As a Human Resources leader, it’s your responsibility to ensure your company operates legally, ethically, and with a solid structure. It is equally vital to ensure employees are treated fairly, feel comfortable and confident in their role, understand expectations, and receive necessary benefits – which is a tall order. Because company cultures and atmospheres differ, devising an effective management strategy to meet those objectives requires substantial research and deep critical thinking.
To help you become a more effective human resources leader and identify an effective management strategy for your company, follow these tips, which will guide you through the creation and implementation of an all-encompassing Human Resource strategy.
Build Culture through Employee Relations
Focus on individuals first. Each employee must know the value he/she brings to the team and how his/her individual role contributes to reaching company goals. Employees who feel appreciated will feel more comfortable and confident in the workplace. As a result, these individuals are more likely to contribute, strive for success, and encourage teammates to do the same.
Start by creating a close-knit work environment centered around positivity. Then build a culture conducive to collaboration and achievement. This will allow you to develop a supportive and unified team with a shared vision that values the contributions of the individual.
Building workplace camaraderie can be as simple as initiating weekly breakfast sessions across departments where work-related conversations are discouraged. Employees across roles, titles, and functions can interact in new ways and learn about each other as people (and employees). This approach can encourage long-time and newly-hired employees to show their personalities and get to know each other beyond the “coworker” label.
Knowing their own value and creating team chemistry will help employees excel individually and as a cohesive unit.
Communicate Efficiently
What is the best, most efficient way to communicate with employees? What information should be communicated? And when should this happen?
Instead of only communicating performance progress and results during quarterly or annual reviews, employees should be informed more frequently about their individual performance. That includes:
- What he/she is doing well
- What he/she can do to perform better
- Effective ways to seek input from a colleague or team lead
This feedback will keep employees “in-the-know” regarding where they stand and how they can improve or excel in their role.
Since everyone is working toward the same goals, it is key to remind employees – through meetings, email, intranet, and any communication and organizational apps – on a consistent, ongoing basis to ensure eliminate ambiguity and the potential for confusion.
Use Strategic and Creative Problem Solving
Most often, employees turn to the HR leader when issues arise. Those working in HR must plan for a diverse list of workplace-related situations and be prepared with tried and trusted conflict resolution strategies.
To be prepared, HR leaders must be:
- Proficient in critical thinking
- Quick, flexible and adaptable
- Impartial and fair (avoid cutting corners and bias)
When an issue is brought to HR, it is vital to listen and learn about how the issue transpired and mediate with all involved parties in an effort to reach a compromise or acceptable outcome.
Leverage Smart Technology Platforms
HR responsibilities can be vast and overwhelming. Recruitment, payroll, employee relations, benefits management, onboarding – the list is long and the functions are critical.
To help streamline, simplify, and manage the workload, consider leveraging the power of smart technology and human resources software. People analytics, recruiting technologies, artificial intelligence, and our own Benefits Quarterback are designed to lighten the HR workload and offer valuable insights.
For example, Benefits Quarterback integrates benefit technologies into a single, user-friendly dashboard and offers a customized Health and Welfare savings plan from experts. This makes it easier to explain benefits and assist employees.
By integrating and optimizing new technology, HR leaders can increase overall production and in turn, implement higher-level strategies.
Be Confident in Your Strategy
The resulting approach should be developed based on the organization’s culture, values and mission. Seeking input from a variety of stakeholders during the development of your strategy, referencing that input and tying it to your processes and desired outcomes will facilitate buy-in and establish credibility.
Demonstrating a solid understanding of the business and how your organization operates will instill confidence in you and your message. Utilizing data and organization-specific metrics – whenever possible – will only enhance this outcome and ensure your strategy’s success.
BenefitsQB: Your Human Resource Solution
If you have questions about how to create a holistic view and help maximize efficiencies gained from integrated technology, Benefits Quarterback, powered by Hampton Consulting Corp., is your trustworthy human resource solution. To learn more about a Benefits QB gameplan, take our two-minute drill.