The Human Resources department plays an integral role in the functioning of an organization. However, there are different roles that HR employees may occupy in their department depending on an organization’s size, goals and overall business objectives. These roles can be classified as one of the following:
- Supervisory.
- Professional/technical.
- Administrative support staff.
A supervisory role for HR staff is categorized as individuals who supervise others and are often referred to as supervisors, managers, directors or above. HR staff who partake in professional/technical roles are generally exempt and do not supervise others. These may include recruiters, compensation and benefits administrators or HR generalists. HR staff in administrative support roles are usually nonexempt and may be a coordinator or assistant. In order to calculate the percentage of the aforementioned roles, the following calculation should be used:
Number of HR Staff in an HR Role (FTEs)
----------------------------- X 100
Total Number of HR Staff
The percentage of HR staff occupying different roles can be affected by several factors, including organization size, sector and the overall strategy of a company. For instance, there used to be a large gap in HR roles in the public and private sectors. While this gap is narrowing, traditionally, HR played a larger part in strategic planning in the private sector. HR specialists in the private sector are still expected to have more experience, expertise and competencies, thus placing them in more central and supervisory roles.1 SHRM’s 2008 Human Capital Benchmarking Database supports these claims: 53% of privately owned for-profit organizations report filling supervisory roles with HR professionals, versus 33% of both government agencies and publicly owned for-profit organizations.2
Along with differences by sector and industry size, organizations may place HR employees in different roles depending upon their overall business objectives and strategy. When there is an increased focus on talent management, organizational learning and change management, companies may need more employees in supervisory roles.3 Therefore, HR would report directly to the executive team and other levels of management in order to coordinate company-wide initiatives and strategies. Furthermore, there may be fewer HR employees in professional/technical or administrative support roles depending upon the extent of decentralization within the HR department. Organizations that have a decentralized HR department will most likely choose to outsource such functions as benefits, training and payroll, and this will have an impact on the percentage of HR employees in professional roles.
Organizations need to take into account their overall structure and strategic initiatives when evaluating the configuration of their HR department and the roles of the individuals within it. Executives concerned about the structure of their HR department may find it helpful to use hard data about the percentages of HR staff in specific roles from competing organizations in order to justify changes in their own management practices.
For additional benchmarking data and to learn how the SHRM Customized Benchmarking Service can take your HR department to the next level, please visit our web site at www.shrm.org/research/benchmarks/ or call 1-800-283-7476 ext. 6366.
Endnotes
1 Lockwood, N. R. (2006, July). Strategic human resource management in the federal sector: HR’s emerging role and the demand for leadership. SHRM Research Quarterly, 2.
2 SHRM’s 2008 Human Capital Benchmarking Database [unpublished data].
3 Anderson, C. H. (2008, March). OD is major support beam of HR structure. Retrieved from http://www.shrm.org/oed/library/0308anderson.asp.
Project Team
Project leader: Kelsey Logan, Strategic Research
Project contributors: Andrew Mariotti, strategic research analyst; John Dooney, manager, Strategic Research; Steve Williams, Ph.D., SRHR, director, Research Department
Copy editing: Nicole Gray, copy editor
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