Human Resources Blog - Spark Hire

5 Tips for Running a Successful HR Department

A well-run human resource department helps you to operate your business efficiently. It is a vital part of any company, as it helps with settling disputes, recruiting, and training employees, making sure the company complies with labor laws. It also manages the organization’s relationship with employees, keeping records, and creating payrolls and benefits. Without the human resource department, companies would not be able to meet the needs of its employees and management. This department maintains the culture of the company and grows your business. The work done by this department is cumbersome, so employing strategies and processes will help streamline its operations.

Encourage Employee Feedback

Since the HR department is responsible for the welfare of your employees, allowing your employees to present their ideas, worries, and issues gives you vital information. When you listen and understand your employees, a conducive working environment will be established, and productivity will go up as you retain your best employees.

An anonymous feedback system encourages your employees to speak up without fear of suffering negative consequences. An open-door policy also ensures employees can freely visit the HR team to discuss anything ranging from personnel issues to their goals. When employees are free to communicate, the company will quickly discover where they need to focus their energy. 

Communication is key to the success of any company. Regular meetings are another strategy you can employ to encourage your employees to speak and share their feedback. Form a habit of taking feedback positively, even when you do not agree with an employee’s views or suggestions.

Embrace Technology

When it comes to running an efficient HR department, HR technology is one of your greatest assets. There are plenty of tools that help companies automate and streamline this department, save you precious time, increase efficiency, communication, and save money. Some of these tools focus on automating the hiring process, signing documents electronically, among other areas. 

Technology also helps you to manage and retain your employees, reward them, and even conduct performance reviews using various software. Technology also eliminates or reduces manual work in the HR department, and this goes a long way in ensuring that it runs smoothly.

You should also purchase software to generate pay stub information and payrolls and ensure that data storage and completion of operations are done from one location. This will minimize internal mistakes, simplify intricate procedures, and maximize output. Automating HR processes leaves the team with enough time to take care of the employees.

Create an Employee Handbook

An employee handbook eases the work of the HR department. Employees find the policies, objectives, procedures, benefits, and guidelines of the company in the manual; hence they do not have to keep rushing to the department for answers. It also helps new employees to gain an understanding of the company policies, values, and mission. Although the process of creating one is tedious, its benefits are gratifying. This book promotes transparency, averts misunderstandings and conflicts, and provides a reference point to what the company expects of its employees. It also indicates the correct dress code, explains the culture in the company, and the compliance with the laws and regulations.

The handbook also lists managers who employees can turn to in case of violations at work; however, the guide should not replace the entire department. Ensure that besides having the handbook, your employees have access to the HR department to air their concerns, seek clarification, and ask questions.

Go Paperless

In this era, going paperless is no longer a choice; cloud solutions not only make the operations of the HR department run smoothly but also eco-friendly. Your HR employees should not spend hours retrieving a file they can get from a click of a button. Using paper also means the team will have to spend many hours filling, organizing documents and uploading them to the computer. A paperless office also saves on space, money, and boosts the security of sensitive information. However, Make sure you create a backup of your documents externally to protect your company from threats like malware, Trojans, denial of service attacks, among others.

Formulate a Working Strategy

You cannot run an HR department without a well thought plan and strategies. Come up with indicates of activities like hiring, conducting employee assessments, employee retention, and maintaining the office culture. Also, create a mission statement to govern the department. The strategy explains the role of the HR department in the company and contributions to the firm’s growth. The plan needs to be innovative, flexible and aligned to the goals and the vision of the company. The department will use these strategies to improve the performance in the company by determining what the company needs, and improve the weaknesses of employees.

If the HR department is running efficiently and its members happy, the energy they resonate with will spread to the other departments. This will boost the overall performance of your employees.    

About the Author

Robert CordrayRobert Cordray is a former business consultant and entrepreneur with over 20 years of experience and a wide variety of knowledge in multiple areas of the industry such as corporate leadership, employee engagement, workplace culture and entrepreneurship. Robert earned a Bachelor of Business Administration (BBA) from the University of Chicago. He currently resides in the Southern California area and spends his time helping consumers and business owners alike try to be successful. When he’s not reading or writing, he’s most likely with his beautiful wife and three children.

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