Supporting the chief role of “human resources” or human capital in enterprises and societies has been a recognized role of Human Resource socialist parties, that argue that value is first and foremost founded by their activity, and for that reason give explanation for a larger claim of incomes or relief from these enterprises or societies. Critics believe this is just a bargaining tactic which grew out of various practices of medieval European guilds into the modern trade unions and collective bargaining units.

The more traditional usage within corporations and  businesses refers to the individuals inside the firm, and to the segment of the firm’s organization that works with hiring, firing, training, and other personnel questions.

 

The purpose of Human Resources is to maximize the feedback on investment from the organization’s human resources and minimize financial risk. It is the accountability of human resource managers to manage these activities in an efficient, legal, fair, and consistent way.

Human resources is considered to be a term with which a lot of organizations describe the mixture of traditionally administrative personnel roles with performance management, employee relations and resource planning. The sphere draws upon concepts developed in Industrial and Organizational Psychology. Human resources have at least two related explanations depending on context. The original meaning derives from political economy and economics, where it was by tradition called labor, that is one of four factors of production.

Human resources management fulfills the following key functions:

1)                  Recruitment Strategy Planning;

2)                  Hiring Processes itself;

3)                  Selection of candidates;

4)                  Training and Development of personnel;

5)                  Evaluation and Management;

6)                  Process of Promotions;

7)                  Redundancy;

                  Managing Industrial and Employee Relations;

9)                  Record keeping of all personal data;

10)              Compensations, pensions, bonuses and so on in liaison with Payroll;

11)              Confidential advice to internal ‘customers’ dealing with problems at work;

12)              Process of career development.

Process of sourcing includes

1) advertising, a common part of the recruiting process, frequently encompassing multiple media, such as Internet, newspapers, job ad newspapers, professional magazines, screen advertisements, job centers, as well as campus graduate recruitment programs;

2) recruiting investigation, which is the practical identification of relevant talent that may not respond to job postings and other different recruitment advertising methods described above. This initial research for so-called passive scenario, also called name-generation, results in a list of prospects who can then be contacted to importune interest, obtain a resume and CV, and be screened.

Bigger employers tend to undertake their own internal recruitment, using their human resources department. Additionally to coordinating with the agencies mentioned above, in-house recruiters are able to advertise job vacancies on their own websites, organize employee referral schemes, and focus on campus graduate recruitment. On the other hand a large employer may prefer to outsource all or some of their recruitment process (Outsourcing recruitment process).