Is is legal for a corporation to hire new employees without a structured HR office?

Question

Would it be right for a corporation to hire without any proper basis and guidelines for hiring, recruitment, and placement of new employees? What are the legal impediments of this practice? Can someone highly qualified for a certain job file a case against a corporation of no HR office/officer who turned the applicant down because the in charge has the right to choose whoever he wants to place under his department. Is it right to let the hiring be done by operations people, and not be initiated and performed by a qualified Human Resource officer?

Answer 1

Is it *right* or is it *legal*? There is a big difference between the two. Though the practice you are describing isn't *right* in the sense that it does leave the corporation (and quite possibly the corporate officers) open to some amount of liability and it is definitely not advisable to learn this stuff through trial and error and the school of hard knocks, it is, unfortunately, *legal*.

Answer 2

There is no requirement, by law, to have an HR department. Larger corporations use them to alleviate personnel issues from department heads, and establish uniform guidelines for terms of employment.

If a department head does the hiring, they are free to hire whomever they want. However, if it can be proven that the deparment head is discriminating against any applicant, then the corporation can be found in violation of the EEOA and levied fines.

Depending on the size of the corporation, I would be leary if there was no one person in charge of HR or HR related issues.

Answer 3

Sure. Small companies do it all the time. Companies under 100 people usually can't afford an HR Dept.

Answer 4

It's called "at will employment"-many states practice it, and yes, it is legal and they can.

Check the Dept of Labor.