Since I have shifted my career into Human Resources, I always wanted to see visually how the different HR processes are linked and integrated and always was unable to find such representation on the internet nor dedicated my time to do this exercise myself. Having been in the HR Consulting industry for so many years, I have come across a good number of clients, HR Department Heads, and HR professionals who would ask of such representation in order to understand the life cycle of Human Resources and how HR processes are integrated.

My objective in this article is to visually illustrate how HR processes are integrated with each other and provide further insights along the way.

To be honest I started this exercise with a lot of passion and energy as I get very motivated to complete the process and see the outcome of it. However, the passion and energy went out the window as in my first attempt to draw the integration between the HR processes the below was the outcome.

Seeing the complication of this representation I decided to take a different approach to make sure that the final output is easily understood.

I accordingly decided to have 3 layers as explained below:

• The first layer (the core) represents the HR Mega Processes. This is basically the life cycle of the Human Resources. The way I see it, it consists of the below components:
  • Hire: in this mega process, HR starts by hiring the resources and acquiring them into the company.
  • Manage: in this mega process, HR manages the HR activities and day to day HR operations for acquired resources and retain them throughout their service in the company.
  • Retire: in this mega process, HR manages the retiring activities of employees from the company.
• The second layer represents the HR Processes. Each HR Mega Process is basically broken down into key HR Processes as observed on the diagram.
• The third layer represents the HR Sub-Processes. Each HR Process is basically broken down into sub-processes and the integration between each is illustrated through simple links.

Just a point to be noted here, the HR processes and sub-processes represented in this diagram are the standard ones. Each company may have additional processes or even different naming for each.

You can also see on the outer layer three components as below:

• HR Strategies and Plans: these are the HR strategies and projects which are cascaded from and directly linked to the business objectives and which in turn are driving and steering the overall HR processes to eventually achieve the HR objectives.
• HR Governance Framework: these represent the HR policies, HR forms, governing regulations and laws, and standards that control the way the HR processes are executed.
• HRMS and Supporting Technology: these represent the systems and technologies supporting all operations of the HR processes including the HRMS, time and attendance system, ERP system, etc.

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One important point that I also want to highlight here is that if you carefully look at the Competency and Development HR sub-process, you would note that it has the most links to other HR sub-processes. In fact, I believe that this sub-process is the core HR sub-process if you may call it as this sub-process starts immediately after the organization design is completed in order to define the competencies for each position on the company structure upon which the recruitment process can understand what type of competencies to look for during candidate sourcing. The competencies will be also the basis for defining performance objectives, performance reviews, training plans, and development plans for successors.

I hope that this article and the conclusions made are beneficial to other HR professionals. Please do share your thoughts and feedback on the subject as they are always welcome.