hiring department results in increased cost of recruitment.
Training : In several cases, HR department is not totally involved in the nature of jobs of the line employees, HR department does not have a detailed knowledge of tasks, duties, responsibilities, accountability of several positions, so in the name of training, they only act as coordinators to arrange training programs suggested by line managers, which could be more or less technical and job specific, HR department washes its hands off after orientation or induction program, by givins presentations etc etc.
Appraisals : HR department involvement in appraisal is mere coordinator in order to collect the forms, or print them out, and finally summarize the results. in some cases HR acts like an alarm clock reminding managers to conduct appraisals and submit the results. the appraisal which happen between employees and managers depends on relationship shared by manager and employee, so again, reasons like favoritism, personal bias, ego and prejudice come into play and not provide realistic or practical evaluation of employee's performance as per the KRAs / KPIs agreed as per JD.
Image of HR in the companies : HR executive are the pretty faces sitting in the department to do paper work as required as part of Quality certifications of the company , if an employee come to HR with a genuine reason / complaint / concern.. he / she is advised to sort it out with his department manager.
HR personnel does not have much say in the succession planning, promotions, salary negotiations etc to the management.
Any policy, procedure, idea newly introduced by HR department to benefit the company in terms of better Human resource management, it is laughed off by the line manager as " Just another policy again, it will go down the drain soon - ha ha ha "
More or less HR executive are clerks who are making reports, fulfilling statutory requirement and filing of documents. so Hr department merely ends up as cost center.
Please give your suggestions how this can be changed and HR department and its staff becomes true contributers of the business !
Thanks and Regards
Hussain