"There are so many important functions of an HR department. If I had to pick the top three, I would have to say recruitment, training, and performance management. A company must hire the right employees for each job and do a good job training them for those roles. If you hire the wrong people or don't give them the necessary training to do the job well, you set yourself up for failure. Once you've hired and trained them, performance management is crucial in keeping them on track. Annual performance reviews, or ideally more frequent performance reviews, are a great opportunity to give employees feedback on how they are doing and for an employee to give their manager feedback. The 360 review helps build a strong working environment and keeps everyone focused on continuous improvement. In my current role as an HR Generalist at a small company, I've had the opportunity to be involved in each of those functions, and I've seen their importance firsthand."