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Even in organizations that have kept the more traditional structure of formal human resource management departments, the kinds of work carried out by those departments and their relationships with the rest of the organization have changed in most cases. Advances in the measurement of human resource management activities have made it more feasible to evaluate these activities in much the same way as we evaluate other organizational functions Understanding how human re source management can exist in these different settings helps shed light on the way in which human resource managers interact with other managers Any organization that has a human resource department assigns that unit staff(or support) functions with staff(or support) responsibility R The human resource department is usually given specific responsibility for certain functions and shares responsibility for other functions. The most common specific responsibility a signed to the human resource department is legal compliance. The department i expected to keep abreast of all local, state, and federal laws that affect human re source practices and to monitor court cases and decisions that might modify or extend those laws. Human resource managers are also usually expected to maintain data and records to show how the organization has attempted to maintain compliance. In larger organizations, a separate human resource unit is often dated for the sole purpose of dealing with organized labor. Usually called the labor relations department, this unit handles labor contract negotiations and administers labor agreements after they have been accepted .
The human resource department also takes primary responsibility in most organizations for recruiting potential new employees for entry-level positions and for the initial screening of applicants for those positions. Similarly, human re- source managers generally design the basic compensation and benefits system used by the organization. They also design the performance appraisal system, basic training and development programs, incentive and performance-based reward systems, and discipline and grievance systems. Human resource managers have also become increasingly involved with total quality management efforts and their organization's international activities
In some organizations, human resource management departments are structured around "centers of excellence." In these cases, the human resource department is responsible for providing services only in those cases where they can provide higher-quality services than can be purchased on the outside(i.e., through outsourcing, discussed earlier). In other cases, the human resource department functions as a consulting operation within the organization. They are expected to be responsive to the needs of the other functional areas, but they have to sell their services to the line managers. In these arrangements, the human resource management department budget is very small, and the only way to hire and retain employees in that area is to provide services that other managers are willing to pay for(literally). Thus, the human resource management department becomes a self-funding operation, or it could even become somewhat of a profit center.
In any case, in the more modern, strategic view of human resource management, the human resource department is also responsible for coordinating the various human resource management activities and ensuring that they are consistent with corporate strategy. If those services are provided primarily internally by the human resource management department, this coordination can be fairly simple. As those activities move outside the organization, perhaps by contracting with outside vendors, the coordination problem becomes much more complex. In these cases, the human resource management department is responsible for identifying suitable vendors, monitoring the performance of those vendors, and ensuring that each vendor is providing services that help the organization meet its overall strategic goals