Home Depot, Inc. (NYSE: HD) will be trimming its human resources staff soon, according the the company. The largest home improvement retailers in the U.S. seeks to trim its HR staff by a total of 1,000 employees, with the goal of having more help on its sales floors instead of on administrative tasks.

Home Depot officials said that it won't be handling human resources issues on a store-by-store basis any longer, opting instead to handle employee HR from a district-wide perspective. It will shift HR tasks mostly to telephone-based support and will be adding 200 people for a new human resources call center, according to the company.

Is this a wise move? It will save the retailer costs from a headcount burden at each store that may not be the best use of its labor force, but then again, having HR in-store does probably have an advantage. Maybe it's not enough from a cost perspective. If the retailer can shift more headcount to the sales floor, that is always a good thing.

In addition to the HR personnel moves, the retailer said that it will shift stocking crews at some of its stores from the overnight shift to the day shift, as there just isn't enough work for some overnight crews at this time. Since the mortgage mess continues to spook the entire country at this time, home improvement retailers are seeing a good brunt of the mess.