An HR Executive plays a pivotal role in every organization. Being the leading light for the entire HR workforce for all departments, HR Executives administer and manage various HR functions contributing to the company’s hiring processes, streamlined functioning, and well-being. It is one of the best business jobs with a decent salary package, abundant growth opportunities, and a high level of job satisfaction. 

Human resource executive is not only a highly rewarding job profile but also an important one. For an organization to work efficiently, it is crucial to abridge the gap between the management and the workforce. This is where an HR Executive enters. They handle employee relations, training, payroll, referral programs, and benefits of employees subsequent to the hiring process that includes recruitment, screening, conducting interviews, and placements.  

Professional Requirements to Become an HR Executive

Typically, an organization looks for a graduate candidate to fill the post of HR Executive. A bachelor’s degree in Human Resource Management is always a preferred qualification for this post, although hands-on experience and extensive background in HR contribute immensely towards bagging a job as an HR Executive. With the ability to plan and direct the managerial roles, an HR Executive also needs to be conversant with labor laws in order to be able to handle unanticipated situations within the organization. 

Essential Skills for HR Executive 

Supplementary to the qualification and professional experience, a candidate also needs to be adept with essential skills for successfully handling the role of HR Executive. These hr skills are not only the prerequisite in most organizations but also are critically important in various strategic capacities in this job profile. Having these skills will help you climb the corporate growth and promotion ladder faster. 

Below are a few essential skills for an HR Executive:

Data & Analytics 

HR Executives make use of data and analytics to comprehend the efficiency and performance of the workers and study the relative performance of departments and the organization on the whole.  Interpretation of data also helps in talent acquisition, gauging the performance for appraisals, bonuses, and benefits of the employees. Further, data and metrics contribute to crucial decision-making by the management of an organization.

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Asset Management

Asset management at the HR level involves strategic workforce planning with an insight to anticipate the future needs of resources in relation to present assets and resources. Asset management engages the executive in strategically planning the hiring process based on several parameters such as organization performance, immediate future goals, and targets, expansion plans, cyclic patterns among many more. 

Organizational Structure

The structure of an organization includes different business processes and the HR Executive creates roles and positions to perform those processes and workflows along with creating, managing, and maintaining activity analytics, work logs, and managing the resources to enhance efficiency. Organizational structures can be functional or divisional and an efficient executive also understands the power of decentralization of resources and team building. 

Business Insight

To become a successful HR Executive, an in-depth understanding of the business and the industry is imperative. With business acumen and entrepreneurialism, you can comprehend the competition in the market and contribute to the strategic planning for effective organization pertaining to HR management and talent utilization. 

Digital Literacy

Needless to say, organizations are either already relying on digitalization or are quickly shifting from the traditional setup to a digital one. Being an HR Executive, it is essential to make use of technology along every step as digital platforms provide an expedient database that can be of high value for an organization and an HR Executive must be proficient in using them. Digital literacy also helps HR Executives to maintain and update human resource information systems. 

Personnel Management

Personnel management is one of the key roles of an HR Executive and since it is a skill-based role, a candidate must have the people’s skill and capability to manage, engage and motivate the employees for their benefit as well as the benefit of the organization. 

Roles and Responsibilities of HR Executive

To understand the job profile of an HR Executive, it is important to know the roles and responsibilities they are expected to fulfill. So, here’s a list of the responsibilities of an HR Executive: 

Staffing 

As an HR Executive, you need to manage and carry out the entire recruitment, staffing, and hiring process for all departments. Since the right staff plays a pivotal role in the effective running of an organization, the HR Executive bears the burden of selecting the right candidates for each department and role for efficient working of the organization or a company. From creating job descriptions to job postings, conducting interviews, shortlisting of the candidates, reference confirmations, and all the way to the final selection, tests or sample assignments – hiring is the key role of an HR Executive. 

Performance Management

In order to augment productivity, efficiency, and effectiveness in the organization, HR Executives along with the management carry out performance management using planning, training, and employee performance evaluation. The main purpose of performance management is to monitor the work and efficiency of employees and help them attain their corporate goals with the help of healthy communication, maintaining a productive work environment, and certain activities that boost productivity.

Various steps involved in performance management include reviewing and monitoring the output and offering incentives to deserving employees. One part of the process is also to identify low performers among the workforce and letting them go. 

Learning & development

Learning and development (L&D) is the practice carried out by the HR Executive to empower the employees with better and enhanced skillsets for improved output and competence. You are not only responsible to recognize employees facing aptitude issues during performance management but also provide necessary solutions through shaping a talent management strategy, identifying skill gaps, and bridging those gaps with the help of corporate training and timely guidance. 

Replacement Planning

The responsibility of passing on the leadership to employees is also part of the HR Executive’s role. There are different scenarios when replacement planning is executed such as retirement or passing away of an existing employee, employees leaving the organization, or when a low-performing employee is fired from the company.

Replacement planning or succession planning saves time, resources, and efforts spent in fresh recruitments. Also, it helps in employee retention by providing better opportunities to best-performing employees. Factors including performance metrics, bench strength evaluation, and progress assessment contribute to chances of succession for an employee. 

Employee Compensation and Benefits

An HR Executive along with the senior management oversees the compensation and benefits of the employees, including direct pay and commission based on their performance along with other perks like insurance, pension, child care, holidays, laptop, conveyance, etc. Compensation and benefits play a crucial role in employee retention and keeping them motivated to perform. 

Human Resource Information System (HRIS)

Record keeping of the entire workforce using HRIS helps the company or the organization in employee data integration, continuous availability of data, faster extraction, and processing of employee information, etc. Various personal and professional details of the employees are saved in HRIS such as contact information, demographic information, qualification, job position, compensation & benefits, attendance & work logs, and performance reviews. HR Executives maintaining HRIS, HR metrics, KPIs, and employee analytics while also making data-driven decisions for the welfare of the company based on these metrics. 

The Highest Position in Human Resource 

If you are wondering about the length of the corporate ladder in this field, there is a lot of scope for job promotions and career development. Comparing HR Executive salary and rank to the highest position of Chief HR Officer or VP of human resource, the corporate ladder is totally worth climbing, as consistency, work experience, continuous training, and value-adding courses can help a candidate aim for the highest position in HR before retiring. 

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What is the Average HR Executive Salary in India?

As far as Government jobs in India are concerned, HR Executives not only are in high demand but also are well paid. Since government departments in India follow decentralization and distribution of functions, the role of an HR Executive enjoys delegation of duties and expects a salary between ₹ 0.2 Lakhs to ₹ 20 Lakhs. Although the average government salary of an HR Executive in India is ₹ 9.5 Lakhs per annum, pay scales in the private sector may vary extensively. 

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At an entry-level, one can expect a salary package of ₹ 216,000 per annum including commissions, perks, and benefits but considering HR Executive salaries nationwide, the average comes at around ₹5,00,000 per annum in India. With experience and advancement in career, the annual package high can go up to ₹2,160,000 per year. Certain factors that can affect your salary package are educational qualifications, years of experience, performance reviews, professional association, the company you work for, and location. 

Conclusion

A career in HR is highly rewarding. However, just like any other corporate job, it can get stressful at times. Nonetheless, it comes with various benefits like a lucrative salary package, the scope for career growth, and is highly in demand in all domains. The job demands integrity and fair-mindedness along with skills to persuade, motivate and lead people in your team.

Liverpool Business School & upGrad offers Global MBA program which has multiple specializations like HR, Marketing, Marketing, Finance, Operations, Analytics & more. The program provides 1-on-1 mentorship from industry leaders, 1-week immersion program at University campus, dual credentials (MBA from LBS & PGPM from IMT), network with peers at offline basecamps and more.

So, if you are planning to build a career in HR, focus on the big picture, carry an analytic mind along with a pleasing personality. Focus on working towards the wellbeing and growth of your organization. Brush up your networking skills, leadership and get comfortable with sticky situations to further excel in this field of career. 

Learn MBA Courses from the World’s top Universities. Earn Masters, Executive PGP, or Advanced Certificate Programs to fast-track your career.

Top Courses in Human Resource Management 

Executive Post Graduate Program in Human Resource Management

Designed for Bachelor’s degree holders, this 11-month post-graduate program in Human Resource Management from Loyola Institute of Business Management is a highly beneficial course for HR aspirants. The course offers actionable insights with real-world case studies and hands-on projects for gaining expertise in the HR domain.

Guidance from the industry experts and faculty of LIBA further helps the candidates to enhance their market knowledge and brush up the human resource skills. Based on networking and peer-to-peer learning, the course can be a great value addition to a job aspirant as HR Executive. 

We hope this article offers you a clear picture of what HR Executives do and how much they can earn in India!