How do you help employees reach their greatest potential? How do you set performance expectations and help those you know could be performing so much better than they actually are? Can you identify gaps in training or communication among roles and hierarchies?
You may conduct annual performance reviews with your employees or have some type of time-based evaluation system at your company.
What protocol or performance improvement templates do you have in place to actually do something about struggling employees
As a busy HR professional, finding time for career development can be challenging. While there are plenty of HR certification programs available, you may find yourself wondering if they’re worth the energy. After all, with so much on your plate, the last thing you want to do is commit yourself to an unnecessary burden.
Read part 8: How an HCM system can improve productivity for HR, part eight: Retention
While you do your best to prevent employee turnover, employees will eventually leave an organization—voluntary or not. Whether it’s a spouse’s relocation, different career moves, family obligations, layoffs, or retirement, there are many reasons why employees exit. While these life events can happen in any organization, HR managers can handle employee departures gracefully and use their experiences to fine-tune retention efforts.
Read part 7: How an HCM system can improve productivity for HR, part seven: Compliance
The grass is greener on the other side. Employees with this mindset could be close to quitting—if they haven’t already.
When employees leave their jobs, HR managers have to restart the costly dance of recruitment, hiring, and onboarding all over again. With today’s hiring market, evolving labor laws, and overflowing HR tasks, the consequences of employee churn are heavy to bear. Turnover doesn’t just increase onboarding and training costs—it also reduces employee morale and productivity.
Read part 6: How an HCM system can improve productivity for HR, part six: Benefits Management
Maintaining compliance is a messy and often immense endeavor.
The ever-changing web of regulations and laws have HR professionals balancing benefits management, payroll runs, and leave reporting among other HR policies. At the same time, HR professionals have to stay on their toes with laws like the Affordable Care Act (ACA), the Family and Medical Leave Act (FMLA), Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC), and more.
Making important decisions about employee benefits, like choosing health insurance packages, can be stressful and overwhelming—for employees and managers alike. New hires may know far less about their benefit options than their HR departments. In modern workplaces, HR leaders have to maneuver different needs and priorities from four generations of employees.
Read part 4: How an HCM system can improve productivity for HR, part four: Payroll
If you hear “performance review,” it may cause some fear and anxiety—for managers and employees alike. Many people encounter stumbling blocks when performance reviews comes around. Overworked HR managers may handle too much responsibilities with little time to guide employees in the right direction. This is where effective performance management enters the picture.
The workforce is paradoxically both more dispersed and more connected than ever before. A manager in New York can have a video conference with business prospects in Japan, while another employee in that same New York office instant messages a coworker at home in California. The Internet has enabled us to be connected in ways previous generations may have never thought possible.
The ability to communicate from just about anywhere in the world brings many new possibilities for companies. We’re seeing fewer employees commute to offices, choosing instead to work from the comfort of their homes or in collaborative coworking spaces. The idea of expanding a company regionally or nationally—even globally—has become more of a reality today than before.
Read part 3: How an HCM system can improve productivity for HR, part three: Training
To many of us, payroll is a blessing—but it’s also an HR professional’s heaviest strain. As exciting as payday is, managing payroll continues far beyond processing paychecks.
We know handling payroll can be extraordinarily complex: it must be accurate, it must be efficient, and it must comply with regulations on a local, national, and international level. On top of coordinating day-to-day business operations, recruiting and hiring candidates, and managing growth, HR leaders must follow compliance, and get the numbers right for various taxes and payments.
Read part 2: How an HCM system can improve HR productivity, part two: Onboarding
So you’ve onboarded the best and the brightest. Now what? Your job as an HR leader is not over. A great manager helps employees shape the future direction of their careers.
Yet, some managers neglect sustainable training and development practices. As a result, organizations pay the high price of losing top talent. When you’re short-staffed or overtasked, the burden seems all too real. HR managers face the pressure to take care of essential day-to-day operations, and are often left without time to carve out a long-term plan.
With a lot at stake for effective training and development, HR leaders bear the responsibility of laying the foundation for employee success. But training doesn’t have to be elaborate; it’s a matter of assessing employee skills and needs and guiding them to fill in the gaps throughout their career. If it’s done well, the payoff can be substantial for management and teams alike.
