An organization’s HR department faces multiple HR tasks daily, like recruiting new employees, retaining and engaging existing ones, and providing up-to-date training and benefits—all while maintaining compliance. All this is easier said than done and HR problems commonly arise. Luckily, HR professionals have access to tools and techniques that can help solve a variety of human resources issues.
Compliance: Navigate Laws and Regulations
The Issue: The list of compliance laws and regulations is a mile long. The U.S. Department of Labor (DOL) sets standards for worker treatment under the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA). Employers must pay workers at least the minimum wage for all hours worked, as well as time and a half for overtime, while keeping detailed records. Aside from the FLSA, government contractors must comply with standards set by the Office of Federal Contract Compliance Programs (OFCCP) including developing an Affirmative Action Plan (AAP) and keeping detailed records for all applicants and hires. The challenge lies in the fact that your HR team not only has to make sure they are following the rules, they have to track and updates and ensure all job postings include the required wording. If done manually, compliance can take a huge amount of time and lead to costly errors.
The Solution: The right applicant tracking software (ATS) will automate many of the hiring compliance procedures HR professionals need to follow. It should include a voluntary self-identification questionnaire for AAP reporting, track good faith recruiting efforts, store all candidate information and update all required forms like W-9s. HR software should also automatically include any EEO taglines in job postings, ensuring they’re never accidentally forgotten. Once hired, a time tracking solution will ensure your employees are always paid every dollar they’ve earned, including overtime.
Recruiting the Best Talent
The Issue: Recruiting candidates requires a lot of work including evaluating what skills and qualifications are necessary for the position, developing an accurate job description, advertising to the right candidates and sorting through applicant resumes. All this occurs before the interview stage even begins. And if you didn’t get a good pool of qualified applicants, you must start the entire process all over again.
The Solution: An ATS enables you to not only organize your recruiting tactics across multiple channels, but also helps reduce risks and stay compliant. Automating these manual processes allows recruiting and hiring managers to spend more time with top candidates and less time with paperwork. An ATS that can track and group applicants based on skills and qualifications can streamline and significantly expedite the hiring process. Adding interview questions like, “How would you handle a situation when…” or “What would you do if…” helps search out candidates with the core competencies you’re hiring for.
Employee Retention
The Issue: Losing an employee, whether by termination or resignation, can cost employers about $4,000 to hire a new employee. The costs are associated with recruiting, hiring and training a new employee plus any overtime paid to workers covering their workload. There are other hidden costs to turnover as well. Overall team morale, as well as your company culture, can suffer as well. When employees start walking out the door, or are terminated, the ones that remain can get disengaged and start looking for work elsewhere.
The Solution: Start employees off with a strong onboarding process. Only 12% of employees strongly agree their organization does a good job of onboarding. An effective onboarding process is your best tool to get employees on the job quickly and efficiently, encouraging engagement right from the start. A good onboarding process ensures employees know exactly what to expect working for your organization. It should outline job requirements, goals and company policies and procedures. A good working environment can be reinforced through additional tactics such as:
- Offering competitive pay. Research what the competition is paying so the relationship can start strong. Compensation management software automates the process by giving employees raises and bonuses based on your structure. Compensation can include pay raises, one-time cash bonuses and profit sharing.
- Scheduling social time for employees. Institute practices that allow employees to have fun at work to build camaraderie, increase productivity and inspire loyalty. Even if you’re meeting virtually, build-in time to play games or share funny stories.
- Allowing employees time to volunteer. Employees find value in employers who give back to the community and those employees are 13 times more likely to look forward to coming to work. Give employees time off to volunteer during the day.
- Holding regular performance reviews. Performance reviews that are held quarterly, semi-annually and annually give managers the ability to help employees be better at their jobs. Measuring performance lets the employee set goals, understand what’s expected of them and even offer rewards for meeting their goals. A performance management system helps simplify the process by offering DIY evaluation forms, 360-degree feedback and easy goal monitoring.
Workplace Diversity
The Issue: Your workplace lacks diversity. It only hires the same type of people with the same ideas. The problem is it could be illegal, especially if you don’t have valid reasons for rejecting candidates who are women or people of color. Racism can continue to exist as a subtle undercurrent in our society—even when the most well-meaning among us aren’t aware of it. Therefore, we can’t just coast along and assume that if we don’t do anything bad, then the problem will just go away. A lack of diversity can also stifle your company’s ability to be creative and innovative.
The Solution: Start looking in new places to find a more diverse pool of candidates. Reach out to job boards that target minorities, ask your minority employees for referrals and make prominent mention of your company’s attitude toward inclusion in your job postings. A good ATS can help widen your search by having access to a wide range of job boards. An employee referral program that is well-communicated to employees, easy to access, simple to participate in, and clear about expectations and outcomes, will help to encourage more diverse referrals. Improving workplace diversity also requires creating a company culture that more inclusive.
- Train managers and employees on diversity and inclusivity. Create an ongoing diversity group and allow anyone to join. Train the group on language or behavior that should be called out as racist or intolerant. Your managers and staff should be able to identify and address these acts on the spot.
- Include inclusion in your company initiatives. Leadership needs to push inclusiveness and equality in the workplace. As inclusion can only be measured by feeling, leadership needs to set the tone for a working environment where each individual feels safe, valued, accepted, respected and supported. Announce a zero-tolerance policy for works or actions that harass or bully others or dismiss minority points of view.
Overcoming Software Issues
The Issue: Your HR software is slow and clumsy. It doesn’t update like it should or automate the processes that slow down your HR department. HR software that is time consuming and lacks mobile capabilities will likely cause many candidates to drop off the application process without finishing. According to CareerBuilder, candidates want to finish the process in 10 minutes or less. And current employees won’t use HR software if they can’t access it on their phones or if it requires them to jump through hurdles to accomplish tasks like clocking in and out or accessing benefits. Another HR software issue to contend with is being stuck with a system that your company has quickly outgrown.
The Solution: A good applicant tracking system automates recruitment processes so you have time to plan, keep up on trends, initiate new HR programs and enhance your company’s culture. A recruiting AI assistant can even handle screening candidates and setting up interviews so you only have to deal with quality candidates. Other modular HR solutions, including onboarding, performance management and compensation management, can complete the picture by giving your employees a simplified experience that puts them in control of their personal information. Not only will employees be able to input their own data, eliminating errors, but it will save your HR department time as well.
If you don’t currently have HR software, now is the time to upgrade. Manual processes that still use paper are not only slower than digital but they’re a security and compliance risk. Your employees’ data is full of sensitive information that with a manual, unsecured process could easily get lost into the wrong hands. Plus, there are compliance issues to consider like the Affordable Care Act and government contractors that need to adhere to EEO and OFCCP guidelines. A modular system like Arcoro’s has the ability to scale with your company so you’re only appealing to your CEO and CFO once for the investment.
Training & Compliance
The Issue: Employees aren’t excited to sit through mandatory training sessions, like sexual harassment prevention training. The content isn’t engaging, so no one participates and you can’t validate that everyone has taken the training or signed off on it.
The Solution: A learning management system allows your employees to complete training whenever and wherever is convenient for them. A mobile solution gives employees the ability to complete required training, like sexual harassment prevention, and update certifications from their mobile devices or computers 24/7. Arcoro’s LMS allows companies to upload custom content so you can deliver training programs that appeal to everyone. Compliance is ensured by mandating your employees have signed off on completed sessions. Plus, maintaining OSHA compliance is second nature with approved courses and automatic updates.
Compensation & Benefits
The Issue: You’re losing employees to the competition at an alarming rate. Your HR department is too swamped with open enrollment and making updates to employees’ personal circumstances to track when an employee has met a milestone. Your benefits process is also riddled with errors due to manually inputting employee data, putting you at risk to meet deadlines and maintain compliance.
The Solution: Automate both compensation and benefits management processes with modular solutions. Arcoro’s Compensation Management module works in conjunction with Arcoro Core HR or Performance Management to manage and automate merit increases and bonuses used to reward and retain high-performing employees. When employees meet configurable benchmarks within the Performance Management module, income or bonus increases are automatically calculated and reflected in the employee’s compensation.
The Core HR module connects Compensation Management to outside payroll systems for a seamless overall compensation process. Arcoro’s Benefits Management module gives employees access to their personal information, allowing them to update and view benefits at any time. It also gives administrators, managers and employees access to crucial documents during open enrollment. Built-in compliance features not only make ACA compliance automatic but establishes rules-based eligibility, so employees only see the benefits they’re eligible for.
Human resource management is a tough job. Arcoro’s HR solutions can make it easier.
[blog_post_cta]
