4 Ways HR Management Can Boost Efficiency
In today’s fast-paced world, efficiency and effectiveness is the name of the game. An efficient HR department will be able to effectively manage the number one asset of any organization; people.
Here are 4 tips to improve efficiency and effectiveness of your HR Department:
1) Encouraging Open Lines of Communication
It is often said that two hands are required to clap in order for a relationshipto be successful. Workplaces that encourage open lines of communication between employees and HR tend to perform better and have a more innovative, progressive culture as can be seen by the success stories shared by organizations like FedEx and Sainsbury’s.
Employees should feel that they are able to easily approach their HR department with any concerns and issues that they may have. By gathering such information, HR professionals can take the necessary steps to improve various procedures and processes or eliminate procedures which are time-wasting and not effective.
For example, an employee feels uncomfortable and dissatisfied with how his overtime pay is being calculated and has some suggestions as to how he feels staff overtime should be calculated. Fortunately, his organization’s HR Department encourages communication and thus he is able to communicate his concerns with the HR professional responsible and from here, corrective action can be taken.
From this scenario, it can be seen that proactive action by the HR Department has long-term benefits for the organization. Firstly, by listening to the concerns aired by an employee, the HR Department was able to head off any dissatisfaction and unhappiness and over the long term, reduce potential counselling and rehiring costs. Secondly, the HR Dept. is able to further improve its processes after listening to suggestions from their employees.
2) Providing Employees With Continuous Feedback
Most organizations usually have monthly, bi-annual and annual evaluations of their employees. This is great for analyzing an employee’s quantitative performance. However, such methods of performance analysis usually leaves much to be desired.
Firstly, annual or bi-annual KPIs are usually seen as a mere formality with the primary goal of calculating an employee’s annual bonus. Thus, in order to truly drive change, HR Professionals should seriously consider conducting monthly or even weekly reviews with their employees to provide continuous feedback. These meetings should be informal affairs conducted on a one-to-one basis with their employees. (Read The Secret To Effective One-On-One Meetings With Direct Reports).
These meetings can be used as a platform for providing feedback to employees on how their work is progressing and to point out certain behaviours that are to be encouraged or discouraged. For example, positive feedback can be given to an employee who has shown extra initiative in order to encourage this employee. Whereas employees who display negative behaviours can be approached and counselled as a form of corrective feedback.
Over the long-term, this will serve to improve the performance of employees and reduce employee turnover and counselling.
3) Getting Rid of Traditional Filing
Traditionally, most organizations maintain physical copies of their employees’ files on hand. The reasons given by these organizations vary from reasons like cost limitations or even an old-fashioned distrust in computers. Maintaining physical copies of personnel files is a costly and inefficient affair. Firstly, physically stored documents can be misplaced, stolen or even damaged. With the advent of inexpensive cloud storage solutions, organizations can now store their data safely on host cloud servers without worrying about data corruption.
Secondly, it would be extremely time-consuming and inefficient to search through hundreds or even thousands of personnel files just for one employee. In turn, this would serve to discourage employees from approaching the HR department with an issue that they may have due to the perceived inefficiency and long delay associated with submitting a request to the HR department.
A computerized personnel database management system can greatly improve the efficiency of the HR department by allowing HR professionals to access all required information with just a simple mouse click.
4) Working as A Team
Most HR professionals are usually expected to conduct training programs or spearhead initiatives that drive change in an organization. Employees who are required to attend HR initiatives often feel forced or coerced into attending such sessions. Hence, any campaign no matter how well intentioned is likely to fall flat on its face should there be a lack of support from leaders within the organization.
HR professionals need to work together with leaders of the organization in order and communicate why initiatives organized by the HR department will be able to generate value for the organization. From here, this information can then be disseminated to the members of the organization thus allowing the organization to move in a single, united direction.
The challenges faced by HR professionals are many and varied as the landscape is constantly changing and evolving. However, these 4 tips are sure to improve the effectiveness and efficiency of any HR department.