Challenges for HR Leadership Teams

Figure 01

Human Resources (HR) is a complex profession (but that’s what you like about it, right?) and the challenges you face come from many directions. Some of those challenges, like tight labor markets and economic volatility, are beyond your control. Others may arise perennially but can be affected by how you approach them.

Nurturing workers’ health

Reducing the cost of worker illness and injuries probably shows up on your list of top five concerns every year.

The cost of worker’s compensation payments, medical expenses, and legal consultation fees are additional, as are indirect costs such as temporary employees, accident investigation, and repairing or replacing any problematic physical infrastructure.

Improving employee retention

Figure 02

When company leaders do audits to figure out the source of financial leakage, employee churn will always show up as an expense to be reduced. No business wants to lose top talent, and when one slips through your fingers and heads for a competitor, it can cost your company serious money.

This high figure is arrived at by adding up the cost of recruiting and hiring, the wages and time involved in training a new employee and the lost productivity while that new hire is coming up to speed. As a matter of fact, it can take up to two full years for a new hire to reach the same level of productivity as other continuing co-workers.

Building a diverse workforce

Today’s HR departments strive to hire new employees who fit well with the existing company culture. This is an important piece in the hiring process, but it can only reach its full potential when combined with an effort to bring different voices and perspectives into the organization. Diversity means looking at many more factors than the basic demographics of gender, ethnicity, or age. It also means seeking out job candidates who bring new perspectives, diverse problem-solving skills and different types of backgrounds. Undercover Recruiter writes, “By working alongside people of different backgrounds, experiences and working styles, creative concepts can be born from bouncing ideas off of each other and offering feedback and suggestions.” (Duggal, 2019)

In a tight hiring environment, where companies compete for top talent, a workplace with a reputation for inclusiveness will attract more applicants. Brainstorm new strategies to hire diversity of thought in your organization. HR leadership teams and recruiters will have a deeper pool of talent from which to draw, and skilled workers will feel good about participating in a company that promotes equality.

Keeping employees engaged

Employee engagement lies at the root of almost every challenge that your department faces. Gallup research has found that “workgroups with high [engagement] scores outperform those with lower scores on every type of performance metric: revenue, profitability, productivity, customer experience, safety, healthcare costs, etc.” (Mike, 2007)

Figure 03

Achieving leadership buy-in for a recognition program

You’re aware by now that the core of maintaining employee engagement is letting workers know they’re appreciated on a regular basis. However, executives may be feeling a financial pinch, and it might hard to get executives on board with an employee recognition and rewards program. If this is the case, you may need to do a bit of selling. Fortunately, the return of investing in recognition and rewards programs are abundant and easily measured, so it’s not hard to find supporting data. As an HR expert, you can use solid figures and statistics to back up what you already know.

Reference

Duggal, S., 2019. Challenges for HR Leadership Teams. Achievers, 5(7), pp.141-47.

Mike, 2007. hr-technology. [Online] (2.1) Available at: https://www.hrtechnology.com/blog/?blog-category=/hr-technology/ [Accessed 05 June 2022].