Although you know your HR department as the people who hired you and the people who you tend to want to avoid, they can actually be a really useful asset to employees who are seeking career development. So, without further ado, here are 6 ways that HR departments can help employees thrive.
Career planning
HR are focused on helping the business to succeed, but they’re also aware that businesses won’t succeed without employees who are good at their jobs and want to move forward.
Your HR manager is a good person to go to if you want some help on next steps to achieve your goals or if you want some advice on identifying your strengths and weaknesses, for example.
Offering continuing education and training
Many companies offer tuition reimbursement, especially if the degree or certification is something that can directly help the company. It’s worth asking HR because most of the time there’s a good chance your employer will make some money available for you.
Even if you’re not seeking a degree, there will be many online classes or courses you could attend.
Medical assistance
It’s a good idea to seek legal protection if you or a loved one is suffering with health problems. Rather than missing work and risking getting in trouble for violating attendance policies, HR can provide you with paperwork to protect you. Most companies also have some kind of employee life insurance they can add you to.
Whistleblowing
All workplaces will have a dedicated person whom you can talk to but remember that HR is always there to help too. No matter what violations you’re reporting, the HR department will be able to set up an investigation and get to the bottom of the issue.
Recruitment and induction processes
In order to be successful in a role in the first place, HR will ensure the role is right for you and you’re right for the role. Once the recruitment process is over, they’ll then begin the induction process which will ensure you hit the ground running on your first day.
Having a proper recruitment and induction process at the start of an employee’s journey is vital to ensuring the successful running of any company and ensuring that all employees thrive within their workplace.
Coaching line managers
HR departments coach their line managers to lead their teams (you) effectively! Without this process, managers won’t have the ability to provide clear direction and expectations, have good communication skills or have the confidence to build trust and recognise performance – all of which will have a direct impact on the success of the employees under that manager.
How can HR departments help employees thrive? Final thoughts
To summarise, HR departments have a huge amount of influence and impact through people-oriented strategies that focus on engagement and leadership, which will ultimately drive employee and business success. HR departments have their own practices in place to ensure every employee is performing as they should, but it’s equally important for employees to know that they can speak to HR at any time about any issue they’re having.
The human resources department is one of the most important non-core functions of any business. As a result, in most cases, the HR department of any organisation has a lot of responsibilities to handle.
From processing payrolls to keeping track of attendance, from recruiting fresh talent to employee engagement, the functions of HR are critical to ensuring smooth functioning of the business machine.
To this end, it is important for business owners to ensure their HR department is equipped with the right tools to carry out their responsibilities with maximum efficiency.
As SaaS products become more affordable and accessible, even for small businesses, it only makes sense to take advantage of them to maximise the efficiency of your HR department.
In this article, we will discuss three essential tools that have almost become a necessity for modern HR departments.
Let us begin:
Payroll Software
The variety of payroll tasks involved in calculation of an employee’s salary are time consuming and have a lot of scope for human error. Such errors can cause serious miscalculations in an employee’s salary which can in turn, ruin the reputation of your organisation.
Modern payroll software is designed to automate the whole process with minimal effort. From processing salaries to calculating the tax returns of your organisation, a payroll software can take care of it all. These software can be customised to the specific regulations applicable to your business, along with any special rules that are applicable to the calculation of the salaries of your employees.
This way, you not only eliminate the scope of human errors from the process, but also free up the time of your HR department to focus on other critical activities.
Learning Management System
One of the most important functions of an HR department is to overlook the learning and development of the employees. A learning management system enables them to do this task efficiently. A learning management system is a platform that is used to store, share, and manage training content.
These online training software enable learning administrators (HR associates) to enroll learners (employees) and assign different training curriculums to them. A learning management system also offers features like gamification and blended learning that allow learning administrators to create an engaging learning experience.
Additionally, these tools come loaded with tracking features that allow learning administrators to track the progress of different courses, as well as the progress of different learners.
This way, they can pinpoint the areas where the course curriculum can be optimised for better retention and comprehension. These tracking capabilities also enable training administrators to identify learners that need special attention and tailor their learning experience according to their needs.
Time Tracking Software
At a time when teams are forced to work from their homes, tracking their productivity is one of the most essential jobs of the HR department. ONe of the most efficient ways to do so is with time tracking software.
The applications of a time tracking software aren’t limited to this time of social distancing. We’re living in a gig economy and working with freelancers is becoming an increasingly common practice. In order to make sure your company is not being billed unfairly, your HR department will need a time tracking software to track the hours of the freelancers that work for your organisation.
Conclusion
Tracking time and processing payrolls are two of the most time-consuming tasks of an HR department. By automating these, you can make your HR department much more productive, and use their potential for more important tasks. On the other hand, effective employee training is next to impossible to carry out without the help of a great learning management system.
Are there any tools that your HR department uses that we haven’t mentioned in this article? Share them with us in the comment section below!
At the centre of every thriving business is a dynamic and well-greased HR department. And thanks to changes in the modern economy, the HR department is more important than ever. Never before have people been more important or more integral to business success. It’s people, not capital, that is now the driving force behind most modern companies and what makes them valuable.
Managing those people, however, is getting harder. Members of your team have higher expectations than they did in the past and they want companies not only to pay them but provide them with an additional level of service, including things like training. Recruitment is also getting more difficult, thanks to the fact that job roles are becoming increasingly specialised and niche.
Here we’re going to look at some of the biggest HR nightmares you face as a modern employer, and how to fix them.
Low Productivity
Keeping up with your competitors is a top priority for your business. But that’s hard to do if you have to employ twice the labour to get the same job done. It’s the job of the human resources team to make sure that productivity remains high and that the entire business is operating efficiently.
If your productivity is low compared to other companies in your industry, it’s not because you’re unlucky; it’s because you’re doing something wrong. The first thing to do is a Time and Motion study to find out exactly what is going wrong in your processes. Often HR consultancy services can help on this matter since they have experience with where businesses most often make mistakes.
Once the data are gathered, the next stage is to start comparing performance over time. Often you’ll be able to correlate events in your business, like a change in offices, with drops or peaks in performance levels. Knowing when productivity was high and what conditions led to higher output per person helps you to recreate those conditions and get more out of your workforce in the future.
Failing To Adequately Train Employees
As we discussed in the introduction, employee expectations of the workplace are changing fast. In the past, it was perfectly acceptable for companies to offer workers a wage in exchange for their labour. But now companies have to do a lot more to attract the best talent.
Employees don’t just want to be paid today; they want to be trained for the future. Today’s modern workforce has aspirations, and if they feel that your organisation is holding them back, they’ll leave.
The good news is that putting training in place is actually relatively easy in most industries. That’s because there are already other companies in the sector with links to training organisations. Often it’s just a case of finding out who the trainers are and what courses are being offered by your competitors.
In some workplaces, there’s a need to provide employee training for compliance reasons. It’s a good idea, therefore, for companies to keep a record of employee training so that they can track which members of staff have been on which training programme. Maintain records both when training is performed in-house, as well as when it is given by an outside organisation.
Expensive Recruitment
The statistics on the cost of recruitment are shocking. For high-level positions, the cost of finding the right person can actually exceed the cost of hiring them in the first year. As a result, businesses are keen to keep costs as low as possible when it comes to recruiting.
The responsibility for this falls on HR departments, but getting recruitment right is difficult. Often there’s a lot of paperwork involved, as well as a bunch of other issues, like where to advertise. Most businesses use some type of HR recruiting software. This gives them the ability to process dozens of applications and CVs, as well as store candidate’s’ personal details. The good thing about these applications is that they allow you to keep in contact with people who are interested in working for your organisation for years to come. Perhaps there isn’t a position available that matches their skills today, but in the future, once you’ve expanded, there might be a chance for you to review their application and contact them in the future. Again, this helps to keep the cost of recruitment down, since you’ve already got a mailing list of people who are willing to work with your organisation.
Poor Disciplinary Processes
The least popular topic in any HR department is how to deal with employees who haven’t been behaving themselves. Companies with bad disciplinary policies make worker misbehaviour into a personal issue, with managers getting into shouting matches with employees.
It’s the job of the HR department to be as objective as possible and stay on the right side of the law. Doing this is easier said than done, of course, but most employers manage it by having their disciplinary policies written down in their company handbook. HR departments need to follow these procedures to the letter and avoid giving problem employees any material that they could take to an employment tribunal.
When disciplinary actions do get underway, it’s critical to keep a record of all correspondence. This means keeping copies of letters sent to employees, minutes of meetings, communications with trade union officials and other activities related to the case. Having a public record of events helps to keep everybody on the same page as the dispute develops.
Just as with recruiting, there is now software that allows HR departments to store and retrieve all relevant documents relating to a disciplinary case. Having these systems in place helps to reduce the legwork for all people involved and the amount of time disciplinary action takes to resolve.
Out-Of-Control Outsourcing
Finally, HR departments are often responsible for outsourcing within the company. The problem is that many outsourcers don’t often fulfil the internal requirements of the company. It’s important, therefore, that HR departments make sure that they undergo the same training, are members of the right industry bodies, and have gone through any necessary induction training.
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