by law, do you have to have an HR department in the same building that you work in? My job has decided we didnt need HR in my building. We have 6 other branches across the US, and currently our HR department representative is now 7 hours away from us. I thought HR was created "for the employee" when we need them. WHat good is it for me, to be 7 hours away???

"By Law" a company need not have an HR Dept.

No, there is no law requiring that there be an HR department in every building, or even every state, or at all.

I thought HR was created "for the employee" when we need them.

You are misinformed. HR was not created "for the employee". HR was "created" to, among other reasons, keep the company in compliance with certain laws; assist in the development of employees, develop policies and procedures, etc. Assisting employees when possible and necessary is just one of their duties.

You can call or email, right?

You are misinformed. HR was not created "for the employee". HR was "created" to, among other reasons, keep the company in compliance with certain laws; assist in the development of employees, develop policies and procedures, etc. Assisting employees when possible and necessary is just one of their duties.

You can call or email, right?
That’s true for the most part but a lot of companies have the H.R Dept administrating benefits, and correcting payroll errors. This handy when there are problems with the Insurance companies and payroll so when the functions become centralized instead of localized, and employees have to use 800 numbers or E-mail instead of talking directly to the administrator, there is all kind of room for errors.

Just saying. Not all companies can cost-justify an HR representative in every work location, especially in this economy.

That’s their excuse but what usually ends up happening is local a manager ends up designating another person to do the work (sometimes two). Also this type of cost cutting efforts the office is streamlined (lost jobs) in the dept. What you get is the left hand not knowing what the right hand is doing, and employees getting in to trouble for it when they would not normally have to look into these things. This is why the poster believes that the H.R person is there for the employee, because in that regard he is right his problems are not eleviated by centralizing.

This short sited management decision cost more in the long term than the short term, not just H.R depts. any administrative or procurement dept.

I don't necessarily disagree. But my current employer is huge, with about 10,000 employees. Most of them are in one city, though in numerous locations within the city. The next largest location is about 30 miles away. And then we have a few hundred employees scattered literally all over the world.

We DO have a centralized HR. I'm part of it. But with that many employees in that many locations, it's absolutely necessary to have a certain amount of delegation outside. It's just not logistically possible for us to handle the day to day issues of that many people, at least in some areas. So each school (it's a university) and department has one or two people assigned to handle day to day issues. Then we have an Human Resources Officer who is, in turn, responsible for that school or department that the HR Rep or Administrative Officer can go to. And if, for some reason, the employee is uncomfortable going to the Rep or AO for their area, they can go straight to the HRO.

Some areas, such as Benefits (my immediate responsibility) stay within the centralization system. But the Central HR's function, except for the specific customer service areas, is geared more towards the big picture - planning and managing the plans, rather than day to day functions.

Is it a perfect system? Not by a long shot. But it's the best we've come up with so far. It's not a cost issue, at least not here. It's a logistics issue.

I don't necessarily disagree, db20, just saying that it's not impossible to make such a situation work. Would it be more convenient if there were an HR rep at every work location? Sure. But now we're getting into management issues that have no bearing on the legal question the OP asked. So, I'm going to go bye-bye from this discussion before it gets any more off track. ;)

Agreed with what has been said, although I am going to suggest an additional issue. Two employers ago, my company was in 20 some states and had a 35 person HR department. Any location with a significant number of people had at least a part time HR person. However, most of these "generalist" were very limited in what they actually knew. One of the points of centralized HR (or anything else) is that you can afford to hire one or two people who actually know what they are talking about. I am on the Accounting/Finance/Payroll side of things, but I historically spent a fair amount of time talking to employees who were misinformed about something by their local HR generalists. I like the basic idea of a local HR person, but very often the correct answer is to listen to the person, take notes and tell them that you will get back to them. Too often IMO the local HR person basically guessed (incorrectly often as not) and this tended to brass off the employee a lot more then having them contact some remote HR person who knew what they were doing. CBG mentioned benefits. We had a three person Benefits group (part of HR), all central office and two of whom really knew their stuff. Not just "use the pink form" but who actual understood the laws and spent several weeks on continuing education annually. People who not only knew what a benefit plan SPD was, but whom could probably have written a legal one from scratch. People who did not spend a lot time answering phones explaining how to fill out the "pink form".

Also, payroll was 100% central office. We had a general email address ("payroll@xxxxx.com"), our own fax number, our own web pages and we had no problem correctly supporting people with problems. Unless the question was very obvious, the immediate answer was always to take a message and tell the employee that we would research to get back to them. In my experience, it is more important to get the correct answer in a day or two then a bad answer very quickly.

by law, do you have to have an HR department in the same building that you work in? My job has decided we didnt need HR in my building. We have 6 other branches across the US, and currently our HR department representative is now 7 hours away from us. I thought HR was created "for the employee" when we need them. WHat good is it for me, to be 7 hours away???
There are record keeping requirements however related to the premises of the employer.

Hello everyone,
Does anyone know where I could go to find out how much my employer is allowed to deduct from my paycheck for: Med Ins, Fed & State Withholding, etc; I mean, is there a certain # or is it a percentage of my gross pay?

Your help is greatly appreciated.

Manopower - first, please start your own thread instead of attaching your question to someone else's (your first post has been set up in its own thread already). Second, please post the same question only once.

I apologize, thank you for the advice.