Human resources, training, and labor relations managers and specialists

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Human resources, training, and labor relations managers and specialists

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Nature of the Work
Job Outlook
Related Occupations
Required Degrees

Nature of the Work

Every organization wants to attract, motivate, and retain the most qualified employees and match them to jobs for which they are best suited.
Human resources, training, and labour relations managers and specialists provide this connection.
In the past, these workers performed the administrative function of an organization, such as handling employee benefits questions or recruiting, interviewing, and hiring new staff in accordance with policies established by top management.
Today's human resources workers manage these tasks, but, increasingly, they consult with top executives regarding strategic planning.
They have moved from behind-the-scenes staff work to leading the company in suggesting and changing policies.
In an effort to enhance morale and productivity, limit job turnover, and help organizations increase performance and improve results, these workers also help their companies effectively use employee skills, provide training and development opportunities to improve those skills, and increase employees' satisfaction with their jobs and working conditions.
Although some jobs in the human resources field require only limited contact with people outside the human resources office, dealing with people is an important part of the job.
There are many types of human resources, training, and labour relations managers and specialists.
In a small organization, a human resources generalist may handle all aspects of human resources work, and thus require an extensive range of knowledge.
The responsibilities of human resources generalists can vary widely, depending on their employer's needs.
In a large corporation, the director of human resources may supervise several departments, each headed by an experienced manager who most likely specializes in one human resources activity, such as employment and placement, compensation and benefits, training and development, or labour relations.
The director may report to a top human resources executive.
Employment and placement. Employment and placement managers supervise the recruitment, hiring, and separation of employees. They also supervise employment, recruitment, and placement specialists, including employment interviewers.
- Employment, recruitment, and placement specialists recruit and place workers.
- Recruitment specialists maintain contacts within the community and may travel considerably, often to job fairs and college campuses, to search for promising job applicants.
- Recruiters screen, interview, and occasionally test applicants.
- They also may check references and extend job offers. These workers must be thoroughly familiar with their organization, the work that is done, and the human resources policies of their company in order to discuss wages, working conditions and advancement opportunities with prospective employees.
Employment interviewers—whose many job titles include human resources consultants, human resources development specialists, and human resources coordinators—help to match employers with qualified jobseekers.
Similarly, employer relations representatives, who usually work in government agencies or college career centres, maintain working relationships with prospective employers and promote the use of public employment programs and services.
Compensation, benefits, and job analysis. Compensation, benefits, and job analysis specialists administer compensation programs for employers and may specialize in specific areas such as pensions or position classifications.
- For example, job analysts, occasionally called position classifiers, collect and examine detailed information about job duties in order to prepare job descriptions.
- These descriptions explain the duties, training, and skills that each job requires.
- Whenever a large organization introduces a new job or reviews existing jobs, it calls upon the expert knowledge of job analysts.
- Occupational analysts research occupational classification systems and study the effects of industry and occupational trends on worker relationships.
- They may serve as technical liaisons between companies or departments, government, and labor unions.
- Establishing and maintaining a firm's pay structure is the principal job of compensation managers.
- Assisted by compensation analysts or specialists, compensation managers devise ways to ensure fair and equitable pay rates.
- They may participate in or purchase salary surveys to see how their firm's pay compares with others, and they ensure that the firm's pay scale complies with changing laws and regulations.
- In addition, compensation managers often oversee the compensation side of their company's performance management system.
- They may design reward systems such as pay-for-performance plans, which might include setting merit pay guidelines and bonus or incentive pay criteria.
- Compensation managers also might administer executive compensation programs or determine commission rates and other incentives for corporate sales staffs.
Employee benefits managers and specialists administer a company’s employee benefits program, notably its health insurance and retirement plans.
- Expertise in designing, negotiating, and administering benefits programs continues to take on importance as employer-provided benefits account for a growing proportion of overall compensation costs, and as benefit plans increase in number and complexity.
- For example, retirement benefits might include defined benefit pension plans, defined contribution plans, or thrift savings plans and profit-sharing or stock ownership plans.
- Health benefits might include medical, dental, and vision insurance and protection against catastrophic illness.
- Familiarity with health benefits is a top priority for employee benefits managers and specialists, because of the rising cost of providing healthcare benefits to employees and retirees.
- In addition to health insurance and retirement coverage, many firms offer employees life and accidental death and dismemberment insurance, disability insurance, and benefits designed to meet the needs of a changing workforce, such as parental leave, long-term nursing or home care insurance, wellness programs, and flexible benefits plans.
- Benefits managers must keep abreast of changing regulations and legislation that may affect employee benefits.
- Working with employee assistance plan managers or work-life coordinators, many benefits managers work to integrate the growing number of programs that deal with mental and physical health, such as employee assistance, obesity, and smoking cessation, into their health benefits programs.
Employee assistance plan managers, also called employee welfare managers or work-life managers, are responsible for a wide array of programs to enhance employee safety and wellness and improve work-life balance.
- These may include occupational safety and health standards and practices, health promotion and physical fitness, medical examinations and minor health treatment, such as first aid, flexible work schedules, food service and recreation activities, carpooling and transportation programs such as transit subsidies, employee suggestion systems, child care and elder care, and counselling services.
- Child care and elder care are increasingly significant because of growth in the number of dual-income households and the older population.
- Counselling may help employees deal with emotional disorders, alcoholism, or marital, family, consumer, legal, and financial problems.
- Some employers offer career counselling and outplacement services. In some companies, certain programs, such as those dealing with physical security or information technology, may be coordinated in separate departments by other managers.
Training and development. Training and development managers and specialists create, procure, and conduct training and development programs for employees.
- Managers typically supervise specialists and make budget-impacting decisions in exchange for a reduced training portfolio.
- Increasingly, executives recognize that training offers a way of developing skills, enhancing productivity and quality of work, and building worker loyalty.
- Enhancing employee skills can increase individual and organizational performance and help to achieve business results.
- Increasingly, executives realize that developing the skills and knowledge of its workforce is a business imperative that can give them a competitive edge in recruiting and retaining high quality employees and can lead to business growth.
- Other factors involved in determining whether training is needed include the complexity of the work environment, the rapid pace of organizational and technological change, and the growing number of jobs in fields that constantly generate new knowledge and, thus, require new skills.
- In addition, advances in learning theory have provided insights into how people learn and how training can be organized most effectively.
Training managers oversee development of training programs, contracts, and budgets.
- They may perform needs assessments of the types of training needed, determine the best means of delivering training, and create the content.
- They may provide employee training in a classroom, computer laboratory, or onsite production facility, or through a training film, Web video-on-demand, or self-paced or self-guided instructional guides.
- For live or in-person training, training managers ensure that teaching materials are prepared and the space appropriately set, training and instruction stimulate the class, and completion certificates are issued at the end of training.
- For computer-assisted or recorded training, trainers ensure that cameras, microphones, and other necessary technology platforms are functioning properly and that individual computers or other learning devices are configured for training purposes.
- They also have the responsibility for the entire learning process, and its environment, to ensure that the course meets its objectives and is measured and evaluated to understand how learning impacts performance.
Training specialists plan, organize, and direct a wide range of training activities.
- Trainers consult with training managers and employee supervisors to develop performance improvement measures, conduct orientation sessions, and arrange on-the-job training for new employees.
- They help employees maintain and improve their job skills and prepare for jobs requiring greater skill.
- They work with supervisors to improve their interpersonal skills and to deal effectively with employees.
- They may set up individualized training plans to strengthen employees’ existing skills or teach new ones.
- Training specialists also may set up leadership or executive development programs for employees who aspire to move up in the organization.
- These programs are designed to develop or “groom” leaders to replace those leaving the organization and as part of a corporate succession plan.
- Trainers also lead programs to assist employees with job transitions as a result of mergers or consolidation, as well as retraining programs to develop new skills that may result from technological changes in the work place.
- In government-supported job-training programs, training specialists serve as case managers and provide basic job skills to prepare participants to function in the labour force.
- They assess the training needs of clients and guide them through the most appropriate training.
- After training, clients may either be referred to employer relations representatives or receive job placement assistance.
Planning and program development is an essential part of the training specialist's job.
- In order to identify and assess training needs, trainers may confer with managers and supervisors or conduct surveys.
- They also evaluate training effectiveness to ensure that employees actually learn and that the training they receive helps the organization meet its strategic goals and achieve results.
- Depending on the size, goals, and nature of the organization, trainers may differ considerably in their responsibilities and in the methods they use.
- Training methods also vary by whether the training predominantly is knowledge-based or skill-based or sometimes a combination of the two.
- For example, much knowledge-based training is conducted in a classroom setting. Most skill training provides some combination of hands-on instruction, demonstration, and practice at doing something and usually is conducted on a shop floor, studio, or laboratory where trainees gain experience and confidence.
- Some on-the-job training methods could apply equally to knowledge or skill training and formal apprenticeship training programs combine classroom training and work experience.
- Increasingly, training programs involve interactive Internet-based training modules that can be downloaded for either individual or group instruction, for dissemination to a geographically dispersed class, or to be coordinated with other multimedia programs.
- These technologies allow participants to take advantage of distance learning alternatives and to attend conferences and seminars through satellite or Internet communications hook-ups, or use other computer-aided instructional technologies, such as those for the hearing-impaired or sight-impaired.
Employee relations. An organization's director of industrial relations forms labour policy, oversees industrial labour relations, negotiates collective bargaining agreements, and coordinates grievance procedures to handle complaints resulting from management disputes with employees.
- The director of industrial relations also advises and collaborates with the director of human resources, other managers, and members of their staffs, because all aspects of human resources policy—such as wages, benefits, pensions, and work practices—may be involved in drawing up a new or revised work rules that comply with a union contract.
- Labour relations managers and their staffs implement industrial labor relations programs.
- Labour relations specialists prepare information for management to use during collective bargaining agreement negotiations, a process that requires the specialist to be familiar with economic and wage data and to have extensive knowledge of labour law and collective bargaining procedures.
- The labour relations staff interprets and administers the contract with respect to grievances, wages and salaries, employee welfare, healthcare, pensions, union and management practices, and other contractual stipulations.
- In the absence of a union, industrial relations personnel may work with employees individually or with employee association representatives.
- Dispute resolution—attaining tacit or contractual agreements—has become increasingly significant as parties to a dispute attempt to avoid costly litigation, strikes, or other disruptions.
- Dispute resolution also has become more complex, involving employees, management, unions, other firms, and government agencies.
- Specialists involved in dispute resolution must be highly knowledgeable and experienced, and often report to the director of industrial relations.
- Mediators advise and counsel labour and management to prevent and, when necessary, resolve disputes over labour agreements or other labour relations issues.
- Arbitrators, occasionally called umpires or referees, decide disputes that bind both labour and management to specific terms and conditions of labour contracts.
- Labour relations specialists who work for unions perform many of the same functions on behalf of the union and its members.
Other emerging specialties in human resources include
- international human resources managers, who handle human resources issues related to a company's overseas operations and
- human resources information system specialists, who develop and apply computer programs to process human resources information, match jobseekers with job openings, and handle other human resources matters; and
- total compensation or total rewards specialists, who determine an appropriate mix of compensation, benefits, and incentives.

Job Outlook

Job growth could be limited by the widespread use of computerized human resources information systems that make workers more productive.
Like other workers, employment of human resources, training, and labour relations managers and specialists, particularly in larger companies, may be adversely affected by corporate downsizing, restructuring, and mergers;
However, as companies once again expand operations, additional workers may be needed to manage company growth.
Demand may be particularly strong for certain specialists. For example, employers are expected to devote greater resources to job-specific training programs in response to the increasing complexity of many jobs and technological advances that can leave employees with obsolete skills.
In addition, increasing efforts throughout industry to recruit and retain quality employees should create many jobs for employment, recruitment, and placement specialists.
Among industries, firms involved in management, consulting, and employment services should offer many job opportunities, as businesses increasingly contract out human resources functions or hire human resources specialists on a temporary basis to deal with increasing costs and complexity of training and development programs.
Demand for specialists also should increase in outsourcing firms that develop and administer complex employee benefits and compensation packages for other organizations.
College graduates and those who have earned certification should have the best job opportunities, particularly graduates with a bachelor's degree in human resources, human resources administration, or industrial and labour relations.
Those with a technical or business background or a well-rounded liberal arts education also should find opportunities.
Demand for human resources, training, and labour relations managers and specialists depends on general economic conditions and the business cycle as well as staffing needs of the companies in which they work.
A rapidly expanding business is likely to hire additional human resources workers—either as permanent employees or consultants—while businesses that have consolidated operations or merged with another company may require fewer of these workers.
Also, as human resources management becomes increasingly important to the success of an organization, some small and medium-size businesses that do not have separate human resources departments may assign various human resources responsibilities to some employees in addition to their usual responsibilities;
Others may contract with consulting firms to establish formal procedures and train current employees to administer programs on a long-term basis.

Related Occupations

Human resources occupations require strong interpersonal skills. Other occupations that demand these skills include Counsellors; Education administrators; Lawyers; Psychologists; Public relations specialists; Social and human service assistant; Social workers.

Required Degrees

BA in Business Administration
BA in Human Resources
BA in Personnel Administration

You can check the above degrees at the following universities:

University	Major	Degree	# of credits	Credit UP (US$)	# of years
Lebanese Canadian University	Administration Des Affaires - DBA	DBA	NA	9000/ Yr.	3

This career information is drawn from data provided by the U.S. Department of Labor.

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