Strategic HR Technology Investment: A Comprehensive Checklist for Global HR Teams
The worldwide Coronavirus pandemic has brought about a sea change in the way we conduct business today. HR’s role has grown more important than ever, not just in employee management, but also in establishing guidelines on how organizations should function in this new environment.
As businesses struggle to maintain profitability in the face of new work-from-home and social distancing conventions, the following are some recent creative ‘Human Resource practices‘ and trends that businesses of all kinds may adopt and benefit from.
But before we go into HR best practices for 2022, we need to understand the term ‘best HR practices‘ and learn to distinguish between ‘best fit’ and ‘best practices’ in Human Resource Management (HRM).
It is a collection of Human Resource actions and principles that are universally effective in achieving a competitive objective, regardless of the organization’s size or industry.
Alternatively, it may be described as a set of strategies, concepts, or ideas that are embraced by businesses for maximizing business performance. This is true regardless of the company, industry, or any field to which it is applied.
According to Human Resource management studies, there are two distinct strategies for employee management in a company.
The best-fit methodology entails aligning HR policies with corporate strategy in order to maximize profitability. This implies that HR should prioritize both the company’s and its employees’ interests and requirements.
According to the best practice strategy, a set of universal HR activities exists that may assist businesses in achieving a competitive edge regardless of their sector or organizational context. In basic terms, best practice is a method that is universal, while the best fit is a situation-specific approach.
Often, most organizations choose a hybrid approach of best fit and best practices, depending on the circumstances.
It is essential to distinguish between Human Resource practices and Human Resource activities. Without clear knowledge, it is easy to get confused between HR practices and activities. Both are necessary for an HR department to perform at its full capacity and for a company to maximize its human capital investment.
Human resource practices include HR’s strategic operations; they serve as the basis and guiding force for managing the company’s employees and should be aligned with business objectives.
Several examples of HR practice include:
On the other side, Human Resource activities are concerned with the execution of Human Resource practices and other critical planned strategies under the HR department’s objectives.
Human Resource activities may involve:
HR departments flourish when HR practices and HR activities are integrated as a unit, functioning hand in hand.
The impact of the coronavirus epidemic on companies, employees, and workplace culture has been huge. Thus, the HR practices for 2022 must reflect these changes to ensure higher employee engagement and retention, and motivated employees. Keeping these aspects under consideration, we have provided a checklist of current HR best practices.
Employees have experienced severe stress because of their concern for themselves and their loved ones as a consequence of the uncertain conditions arising from the COVID-19 pandemic. To alleviate the employees’ concerns, HR may build programs that target employees’ overall health and wellbeing, including psychological counseling and financial wellness.
Remote working has become the new working model for the near future in the post-pandemic period. In the absence of a conducive work environment, as seen in an office, Human Resources would play a significant role in helping employees to get acclimatized to the work-from-home model, efficiently. This might include novel human resource strategies, such as assisting with the administrative aspects of setting up a home office and fulfilling demands for family care.
By open-book Management approach, we imply performing business transparently. For the same, it is necessary that an organization communicates corporate developments to its employees as when the developments take place.
Regarding the same, you may opt to use a product such as ‘Engagedly’s OKR/Goal Alignment platform,’ which enables you to communicate business updates straight from the dashboard. This will drive your employees to strive toward corporate objectives since they will have a long-term perspective. Also, the measure will not only increase your business’s efficiency, but will also ensure that you have fewer concerns about employee engagement and retention.
Fully engaged workers are always more productive than the rest of the workforce and they show a minimal level of absenteeism. Thus, employee engagement has become one of the indispensable factors of current Human Resources practices.
Employee engagement requires open dialogue, transparent communication, and, most crucially, empowerment. Importantly, employees are no longer keen on routine labor that does not provide career opportunities and growth. They are always on the lookout for opportunities to improve their skills and knowledge in order to meet unforeseeable challenges.
Organizing programs, professional development courses, and seminars enable them to close the skills gap generated by evolving technologies.
Thus, engagement via empowerment delivers value to the business and is a time-tested worldwide human resource technique.
The static PowerPoint presentations provided to large audiences in classroom settings have been phased out by new technologies, leaving behind freely available, online, and self-paced education.
Nowadays, through a technique known as microlearning, complex information may be broken down into smaller digestible modules and presented as animation to make comprehension of the concepts easy.
This enables employees to soak up information quickly and use the pertinent information to complete their job at that moment. Thus, training has become intrinsically linked to the unique demands of both employees and employers. Other advancements, such as gamification, have made professional learning more enjoyable, while virtual reality enables employees to practice their job abilities in real-world scenarios.
Frequently, remote workers cannot discern the boundary between work and personal life, taking on work outside of normal hours. Human resources may take the lead in promoting the need for a good work-life balance in order to avoid burnout. In this respect, measures such as a cut-off time for work, a weekends-off policy, and flexible workdays policy that prioritize outcomes over several working hours may be a wise HR practice.
Compensation, bonuses, and rewards all contribute to your employees’ sense of recognition and appreciation. It is one of the significant worldwide HR practices to follow. Outstanding employees deserve exceptional rewards. Fair remuneration encourages individuals to maintain their excellence in the job and even outperform their previous performance.
Your compensation plan should consider the employee’s skills, the value they add to your business, and competitive pressures. By strategizing pay packages that are superior to the ordinary competition, you can retain people and support the organization’s continuing development.
As the world gets more complicated and connected, it’s vital to hear out a variety of perspectives voiced by employees from different cultural backgrounds. Effective practices such as a culturally diverse senior management team and the use of AI to select applicants based on their talents may eradicate recruiting biases that seep into the hiring process.
Data-driven decision-making can transform the efficiency of company processes, and HR is no exception. Investing in human resource software, as offered by Engagedly performance review software, enables the creation of customized performance metrics over time and across departments. It also provides deep insights into trends, such as attrition rate, promotion/transfer rates, and employee mood. This data may be utilized to make efficient recruiting, training, and culture-related choices.
The epidemic has emphasized more than ever how precarious life is. The approach of doing business as usual is no longer suitable in this context. Human resources may take the lead in building an empathetic culture in which workers are respected and heard as individuals rather than as contributors.
For the year 2022, specific HR practices must be followed in order to simplify workflow and align your workforce with the company’s goal and vision. If an organization focuses on human resource best practices and efficiently implements the aforementioned trending practices, it may cause increased employee retention and happiness.
Engagedly offers a suite of HR tools to assist you in automating global recruiting operations, adhering to applicable rules and regulations, managing employee activities, and regulating worldwide payroll. The best aspect being, these critical operations may now be managed from a single platform.
Want to know how Engagedly can help you mange your remote employees better? Request us for a demo.
