Two kinds of people usually search for this. Someone thinking about a career in HR wants to know what the job actually involves and what are day to day responsibilities. And for someone who has just hired an HR person for the first time they want to know what to expect, what to hand over, and what their HR should be doing every month.
We will try to answer both the questions in this article. By the end, you’ll have a clear understanding of what are the job and responsibilities of an HR.
What HR Actually Does The Simple Version
HR manages everything related to people in a company. Not just hiring that’s a small part of it. An HR person’s actual job covers the full journey of an employee: from the day they join to the day they leave, and everything that needs to happen in between.
In a small company, one HR person handles all of it. In a larger company, it gets split into one person for hiring, one for payroll, one for policy. But the responsibilities stay the same regardless of who’s doing them.
Core HR Responsibilities What the Job Involves
- Hiring and Onboarding
Finding the right people is where most people think HR’s job starts and ends. In reality, hiring is one part and onboarding is often where more things go wrong.
On the hiring side, HR writes the job description, posts it on job portals, screens applications, coordinates interviews, and sends out offer letters. Getting an offer letter right matters it’s a legally binding document once signed. The salary structure, notice period, probation terms, and joining date all need to be clear.
Onboarding is everything that follows. Collecting KYC documents (Aadhaar, PAN, bank details), completing PF and ESI registration within the first week, setting up the employee in payroll, issuing the appointment letter on day one. These aren’t optional the Labour Code now mandates a written appointment letter for every employee. Miss the PF registration and the first month’s contribution is already late.
- Payroll and Statutory Compliance
This is the most time-sensitive part of the HR job. Salaries have to go out on time, PF has to be deposited by the 15th, TDS by the 7th, ESI by the 15th. Miss these and the penalties start immediately.
HR manages the full payroll cycle verifying attendance and leave records, calculating gross salary, deducting PF (12% of basic), ESI (0.75% of gross if applicable), Professional Tax, and TDS. Then generating payslips for every employee, running bank transfers, and filing all the statutory returns Form 138 quarterly, Form 130 annually. The payroll compliance guide covers all these deadlines in detail.
For someone starting out in HR: payroll will take up a significant portion of your time every month. Understanding PF, ESI, TDS, and Professional Tax is not optional these are legal requirements and errors have real consequences.
- Attendance and Leave Management
Tracking who worked, how many days, which leaves were approved, and what becomes loss of pay this feeds directly into payroll. If attendance isn’t tracked properly, salaries can’t be calculated correctly.
HR sets up the attendance system, maintains leave balances, processes leave approvals, and ensures LOP deductions are applied when balance runs out. For companies with field staff or remote employees, this gets more complex which is why tools like GPS-verified attendance have become common. When attendance is tracked properly throughout the month, payroll day stops being a last-minute reconciliation exercise.
- Employee Records and Documentation
Every employee has paperwork, an offer letter, appointment letter, PF form, increment letters, appraisal records. HR keeps all of it. Not just digitally but in a way that’s accessible if a labour inspector asks for a wage register, or if an employee needs their experience letter three years after they’ve left.
This is also where data protection comes in. Since the DPDP Act 2023, employee personal data Aadhaar, PAN, bank details, family information needs to be collected with explicit consent, stored securely, and not shared without reason. HR owns this obligation.
- Labour Law Compliance
India’s labour laws are layered central laws, state-specific Shops Acts, industry-specific rules. HR stays on top of all of it:
- Minimum wage varies by state, skill level, and industry. Changes roughly twice a year. See the state-wise minimum wage table.
- PF and ESI thresholds mandatory from 20 and 10 employees respectively in most states
- Shops and Establishments Act registration and annual returns
- POSH Act mandatory ICC for companies with 10+ employees, annual filing required
- Maintaining statutory registers muster rolls, wage registers, Form V payslips
For employers: if your HR isn’t maintaining these, the liability sits with the company not just with HR. A labour inspector can visit any establishment. Having records in order is not optional.
- Performance Management
Setting goals, running appraisal cycles, and helping managers give feedback that actually means something. In most Indian companies, this happens once or twice a year and HR coordinates the process, ensures consistency, and handles the paperwork that follows (increment letters, promotion documentation, revised salary structures).
In smaller companies, performance management is often informal. That’s fine when the team is small and everyone knows each other. As the company grows past 30–40 people, the absence of a structured process starts showing up in retention problems.
- Employee Relations and Grievances
When something goes wrong between a manager and an employee, or between two colleagues, HR is who both sides come to. Handling this well requires being neutral hearing both sides, referring to policy, and finding a resolution that’s fair.
Disciplinary processes also fall here. If an employee needs to be given a warning, put on a performance improvement plan, or let go HR manages the process and makes sure it’s documented correctly. A termination without proper documentation is an easy target for a wrongful dismissal claim.
- Exits and Full and Final Settlement
When someone leaves voluntarily or otherwise HR manages the exit. Collecting company assets, running the no-dues process, calculating full and final settlement (last salary, earned leave encashment, gratuity if applicable), and issuing the relieving letter and experience certificate.
Under the new Labour Code, F&F must be settled within two working days of the last working day. The relieving letter matters employees need it for background verification at their next company. Holding it without reason is not a legally defensible position.
HR Roles What’s the Difference Between Them
As companies grow, HR splits into specialised roles. Here’s a quick breakdown:
| HR Role | Common in | What They Focus On |
|---|---|---|
| HR Generalist | Small and mid-size companies | Everything hiring, payroll, compliance, employee issues |
| HR Operations | 20+ employee companies | Payroll, attendance, PF/ESI, statutory filings, records |
| HR Business Partner (HRBP) | Large companies | Works with specific departments, advises managers |
| Recruiter / Talent Acquisition | Any hiring-heavy company | Only focuses on finding and hiring people |
| HR Manager | Most mid-large companies | Oversees the HR team, owns policy and compliance |
Most companies under 50 employees have an HR Generalist or HR Manager doing all of the above. Specialisation comes later, as headcount grows.
Skills You Actually Need in an HR Role
The job postings say ‘excellent communication skills’ and ‘team player.’ What actually matters day to day:
- Attention to detail. One wrong digit in a PF calculation, one missed deadline on a TDS deposit, one salary structure that doesn’t meet the 50% basic rule all of these create real problems.
- Knowing the laws that apply to your company. Not memorising the entire Labour Code, but knowing which laws apply, what the thresholds are, and where to check when something changes.
- Keeping calm under pressure. Employees asking about salaries on the 30th, a manager escalating a grievance, and a PF filing due on the 15th all at the same time. HR regularly handles multiple urgent things simultaneously.
- Being consistent. Same rules applied the same way to everyone. When HR is inconsistent one employee gets a policy exception another doesn’t trust breaks down quickly.
If you’re an employer figuring out what your HR should be doing this list is a reasonable baseline. If they’re handling payroll, compliance, and people issues well, the foundational things are covered. If you want to understand how the payroll side of HR works in detail: How to Calculate Payroll in India. For the leave policies HR manages: All Types of Leaves in India. And for companies at the stage of hiring their first HR person alongside setting up payroll: Waggex brings attendance, leave, and payroll into one system so HR spends less time reconciling data every month and more time on the parts of the job that actually require a person.