Focus on legal and human resources: a special bond with extra value

There is a tie bond between the human resources department and the legal function. The first is one of the areas of the organisation in which legal matters have a significant impact — labour compliance, employee administration, health and safety — are areas with an eminently legal component.

Because of this tie bond between human resources and legal, lawyers arise as a strong candidate to the role of human resources manager, especially because of their knowledge of law, particularly of employment law, and this could contribute to solve in a better way the daily issues than can come up in the personnel administration.

The extra value that a lawyer can bring to the human resources department lies in their knowledge and profile. Their consistent training makes them seek compliance of every regulation that may apply to their organisation. For that matter, a lawyer can bring to the role of the human resources manager a legal approach that will necessarily improve the human resources department’s operations.

However, there must be a shift in the mindset of a lawyer who decides to take the chance to lead a human resources department, because the manager of this department has a different role than the traditionally expected for a lawyer. There will be no dispute resolutions, on the contrary, lawyers must prevent the occurrence of conflict, using their knowledge of the law as a tool to bring added value to the role and to the organisation ensuring compliance with labour, and regulatory and ethical standards. In this way the human resources function limits the risks associated with employee hiring, limiting exposure of the organisation to unnecessary risks.

The lawyer, as a human resources manager, will have the duty to stimulating a compliance culture, and to act as a role model to the organisation, showing the employees the behaviours that the are expected from them and conveying clear transparent and fair rules to all.

Being the human resources manager of G4S Chile, I have been working on establishing and enforcing a labour compliance culture. We have developed a special department dedicated to this matter; it is our goal to improve the culture of our company, positioning the human resources department at the centre of the business, so that our company can face the authorities and our clients adopting a different perspective.