HR articles

What Does an HR Manager Do? Responsibilities, Skills, a Day and a Year in the Role

2026-10-19 12:49
SHORT ANSWER

An HR manager runs the people side of a company: HR operations and documents, recruiting and onboarding, pay and benefits, development and retention, and employee relations. Day to day that means hires, exits, transfers and difficult conversations; across the year it means goals, reviews, surveys and the pay budget. A strong HR manager links all of it to the business goals.

Course on this topic: HR Manager Course

I have been in HR for 21 years, at Alfa-Bank, StarLightMedia, Wargaming, Preply, iDeals and PeopleForce, and today I run Pritula Academy.
In one company the HR manager signs contracts and counts vacation days. In another, the HR manager is the right hand of the CEO. Below: what the role really covers, what a day and a year look like, how it differs from an HR generalist, an HRBP and an HR director, how to grow in it, and a free HR audit scorecard to see where your HR function stands today.

What is an HR manager?

An HR manager is the person responsible for the people side of the business. In my course I describe HR in several ways at once, and all of them are true:
  • the right hand of the CEO;
  • the “glue” for all employees;
  • an internal consultant and adviser to managers and employees;
  • someone who understands employee behaviour;
  • someone who increases the efficiency and value of the business.

What does an HR manager do? The five areas of the job

The clearest map of the role is the five functional areas used in the aPHRi framework of HRCI. I use them in my HR audit, and they describe almost everything an HR manager touches:
  1. HR operations. Employment contracts and policies, personal files, onboarding procedure, the HR calendar, the HR system and HR metrics. This is the biggest block of the job.
  2. Recruitment and selection. Job descriptions, candidate assessment, the recruiting funnel, time to hire, counter-offers.
  3. Compensation and benefits. Salary ranges, salary reviews, bonuses, the benefits package, market benchmarks.
  4. Development and retention. Onboarding, development plans, the training budget, performance reviews, turnover and the reasons people leave.
  5. Employee relations, health and safety. One-on-ones, engagement surveys, conflicts, wellbeing and safety, exit interviews.
Add culture, engagement surveys and HR analytics on top. To measure this work, start with the formulas in HR Metrics: 27 Formulas with Examples.
FROM MY PRACTICE · PREPLY

At some point I came to the idea that an HR manager is, in essence, a product manager. I wrote down every product I made: the employee's personal account, for example, is a product, with characteristics, benefits, functions and an audience. And I started to treat everything in HR as a product.

And if these are products, they can be built in an agile way. When I set up onboarding in the past, the team and I thought through which documents and processes were needed, and it took three months: a waterfall approach, from A to Z at once. At Preply we switched to agile. We did not try to build all of onboarding at once; we took what already existed and asked what the next small element should be. We wrote a good presentation for new employees, approved it and started using it right away. Then the next element. That is how we assembled all the processes from small pieces.

Treat every piece of HR as a product: add one working element at a time and put it to use at once.

— Mike Pritula

HR manager vs HR generalist vs HRBP vs HR director

The answer depends on how HR is structured in the company. In my course I show six models, from the smallest company to the largest:
  • Without HR — the CEO, an accountant and an assistant share HR tasks.
  • HR generalist — one person covers recruiting, training, assessment and rewards, records and communications.
  • Three in one — a head of HR with several HR managers who split these areas.
  • Service functions, business partnership, three-legged model — an HR director with specialised heads, HR business partners and a separate operations team.
So the short version:
  • HR manager runs HR processes and programmes — all five areas in a small company, some of them in a larger one.
  • HR generalist covers every area alone, usually as the only HR person.
  • HR business partner is embedded in a business unit and is accountable for that unit's goals through people. I described this role in detail in What Is an HR Business Partner (HRBP)?
  • HR director is responsible for the whole HR function: strategy, structure, the HR team and the budget.
The career ladder in my course: HR assistant → HR specialist → HR manager → HR generalist → head of HR → HR director → CHRO. Titles differ between companies; look at the scope, not the name.

What does an HR manager do every day?

Most of the daily work is five recurring situations: a new hire, a resignation, a transfer, an exit interview and a difficult conversation with an employee. For each one I give my students a checklist that you open at the moment of the task, not “later”. Here is the hiring checklist you can copy:
  1. The employment contract is signed before day one, not backdated.
  2. The personal file is opened with all the required documents and consents.
  3. A welcome email goes out three days before the start: what to bring, when to come, who will meet the person.
  4. Accounts and equipment are ready by 9:00 on day one. Without access the first day is lost.
  5. A 30/60/90-day plan is agreed with the manager. The plan is a document, not a conversation.
  6. A buddy is assigned and briefed: a colleague who answers any question for the first two weeks.
  7. The calendar for the first week is set: a one-on-one with the manager, meeting the team, a product tour.
And the difficult conversation checklist, which saves more HR managers than any policy:
  • Facts, not labels. Not “always late”, but “three times this month, on these dates, by this many minutes”.
  • A goal set before the meeting. What you want: a change in behaviour, a plan, an understanding.
  • Agreements written down during the meeting, and a follow-up email to the employee and the manager within two hours.
  • A review date in the calendar in 30, 60 or 90 days.
Every checklist ends with a box called “What went differently”. Once a quarter collect those notes and update your processes. That is how an HR manager's routine improves instead of repeating itself.

What does an HR manager's year look like?

The year has four rhythms. If the financial year matches the calendar year:
  • Q1 — onboarding and goals. Company goals defended with the CEO and cascaded to teams and individuals, a baseline engagement measurement, a review of last year's pay results and the salary review kick-off, last year's bonuses paid out.
  • Q2 — mid-year. A pulse survey and action plans, salary corrections, mid-year reviews and calibration, check-ins with new hires.
  • Q3 — engagement. A full engagement survey, an exit interview analysis for the half-year, market pay benchmarks, the kick-off of next year's compensation budget.
  • Q4 — year-end. The compensation budget defended with the CFO, year-end performance reviews and calibration, year-end bonuses, planning for the new year.
Across all four quarters the work runs in five columns: onboarding, performance, engagement, compensation and benefits, and operations. Three mistakes I see in HR calendars:
  1. Writing “onboarding” in a cell instead of a concrete action such as “30/60/90 check-ins for Q4 hires”.
  2. Planning only Q1. Q4 is the busiest part of the HR year, and it is planned in January.
  3. Not coming back to it. A calendar opened once a year is a declaration, not a calendar. Check it at least monthly.

Where should a new HR manager start? With an HR audit

When you join a company, or take over HR in your current one, do not start with the most urgent request. Start with a picture of the whole function. Rate each of the five areas, see where the gaps are biggest, and weigh them by how much of HR work the area takes. HR operations carries the most weight, then recruitment, employee relations, compensation and benefits, and development.
FROM MY PRACTICE

When is the best time to run an audit? It is great to do it when you start working at a company. I created the first version of this audit in 2017 or 2018. Over time I kept refining and improving it.

Since then many people have used it, and the most positive feedback came from people who had just started at a company. Thanks to the audit they could, first, understand what was going on and, second, plan their actions. And they got good feedback from their management: my students or acquaintances ran our audit, prepared a report, and management liked it very much.

An HR audit is most valuable at the start: it shows what is going on and turns into a plan your management can see.

— Mike Pritula
FREE TOOL

HR audit scorecard

Rate 25 statements about your company: 0 — this does not exist, 1 — something exists but does not work as a system, 2 — set up, regular and measured. You get a score for each area, the overall level of your HR function and the three priorities to take to your CEO. The example below is a fictional company; replace it with your own answers.

The full version — the audit spreadsheet, an HR strategy one-pager, an annual HR calendar and daily HR checklists — is in the HR Manager Course.

A 2 needs evidence: a document, a report, a date. Take the top three priorities to your CEO as a plan, not a complaint.

How to turn the audit into an HR strategy

An HR strategy is an action plan to reach the company's long-term goals through people. In my course it is built in ten steps; here is the core you can copy:
  1. Write down the company's vision, mission and values, and the HR mission: what gap does HR close?
  2. List three to five business goals and, for each, how HR can support it and which HR metric will track it. No business strategy? Ask the executives what a great result of this year would be.
  3. Enter the audit results and set a target for next year.
  4. Analyse the environment: PESTEL outside, SWOT turned into a TOWS matrix to choose the strategy.
  5. Set current and target values for key metrics — engagement, eNPS, turnover, time to fill — with an action for each.

What skills does an HR manager need, and how do you grow?

HR expertise is the foundation, but it is not what moves you up. What separates a strong HR manager is a set of habits from my course:
  • understands the company's strategic goals and how it plans to reach them;
  • understands the business model — how the company makes money;
  • sees the big picture and thinks in long-term goals;
  • looks for business problems and their impact on the HR strategy;
  • makes decisions on facts;
  • can justify any HR decision from a business perspective;
  • always considers the ethical side.
Dave Ulrich's four roles of HR show where this growth leads. The administrative expert builds effective processes and manages HR costs. The employee champion builds engagement and makes sure people are treated fairly. These two are the present. The change agent and the strategic partner, who link HR goals to business goals and help leaders make strategic decisions, are the future of the role. The more of your time goes to the last two, the closer you are to the HR director's chair.
FROM MY PRACTICE · NATIONAL TV CHANNEL

Most often the HR director chooses the strategic partner role. But it does not always work out that way: operations and routine pull you into the other roles. When I worked at a TV channel, we had many employees, many goals, tasks and ambitions, and few resources. I could not afford to hire HR business partners or strong heads of HR areas, so I was deeply involved in operations. And it was rewarding: when situations came up, I could step into the employee champion role.

Even an HR director spends time in operations. The skill is to combine the roles without getting stuck in one.

— Mike Pritula

Common mistakes of HR managers

  • Living only in operations. Documents and vacation days matter, but if that is all you do, the business sees an administrator, not a partner.
  • Starting with requests instead of an audit. Without a picture of all five areas you fix the loudest problem, not the most important one.
  • Building everything at once. A three-month waterfall project loses to one working element launched this week.
  • Keeping agreements verbal. Contracts, resignations, transfers and difficult conversations must be on paper or in email.
  • Planning the year without the business calendar. Reviews, bonuses and budget must follow the company's financial year.
One question to ask yourself this week: if your CEO asked which three HR problems cost the business the most right now, could you answer with numbers?
I teach the whole role — HR structures and strategy, HR careers, recruiting, onboarding, training, motivation, pay and benefits, performance reviews, surveys, one-on-ones, dismissals and HR automation — in the HR Manager Course.
FAQ

Frequently asked questions

What does an HR manager do?

An HR manager runs HR operations and documents, recruiting and onboarding, compensation and benefits, development and retention, and employee relations, and links this work to the company's business goals.

What is the difference between an HR manager and an HR generalist?

An HR generalist is one person who covers all HR areas, often as the only HR in the company. An HR manager can be that person, or one of several managers who split the HR areas under a head of HR.

What is the difference between an HR manager and an HR director?

An HR manager runs HR processes and people programmes. An HR director is responsible for the whole HR function: its strategy, structure, team and budget, and decides what kind of HR the company needs.

What skills does an HR manager need?

HR expertise in the five areas of the role, an understanding of how the company makes money, the habit of making decisions on facts and metrics, and the ability to justify any HR decision from a business perspective.

How do you become an HR manager?

Most people come through an HR assistant or HR specialist role, often in recruiting. To move up, learn all five areas of HR work, run at least one full HR year, and learn to tie your work to business goals.