People in your employ are what makes your company what it is and your HR department is a link between you, as management, and them. Because of this, the overall strength of your HR department is often reflected in the quality of your communication with your staff, in every way conceivable. In order to ensure you’re getting the most out of this deal, here are five ways to make your HR department more efficient.
1. Hire people with different specialties
Speaking about HR, in general, can be quite misleading, seeing as how there are numerous different sub-categories of HR and the only thing they have in common is the fact that they are all responsible for the same department. Therefore, when hiring people for your HR team, make sure to hire people with different specialties, in order to boost their overall performance and efficiency. For instance, while someone deals with recruitment, employment and replacement, others can focus on training and development. Also, there are those who are experts in compensation and benefits.
2. Automate their tasks as much as you can
Another thing you might want to do in order to help them out is try to automate as many of their tasks as you can. HR software can be a particularly helpful tool. In fact, the use of an HR platform is completely mandatory in 2018. Another way in which you can save some time for your HR department is by looking for HR policy and documentation templates like those offered by HR Expert. In this way, you are making it possible for them to deal with mundane tasks much quicker thus leaving them with more time to focus on more demanding HR activities.
3. Give them at least one hour per week to focus on their own careers
While members of your HR department are mostly preoccupied with managing track records, resumes and performance of others, they seldom have the time to do this for themselves. This can be quite a problem, seeing as how, after a while, they too might start feeling quite dissatisfied with the prospects of working for you.
Ironically, this may lead to losing people who are supposed to deal with your own company’s talent retention. In order to avoid this, make sure to give the members of your HR team at least one hour per week to work on their own careers. This involves tasks like revising their resumes, working on their own LinkedIn profiles and more. To you, this is just one hour per week but for them, it is an indicator that you truly do care about them.
4. Create a larger mentor system
When introducing a new member to your HR team, don’t assign them a single mentor; rather, make sure everyone mentors them equally. There are two major reasons behind this. First of all, this will give a new member a much better insight into what HR actually stands for. Second, this way the responsibility will be shared which will save everybody’s time. For those who listened to the advice from the first section, this is especially important to keep up with.
5. Watch out for harmful terminology
Finally, it is crucial to remember that you’re working with people, and not machines and not numbers. This is why you need to restrain yourself from using terms such as ‘human capital’. This term on its own may be enough to evoke some hostility towards your HR team, which will make their job that much harder.
Conclusion
At the end of the day, by adhering to these five simple principles you can form a strong HR team at a moment’s notice and seamlessly fill in its ranks, should the need arise. Most importantly, you are setting a healthy pattern that will ensure some continuity in the work of your HR. After all, people in the HR aren’t just dealing with the issues of your personnel, they are actively enforcing your corporate values.