What’s your HR strategy? 5 best practices
People work with people. And human resources (HR) assures quality when it comes to staffing. You entrust this vital role to entice top talent to work for you, onboarding them correctly, keep them happy, address their concerns, and develop their potential.
Virtually every part of the customer’s experience with a technology company involves a human interaction, either directly or indirectly. So hiring right matters!
From Product Development to Field Services, people are key to accomplishing desired outcomes, even in areas that are efficiently automated. Employees have a significant influence on operations, at every level, and the execution of best-practice processes in every area of your business.
The automation and consistency of the human resource component is, therefore, a critical, foundational piece to success.
Whats Your HR Strategy 5 Best Practices
Here are five ways to ensure you’re recruiting and retaining the right people:
1. Always keep talent on standby
Whether you need them immediately or not, search for great talent. Interview them, get to know them, and keep nurturing the relationship so that when you have an opening, it gets filled with the best talent. For easy reference, keep a database of all talent.
Tip: Want to jump-start your database? Good talent tends to attract more good talent. Consider instituting an employee referral program, where referring employees receive an incentive if their referral gets the job.
2. Invest in developing your people
As stated above, employee value should appreciate with time. Invest in your employees strategically to reap the reward that pays off now—and for years to come. Sending employees to platform-specific training, covering certification fees, and sponsoring them to go to industry events are all great ways to do this.
Tip: If money is tight, and you can’t send employees to industry conferences, consider instead covering a local membership to a relevant professional association or offer to assist in paying for online classes.
3. Onboard like your life depends on it
You only get one chance to onboard a staff member and set the expectations, standards, and culture. Habits are created in the first 48 hours; get it right! Make sure newbies have the tools and knowledge they need to be successful.
Tip: A well-planned onboarding guide can help you remember what to cover.
4. Retain top talent
It’s easier and far more cost effective to invest in the retention of your staff than it is to rehire, retrain, and realign a new staff member. You can accomplish retention by creating and promoting a positive culture, developing skills, and keeping employees happy. Offering constructive feedback, good benefits, career pathing, and meaningful raises are all great ways to keep employees satisfied.
Tip: Consider launching a flexible work arrangement for top performers for example. 9 times out of 10, they’re already working from home. Sanctioning it lets other employees know it’s a privilege that can be earned. It could be enough to make them turn down someone else’s offer.
5. Clearly communicate performance expectations
To have outstanding performance, you first need to set expectations, define goals, and empower a colleague to perform a role. High performance will only be reached when this level of clarity is present, and combined with key performance indicators (KPIs) that are attainable and agreed upon.
Tip: ConnectWise Manage® can help you manage and report on KPI expectations, so everyone always knows precisely how they’re tracking.
Expectations, goals, and performance all need to be set and tracked. The data then needs to be used to identify HR opportunities. Findings could indicate that an employee needs more training or that an employee should be rewarded. Either way, HR needs to know, so they can act accordingly and continue to develop strong employee-retention programs.