Human resource is an integral part of the organisation based on the role that it plays. It is mandated to undertake various functions that include training and development, recruitment and selection, employee relations, compliance with employment regulations, workplace safety and management of performance appraisal among others. Human resource helps to compliment other business functions bestowed upon the organisation.  This includes functions such as research and development, logistics/distribution, production and quality, marketing, sales, purchasing, IT among others. The aspect is enabled by the relationship that exists between human resource activities and these other business activities. An example of a relationship is the fact that human resource facilitates recruitment of employees with appropriate experience and skills. It is the department tasked with this function hence other departments depend on its efficiency.  When the appropriate employees are recruited other business functions such as research and development, logistics among others move forward in the best way possible. This is because the people deployed to execute these functions are duly qualified. What this means is that if the human resource department were to employ unqualified individuals, other business activities would be paralyzed due to lack of efficiency.

Organisations develop workforce planning with various objectives in mind. The major purposes of a workforce plan include helping in making informed staffing decisions that are in line with operational and strategic goals, ensuring that the workforce has the ability to deliver both in the long-run and short-run and enabling the organisation develop and maintain its workforce. All these objectives are more inclined towards the employees. They aim at ensuring that the employees are on the same page with what ought to be attained by the organisation in general. This necessitates the need for a workforce planning process. Its major objective is to identify and address the gaps that exist between the current and future human resource needs. These gaps are identified based on the strategy that the organisation has adopted. It is more of a procedural process whereby a certain sequence of events has to follow each other. It begins with the analysis of the environment, assessment of employees’ current and future profiles, identification of the gaps and then strategies to be used while closing these gaps.

Employment laws have kept many organisations on their toes on various aspects. The laws tend to affect the human resource and other business policies in one way or another. An example is the implementation of the National Minimum Wage Act 1998. This Act requires that an employee receiving the least amount of money should not go below a certain prescribed threshold. This affects the organisation in that it cannot reduce its cost by way of reducing employees’ wages. This is regardless of whether the organisation is operating at a loss and faces the risk of being dissolved. The only thing that the organisation can do is motivate the employees to maximize their efficiency or find other areas to exercise the cost reduction prospects. Another example is the equality Act 2010. This Act accords the organisation various responsibilities and liabilities. The organization is expected to show aspects of equality in terms of age, gender, race, religion, sex among others. This means that the organisation might fail to employ someone who is more qualified at the expense of another that is not of equal capacity so as to maintain the prescribed outlook.

Employment contracts indicate the agreement between employees and the employer by stipulating various terms and conditions. Organisations are at discretion to offer different types of employment contracts. It is all upon them to find one that works for them or suits the nature of activities being undertaken. The types of contracts that exist include full-time, fixed-term, part-time, zero-hour, agency-staff and contractors among others. There are organisations that utilize different types of contracts at the same time. This has positive implications to the organisations that experience peak and recession periods since they will experience favourable client retention with full-time contracts and at the same time minimize the work load with part-time employees during the peak season. Giving all the employees part-time contracts would lead to loss of the best employees due to job security issues. Incorporating zero-hour contracts on employees that are underperforming would help improve efficiency since they are paid based on the ‘piece work’. Hiring contractors on a full-time basis would be very expensive for any organisation. Therefore, having specific contracts that govern them helps the organisation save a significant amount of funds.

Individuals indulging in different types of contracts also encounter various implications. An employee that indulges in both full-time and part-time contracts stands the chance of increasing his/her income substantially. This is because they will work full-time for the designated hours and then work on the part-time contract that is most probably secured in another organisation. In addition, the full-time contract accords him/her a range of employment benefits, job security and access to greater personal development opportunities. The part-time contract on the other hand will ensure flexibility and control of the work life. If the employee incorporates a contractor contract, it means that he/she has the ability to command a higher pay due to the technical nature of the work being undertaken.