Different regulatory requirements strongly affect various HR processes, including hiring staff and interacting with them at the workplace. HR practitioners are responsible for monitoring and implementing policies adopted by an organization, and conducting processes regarding additional education for employees, recruitment, including interviewing and testing, probation periods, and making decisions on promotions. All of these processes require knowledge and application of legal, safety, and regulatory requirements. Over the last decades, the professionalism of an HR specialist has become strongly dependent on the knowledge of law (Kirk, 2021). The reason for that lies in new policies demanded from organizations by the government, which are related to employment and equality.
The responsibility of monitoring and controlling compliance with these requirements lies with HR practitioners. Besides, HR managers make decisions on an everyday basis, and there is always a large of options they might select from. Some of these decisions might have significant legal consequences for the organization if a manager does not consider the legislative aspects of the situation he or she is addressing (Kaupins, 2021). In such cases, organizations might be exposed to monetary and reputational losses and might even experience litigation. Therefore, organizations demand HR managers be qualified to be capable of fulfilling their duties in this area.
Various departments are responsible for conducting and monitoring legal actions regarding employment and activities that define how such laws and requirements are developed and how they work. The Americans with Disabilities Act requires organizations to provide those with disabilities with the same rights and protections that are given to minorities. They should also be treated equally in terms of their employment opportunities. The Department of Labor is responsible for monitoring the compliance of organizations with legal requirements regarding wage-and-hour laws. The Department conducts that monitoring by sending their representatives to visit organizations, and regarding federal or state laws, as they might differ, the organizations might be inspected by both (McConnell, 2019). The U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission was established in 1964 to provide citizens with equality in workplaces in terms of recruitment, waging, and other processes that were affected by discrimination towards different groups. Department of Homeland security mostly concentrates its work regarding workplaces on immigration-related requirements, inspecting the compliance with laws of hiring and treating certain individuals at workplaces. Occupational Safety and Health Administration is responsible for monitoring and determining the provision to the employees of a healthy and safe environment at a workplace. One of the main goals of OSHA is to reduce the possibility of dangerous situations in the workplace. Regarding HR managers, they must make sure that the employees are provided with such conditions, considering their workplace circumstances and their health condition.
In my opinion, the statement of common sense and compassion being replaced with litigation at workplaces might be slightly exaggerated and one-sided. There are many benefits brought by legal requirements for all individuals. These specifically regard safety and equality in terms of recruitment, waging, and promotion. The acts and departments mentioned earlier positively affect the way organizations treat their employees and do not allow any discrimination in the workplace. On the other hand, some issues regarding bureaucracy and the increasing responsibility of HR practitioners to help organizations comply with the law should be addressed. Because of dynamic and strict legal requirements, HRs have to spend more resources and time on conducting related work instead of concentrating on making workplaces better for employees should be addressed. If the balance between law compliance and creating an appropriate environment for employees to work in is found, there should be no issues whatsoever. Having qualified staff to monitor this and conduct related processes should be enough to avoid litigation.
Organizations must comply with the law, and leaders must do everything in their capabilities to assist this. Yet, an important goal for leaders is to achieve the best working experience for their employees, including HR managers and other staff, and optimizing the balance between effort to comply with the law and satisfy employees must be addressed. This can be achieved in various ways, though all of them will concentrate on reducing the load of legal requirements-related work on HR managers.
One way is to automize certain processes as informational technologies in the area of human resources have significantly developed. It is possible to make certain bureaucratic processes implemented in an automized system so the employees can take responsibility for them. It is also possible to partially automize the basic HR processes like recruitment by creating software tools that will assist in considering the legal aspects of the job. Another way is to have multiple HR practitioners in an organization whose duties will be split. One will direct their work specifically toward compliance with the law, and others will do the practical part of the job. The work of HR managers is already separated into different spheres, varying from Learning and Development HR managers to ones that are responsible for recruiting. Therefore, splitting duties and having practitioners that specialize in jurisdiction might be a good option for leaders to consider.
References
Kaupins, G. (2021). Effects of employee monitoring notification policies on HR manager opinions. Online Journal of Applied Knowledge Management, 9(1), 62-79.
Kirk, E. (2021). Law and Legalities at Work: HR Practitioners as Quasi-Legal Professionals. Industrial Law Journal, 50(4), 583–609. Web.
McConnell, C. (2019). Human Resource Management in Health Care. Jones & Bartlett Learning.