As we enter a new year, many companies will be looking back on the previous 12 months and asking themselves what they can do better. There’s no doubt that 2021 was another challenging year for businesses and staff alike. However, those difficulties forced many organisations to innovate, adapt and introduce remote working policies and new onboarding processes.
In this article, we’re going to take a look at eight HR strategy examples that had a big impact in 2021 and will continue to do so in 2022. These are the policies that made businesses more efficient despite the challenges presented by the COVID pandemic. They’re representative of the latest HR practices and will help your company evolve and become a more resilient, versatile and competitive organisation.
1. Focus on first-time success with hiring
Hiring new employees is costly, time-consuming and resource-heavy. However, it’s also an essential part of running a business. Many organisations don’t put anywhere near the required thought and effort into refining their hiring process. The result is a system that fails all too often.
The hiring process can be improved by starting at the beginning and taking a long, hard look at your company. Where are there talent gaps? Where do you excel? What are your weaknesses? What type of employee has succeeded in the past? Asking yourself these questions allows you to close in on a more accurate description of the ideal hire. In turn, this gives your interviewers, assessors and managers more to go on when they are hiring.
It’s important to note that every job position requires a different set of skills and a different approach. While you always want to be thinking about how an employee fits in with the overall company culture, they need to be right for the specific role, too. This is an HR strategy example that helps create the perfect team.
2. Onboarding sets the tone
Hiring isn’t the only important process new employees go through. Onboarding is just as key. How you introduce your fresh hire to the organisation sets the tone and lays the foundations for everything they’ll do going forwards. Start off on the wrong foot and you’ll have serious obstacles to overcome in the future. This is demonstrated by the fact that employees who have a bad onboarding experience are twice as likely to immediately look for other work opportunities (Super CIO).
The details of your onboarding programme will vary from role to role and between companies. For each position, there should be an established onboarding plan that’s tweaked and refined as you put more and more employees through the programme. It’s also important to remember that onboarding isn’t just about training. It’s also a way of embedding a new face in an established team and making them feel valued and welcome.
3. Paying for retention
Our next HR strategy example may sound obvious, but the wage you offer employees has a significant impact on how they feel about their work and the company as a whole. Paying a competitive salary ensures staff feel valued and fairly treated. In turn, this encourages greater loyalty to the company and results in lower staff turnover.
Lower staff turnover is not to be scoffed at. As we’ve already mentioned, hiring staff is expensive. But it’s not just the application process that costs your business. There’s also the training period and the time needed to get the employee up to speed. In many cases, it will take a new employee six months to reach the same level of productivity as an experienced staff member. In certain roles, it may take more than a year. That’s a long time to be working at suboptimal levels of productivity. With this in mind, paying your employees that little bit extra may actually save you money.
4. Make the most of benefits
It’s not all about the salary, though. In an increasingly competitive labour market, benefits can be a great way to attract and retain talent. Benefits packages are also a reflection of your company culture and values. You say you’re a team that values each and every member. But do you offer employees flexible working hours? How about remote working opportunities? Access to wellbeing services?
We’re not saying that all of these are essential benefits. However, thinking carefully about what benefits your employees receive can make your organisation a more enticing place to work. Benefits also take on a wide variety of forms. Today, forward-thinking startups are proving an increasingly popular option because they offer employee equity as part of their benefits package. In a lot of instances, this is persuasive enough to convince talented designers, marketers and managers to join the company, despite a lower base salary.
5. Staff training is key
As an employer, you’ve invested a considerable amount in your employees. If you stop doing so, that asset begins to stagnate and your investment starts to deliver diminishing returns. Consequently, regular training is absolutely essential if you want to stay on top and keep your employees firing on all cylinders.
That being said, getting the most from your staff is not the only reason you want to offer them regular training. Training also demonstrates that you’re invested in employees’ futures and that you see a long-term place for them in your organisation. This impacts morale, employee satisfaction and retention, making your team happier, more productive and more stable. This is an example of an ongoing HR strategy that should always be updated, refreshed and applied to all staff, no matter the job position.
6. Clear definitions of success
Most businesses use a range of targets and KPIs to measure everything from customer satisfaction to employee productivity. However, all too often, this data is presented in a confusing and muddled way.
This lack of clarity has a big effect on staff. Rather than achievable targets that employees are happy to work towards, these KPIs are figures that are feared. If you don’t know what targets you’re trying to hit, why you’re trying to achieve them and how you’re going to go about it, they’re more of a preoccupation than a motivating force.
To remedy this, businesses need to be more explicit about the way they define success. While weekly targets will regularly change, they need to do so within the wider context of long-term performance. Framing short-term targets in relation to long-term growth is an excellent way of showing why individual targets matter and how they contribute to the business’ overall success.
Giving clear and comprehensive definitions of what you think short and long-term employee success looks like means there’s no confusion and no excuses. But it also makes those weekly targets seem less arbitrary and less frustrating, too.
7. Signposting a way forward
Many of the HR strategy examples we’ve already touched upon revolve around making employees feel as though they’re valued and have a future with your company. However, the most direct way of communicating these ideas is to have open conversations with your staff about their futures. What do they want to achieve at the company? What aspect of the work do they find most satisfying and enjoyable? Are there any skills they feel they’re lacking?
By discussing these questions with employees, you’ll be able to draw up a career roadmap, identifying next steps and long-term goals that they can work towards over the coming years. Providing employees with information as to how they can progress and climb the organisation’s hierarchy motivates staff and ensures they know that you reward those who excel.
8. Communication, communication, communication
Clear communication is the lifeblood of an organisation. Without it, a business seizes up and simply stops functioning as it should. Despite this, many companies fail to communicate effectively with their staff. A lack of transparency helps nobody. It distances management from the staff on the frontlines, frustrates workers and whittles away the trust you’ve spent a considerable amount of time building up.
Just to be clear, we’re not suggesting that you tell your staff absolutely everything that’s being discussed or planned within the business. Some things require discretion. Instead, we’re arguing that many issues within the workplace would be resolved if more attention was paid to communication.
Though improving communication within a business is a challenge and there are whole libraries dedicated to the subject, there are a few easy steps you can take to get the ball rolling.
- Publicise communication channels - if you have special communication channels for complaints, advice, personal issues or any other matter, you need to advertise them. It’s surprising how many employees have no idea what resources are available in their workplace.
- An open-door policy - those in positions of responsibility should try and maintain an open-door policy. That means employees can come to them at any time, with any issue.
- Ask employees for communication feedback - employees will feel failures of communication more keenly than those further up the hierarchy. Asking for feedback on how communication can be improved is a great way of finding out exactly what is and isn’t working.
What next?
So that completes our eight HR strategy examples that will help your business meet many of the challenges you’ll face over the coming year. If you would like more information on HR strategy and payroll management or want to understand how Finesse can assist your business, please don’t hesitate to get in touch.