11 Common HRM Objectives For Human Resources Professionals

Updated 31 July 2023

Human resource management (HRM) is the process of managing an organisation's policies and ensuring employees have a positive experience in the workplace. Professionals in this field perform a variety of tasks, including resolving conflicts, organising documents and onboarding employees, to support the organisation's goals. If you are interested in a career in human resources, learning key objectives for HRM teams can help you decide whether this career path fits your skills and interests.

In this article, we describe the four main types of HRM objectives and share 11 examples of these objectives.

4 Types Of HRM Objectives

HRM objectives typically fall into one of four categories:

1. Organisational

Organisational objectives focus on improving the efficiency of the company. In the HRM department, these objectives might concern data compliance, interdepartmental communication or the hiring process. By achieving these objectives, the HRM team can ensure that other departments in the company can operate efficiently, which can increase revenue. For example, if the HRM team builds a strong internal communications process, the sales, operations and customer services teams might be able to collaborate more effectively, boosting customer satisfaction.

2. Personal

Personal objectives focus on the workplace experiences of individual employees. They might include improving professional development opportunities and boosting retention for high-performing individuals. By helping each employee reach their personal goals, the HRM team can increase the average employee's internal motivation to succeed. They can also increase the average employee tenure, allowing the company to benefit from having more experienced employees.

3. Functional

Functional objectives focus on the tasks assigned to the HR department, like maintaining benefits information or creating onboarding accounts. By meeting these objectives, HRM teams ensure that the department accomplishes the tasks that the organisation's leadership team expects from them. Some of these objectives also fit into other categories. For example, one of the HR team's functional goals might be to lead the review process for current employees. This objective also fits into the personal objective category because it helps individual employees optimise their work environment.

4. Social

Achieving social objectives help the HRM team create a positive work environment that respects the laws and regulations of the organisation's society. These objectives might include things like data compliance, which ensures that the company's use of employee information follows national laws and industry regulations. Often, these objectives also align with the company's mission statement or core values, like innovation and employee support. HRM professionals may also focus on building positive relationships within teams through effective conflict resolution and communication.

11 HRM Objectives

Here are 11 objectives that professionals in human resource management might share:

1. Assisting in the hiring process

In many organisations, the hiring manager and recruiters are a part of the HRM team. If the organisation has its own hiring department, these employees often work closely with HRM professionals to ensure a smooth recruitment and hiring process. HRM professionals can help the hiring team by collecting personal information from job candidates and creating an account for them in the organisation's database. They may also coordinate with departmental leaders and schedule interviews.

2. Onboarding new employees

The onboarding process is when a new employee submits their documentation and becomes a member of the organisation's staff. Typically, the HRM department leads this process, since they have access to the company database. The steps in the onboarding process are different for each organisation, but they might include filling out paperwork, providing several forms of identification and enrolling in benefits programmes. HRM professionals might also train the new employees to use the organisation's intranet, wiki or other technological platform.

3. Resolving conflicts

HRM professionals often resolve conflicts between employees or between managers. Many organisations have a specific conflict resolution and mediation process that the HRM team creates, which provides steps for employees who come into conflict with each other. A manager might first attempt to mediate disagreements on their team before asking an HRM professional to help resolve the conflict. The goal of conflict resolution in HRM is to find a compromise that satisfies both parties.

4. Facilitating communication

HRM teams often send messages with useful information from the organisation's leadership team to all employees. Typically, they use email to convey this information, but they may also post fliers and other documents in central locations in a company's office. For example, they may post a calendar with the organisation's holidays and other key dates in the main office's break room. As the central hub of information, the HRM team can answer questions from employees about the messages they receive and coordinate with the leadership team for clarification if needed.

5. Promoting professional development

Another objective of many HRM teams is the administration of professional development programmes for the organisation's staff. These programmes might focus on industry knowledge or key soft skills, like active listening and conflict resolution. By helping employees develop their skills, the HRM team can increase workplace satisfaction and boost productivity. For some programmes, the HRM team might lead discussions and present information on their own, but for others, they may hire external facilitators.

6. Increasing employee retention

Organisations with high employee retention may see increased productivity and workplace satisfaction, since it often means that employees find their work rewarding. Keeping employees at the company for longer periods of time can also increase the number of qualified individuals for internal promotions. The HRM team might employ a variety of techniques to encourage employees to stay with the company, including advocating for pay raises or improved working conditions, asking for employee feedback on benefits and policies and launching professional development programmes.

7. Ensuring data compliance

During the hiring and onboarding processes, HRM professionals might collect a wide range of information from new employees, including their address, government ID number, past employment details and security clearance. As they may also manage employee health care and retirement programmes, they may have access to additional information about employees' financial status and family life. Because some of this information may be sensitive, these professionals follow strict data compliance regulations to keep employee data private. Some of these regulations might come from the government, while others may be standard for their industry or company.

8. Providing self-service options

Self-service HR platforms allow employees to access their HR information and request changes. They might use these applications to add beneficiaries to their life insurance policies, approve new benefits, request time off or review their latest performance review documents. Many companies store employee contracts on these platforms so managers and employees can refer to them during meetings. Using these programs can save an HRM employee valuable time by empowering employees to find the answers to their questions before asking the HRM team for assistance.

9. Soliciting feedback from employees

HRM professionals might collect feedback from the organisation's employees about the organisation's policies and procedures to identify areas for improvement. Assessing the organisation's current programmes can help them implement new programmes that increase employee satisfaction and retention. For example, an HRM team might distribute a survey to employees about the organisation's current professional development seminars. If the majority of the respondents say that they are interested in acquiring a certain skill, the HRM team might add a seminar focusing on that skill to the next month's professional development programme.

10. Optimising employee benefits

HRM teams administer employee benefits, which may include health insurance, retirement savings, childcare stipends and paid time off, depending on the company and the employee level. They may also evaluate the external vendors supplying these services to ensure that the services fit the needs of the employees in the organisation. Often, HRM teams perform yearly audits of the different benefits services that they administer. They may also ask for employee feedback on the different services to find out which programmes are most beneficial.

11. Leading the review process

Many organisations have performance reviews for employees every six or 12 months. These meetings allow managers to give employees feedback and can lead to promotions and raises for the employees who have exceeded expectations in the past review period. Often, the HRM team directs the review process. HRM employees might attend review sessions with employees and managers, taking notes on discussion points and any improvement plans the manager plans to enact. They may also get copies of the review documentation and add them to the employee's file.