Having a great human resources team is crucial to any successful company. The problem is, they aren’t always seen that way to outsiders or even to fellow employees.

Why? Any longtime business owner understands the importance of having a great human resources team and yet it is hard to quantify their value in real dollars. But the truth is, they provide tremendous value, with much of their worth coming from the dollars you don’t have to spend.

Here are some facts:

• The average employment lawsuit award exceeds $490,000 and employment lawsuits have increased by 400 percent in the last 20 years, according to the ADP Research Institute. The most common claims are discrimination lawsuits, specifically sex or race discrimination, which can be avoided by having a strong human resources team.

• A recent article in Forbes states that the “best way to ensure strategy implementation is to hire the right people into the right company.” The best way to hire the right people is to have a strong hiring process, according to Forbes. That process is put into place by the human resources department.

• Human resource departments are instrumental in negotiating contracts and setting salaries for positions, which relates directly to employee retention. This is crucial, as first off, labor is most organization’s largest cost and, secondly, employee retention has been identified as one of the most important factors to controlling costs and increasing worker productivity.

• Human resource departments are charged with running wellness programs, which are becoming more and more popular as studies continue to show that they can be massive cost savers. Wellness programs can keep costs down – 75 percent of total healthcare costs are spent on chronic diseases, which are the most preventable types of diseases, according to the CDC – and increase worker productivity.

• Human resources is becoming more complicated than ever before. The newly-implemented Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act and the passing of hundreds of new labor laws each year requires human resource professionals to continually stay on top of these developments, or else your organization is leaving itself vulnerable to an expensive lawsuit.