Maryam Al-Bahar- Fall 08’

Q: Using your work experience, list and explain some of the work tasks an HR
department is responsible for.

A: According to Gary Dessler, Human Resource Management (HRM), is “the policies

and practices involved in carrying out the “people” or human resource aspect of a
management position, including recruiting, screening, training, rewarding, and
appraising.”

How does this relate to my experience in a bank in Kuwait during my Human

Resources (HR) internship?

Well… As Dessler mentions, some HR activities include:

• Conducting job analyses (determining the nature of each

employee’s job): There was an employee or two just set to
determine the nature of each employee’s job. The list was then
checked with HR managers to make sure that the job analyses of
each employee whether it be a Branch Manager (BM) or a
Relationship Officer (RO) is correct. Based on the job analyses,
each employee’s performance is compared.

• Planning labor needs and recruiting job candidates: Whether be

it employee transfer, new trainees, new employees, HR provides
BM with the right amount of employees it needs. The HR
department is also responsible for reading prospect job candidates’
résumés, contacting and recruiting the best one.

• Selecting job candidates

• Orienting and training new employees: the bank has a whole

department solely specialized in training new employees plus
training older ones to receive more specialized certificates in order
for employees to be promoted.

• Managing wages and salaries (compensating employees): In

association with the payroll department of the bank, the HR
department provides a guide to how much each position in the
company receives as salary. The company also provides
compensation like travel expenses, when an employee is
transferred to a branch the is far away from where they live.

• Providing incentives and benefits: The HR department is

responsible to creating and attracting employees with incentives
and benefits that would want them to work harder, get more
certificates to get promoted and get more.

• Appraising performance: The HR department ofcourse appraises

performance as well as providing a job analyses.
 Maryam Al-Bahar- Fall 08’

• Communicating (interviewing, counseling, disciplining): All

interviews, warning and discipline letters are written by the HR
department. The department also provides councelling to every
employee issues and concerns that is work related.

• Training and developing managers: This is attained by providing

constant training courses, creating job analyses and having weekly
meeting of all Area Managers, the HR manger and HR director, to
discuss employees performance, as well as branch and company’s
goal attainment.

• Building employee commitment: by providing trust and support.