Imagine the foundation of a thriving company—where every person is supported, engaged, and aligned with the organization’s goals. At the heart lies core HR, the essential processes and data that keep everything running smoothly. Effective core HR management optimizes organizational efficiency and creates a positive, thriving company culture.
This article reviews core HR functions, types of core HR data, and how core HR software streamlines an HR team’s workflow.
What is core HR?
Core HR is an umbrella term used to refer to three distinct things:
- The primary functions of a human resources department
- Basic HR data captured about team members
- The HR software used to enable the first two
Why is core HR important?
An automated and streamlined core HR system improves internal communication, privacy and security, and a team’s ability to access quality data for actionable insights. With clear HR strategies, HR professionals manage team members’ journeys effectively to help improve engagement, retention, and productivity.
Core HR functions and processes
Human resources teams perform several core functions across the employee lifecycle. These tasks help manage the employee experience, ensure compliance, and support organizational growth.
Recruitment and hiring
With the right approach to recruitment and hiring, HR teams can find candidates with the right skill and culture fit. An effective hiring process helps HR teams and hiring managers determine how well applicants will align with the company’s goals and work environment.
This process includes:
- Preparation: HR teams gather information from hiring managers to write a job description for the open position. A clear, concise job description attracts relevant candidates to apply for the role and provides a reference point for evaluating a new joiner’s performance.
- Candidate sourcing: HR teams find candidates through job boards, social media, employee referrals, and internal recruiting. In-house recruitment speeds up onboarding processes and provides career progression opportunities for your people.
- Resume screening: The next step is to screen and shortlist applicants. Determine screening criteria based on the job requirements and role qualifications. Applicant tracking systems (ATS) can help identify candidates with the required skills and experience.
- Interviews: HR teams and hiring managers use interviews to get a feel for each of the candidates and their fit for the company. HR facilitates this process by scheduling interviews, consolidating insights, and providing interview feedback to candidates at the end of the process.
- Hiring: After reference checks, background checks, and internal discussions, it’s time to make the final hiring decision. This involves finalizing the employment terms, discussing salary and benefits, and presenting an exciting job offer to the candidate.
If the candidate accepts, the onboarding process begins.
Onboarding and training
HR handles the onboarding process, which can start as soon as a hiring manager makes an offer to a candidate. An effective onboarding process can help organizations retain top talent, enhance engagement, and promote alignment with the company culture. Many HR teams use onboarding software to automate and manage the tasks of welcoming new joiners and ensuring a smooth transition.
The onboarding process typically includes:
- Preparing onboarding materials like tax forms, company handbooks, and a welcome letter for the joiner
- Assigning existing team members specific onboarding or training responsibilities
- Training the joiner on company systems and software
- Introducing the new person to their team and overall company culture
- Creating opportunities for social interaction with the team to build relationships
- Scheduling regular check-ins to track the onboarding progress and discuss questions or concerns
<<Streamline your onboarding process with these essential onboarding checklists.>>
Time and attendance management
Transparent time-tracking and attendance policies can reduce stress for your people and nurture a positive and respectful work environment. Make it easy for team members to request paid time off (PTO), log work hours, and track absence requests.
Automated time-tracking tools and employee self-service options can alleviate the administrative burden on HR, saving time for strategic initiatives.
Performance management
Performance management involves tracking your people’s work performance and creating development opportunities. A strong performance management strategy helps organizations identify high-performing team members, streamline succession planning, and drive productivity.
HR teams can facilitate performance management efforts by scheduling reviews, creating development plans, and encouraging a culture of continuous learning. Help your people improve their performance by providing access to mentorship programs, HR courses and certifications, and leadership training.
<<Improve your review process with performance management review templates.>>
Learning and development
HR teams implement learning and development (L&D) initiatives to update their people’s competencies and improve organizational performance. Team members can learn new skill sets and upgrade their existing knowledge, helping them advance their careers, earn pay raises, and take on new challenges.
To facilitate learning and development, HR teams can:
- Perform skills gap analysis by sending out surveys, conducting performance reviews, researching industry-standard skills, and offering assessments
- Offer a variety of programs to accommodate different learning styles
- Implement a learning management system (LMS) to optimize learning processes
- Assess and measure the improvement in employee performance using L&D metrics
- Stick to repeatable and effective learning practices to lead to consistent results and a culture of lifelong learning
Team member engagement
Strong employee engagement is an essential part of any successful organization. Engaged people can lead to:
- Increased productivity
- Stronger performance reviews
- Greater presenteeism
- Higher-quality work
- Better work relationships
Several factors impact team member engagement, including your company culture, career growth and learning opportunities, and work-life balance. With so many variables, measure and analyze your engagement metrics from the beginning. Gather insights with employee lifecycle feedback tools, frequent surveys, and performance reviews, and then make recommendations to improve your engagement strategy.
Compensation and benefits
Compensation management helps companies attract and retain talent and maintain strong engagement. HR teams work with company leadership, managers, and benefits specialists to create comprehensive compensation strategies that offer competitive compensation packages to new joiners.
In addition to salaries, compensation packages can include benefits, bonuses, pensions, equity, and professional or lifestyle benefits.
Workforce and succession planning
Workforce planning refers to the process of attracting candidates and hiring people with appropriate levels of knowledge, skills, and experience. HR teams work with their organization’s leadership to avoid under or overstaffing, keep pace with economic and technological trends, and maintain a healthy and functioning staff and successful organization.
Connected to workforce planning, HR uses succession planning to prepare internal people for future roles. Proper succession planning supports operational continuity and team morale throughout transitions. Strong succession planning efforts prevent workforce disruptions due to role changes or sudden vacancies.
HR compliance
HR compliance helps organizations adhere to labor laws, regulations, and industry standards. Maintaining compliance is critical for:
- Avoiding legal penalties
- Enhancing company reputation
- Protecting your people’s rights
- Improving operational efficiency by limiting legal errors and standardizing HR processes
A proactive HR team helps avoid legal mishaps and creates a safe and positive workplace culture.
<<Stay up-to-date with this complete HR compliance checklist.>>
Analytics and reporting
HR analytics involves collecting and interpreting HR data, including:
- Time-to-hire
- Time-to-fill
- Offer acceptance rate
- Revenue per person
- Absenteeism rates
- Training expense per person
- Voluntary turnover rate
- Human capital risk
HR teams compile a report summarizing their findings for management and stakeholders. They can use this analysis to inform important business decisions, from altering compensation strategies to implementing changes to reduce costs and increase profits.
What is core HR data?
One of the most critical functions of a core HR platform is to store important information. HR professionals use HR data to complete tasks, including talent management, workforce planning, learning management, and more.
“Core HR” data includes:
- Individual team member information such as job title, job description, birth date, social security number, and more
- Payroll information such as tax withholding and salary
- Enrollment data for benefits
- Documentation for training
- Sick days and vacation days
- Team demographics
- Compliance information
- Work hours and absences
This core HR information provides teams with essential data to manage teams effectively, determine a company’s areas for growth, improve company culture, and much more.
How to manage core HR data
Core HR data can provide essential insights into an organization’s people, processes, and potential. Teams can analyze this data to measure specific HR metrics, like time to hire or growth rate, to determine the effectiveness of HR initiatives and company processes.
Maintaining HR data quality helps HR leaders and executives make informed decisions and ensures accurate reporting. Regular data audits and validation processes keep information updated and reliable.
Data security is equally critical to protect sensitive employee information and maintain compliance with privacy regulations. To protect core HR data, teams store all data and analytics in a secure, centralized location and implement data encryption, access controls, and audit trails.
HR teams can use core HR software to help manage, analyze, and protect their people data.
What is core HR software?
HR leaders and teams can use core HR software to automate their work and streamline essential administrative tasks. The term “core HR software” covers a range of platforms, like:
- Human resource information systems (HRIS) store an HR department’s data, including information about their people’s pay, benefits, and performance.
- Human resources management systems (HRMS) enhance the functions of an HRIS by incorporating advanced management and analytics capabilities.
- Human capital management software, or HCM software, provide tools for higher-level HR strategies, including succession planning, compensation management, and industry benchmarking.
<<Learn more about HRIS vs HRMS vs HCM.>>
Core HR software functions
Although every core HR software is different, some functions the platforms typically include are:
- People data storage
- Employee directory and organization chart
- Employee self-service for updating details, requesting time off, enrolling in benefits, etc.
- Document sending and signing
- Storage of HR documents such as contracts, handbooks, and policies
- Dashboards for visualizing data
Specialized HR software can also integrate with or enhance these core functions, offering more targeted solutions for specific HR needs.
- Employee management software handles a variety of administrative tasks like onboarding, payroll, performance review, and team recognition
- Applicant tracking systems simplify recruitment by helping HR teams source and screen candidates, manage applications, schedule interviews, and more
- Workforce planning software tools help HR teams create hiring plans and timelines, streamline the recruitment and hiring process, and build headcount plans for acquisition, new sites, or a reorganization
- Employee onboarding software facilitates and streamlines integrating new hires into an organization, automating tasks like document distribution and setting up IT tasks to set up new joiners with equipment and tech access
- Compensation management software streamlines compensation strategies and supports compliance
- Payroll automation platforms streamline tasks like calculating compensation, generating reports, and ensuring team members receive their salaries
- Employee recognition software helps teams nurture a supportive and encouraging culture and boost retention
- Learning management systems support learning and development by automating training, tracking learning progress, and generating reports
Advantages of core HR software
Core HR software offers organizations many benefits, including:
- Serving as a centralized location for storing and viewing essential data related to people, payroll, enrollment, compliance, and more
- Streamlining and automating core HR processes
- Saving time with digitized paperwork
- Improving internal communication
- Increasing productivity with self-service
- Maintaining the organization of important documents and information
- Offering privacy and security
- Gathering valuable insights through data analytics
HR teams often have a lot on their plate as they manage team member lifecycles, regular training, company compliance, and much more. HR software automates where possible to help HR professionals save time and optimize their processes.
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What should core HR software include?
If you’re looking to invest in core HR software, look for a solution with:
- An easy-to-use, user-friendly interface
- Implementation support
- Helpful, available customer service
- High security standards
- The ability to scale as your company grows
- Features to streamline all the core HR functions you need, such as people or payroll data, compliance, and analytics
Why core HR should be incorporated into modern HR strategy
As HR departments evolve and take on a more strategic role in the modern organization, it becomes increasingly important to streamline and automate the more basic, repetitive HR tasks and processes to free up HR professionals’ time and bandwidth.
Core HR software is essential for keeping up with core HR tasks such as payroll and compliance as efficiently and effectively as possible. With tools for easy automation, you can lessen your team’s administrative burden and improve productivity.
