Do you ever find yourself wondering what HR people spend their days doing?

Your average HR department spend their days spinning many plates – and sometimes those plates are on fire!  A team of outsourced HR consultants is no different, it just means that the plates are all different brands and the flammable substances on them are many & varied; one size fire extinguisher will most definitely not fit all.

All joking aside, an HR team, be they internal or outsourced, is responsible for ensuring that every individual and asset is well-managed, strategically utilised and of course, engaged in a legally compliant way – allowing for key business goals to be achieved.

Traditionally when you think of HR, you might just think of ‘the people that deal with employee welfare’.

Although welfare is extremely important to good HR professionals (and we all love the workplace health kick that involves awkward lunch time yoga) there is actually much more that the role encompasses.

The central nervous system of the HR department is usually known as the employee ‘life cycle’ – from the initial stage of identifying the need for a new role to be created, right through the recruitment, induction, development, training, maybe even the odd disciplinary (we won’t talk about last year’s Christmas party!), and finally the separation of an employee from the business.

The HR department also takes on the huge responsibility of the legalities that come with employment. This includes contracting with employees, managing salaries, holiday time, break time, sickness, employee data management and health and safety in the workplace.