HR Teams are a Critical Partnership
As much as we all favor our respective Human Resource Management disciplines it’s time to give credit where credit is due. They are ALL critical to the success of an organization particularly in todays staffing environment where companies are clamoring to attract and retain the best and the brightest talent to meet their business objectives. No matter how technically efficient a company becomes there is no greater asset to a company than its human capital when it comes to managing the efficiency.
As we all know, humans like to be motivated, appreciated, and paid. Building loyalty, trust, and engagement among employees is not an endeavor to be compartmentalized. It takes a comprehensive HR team partnership representing Recruiting, Benefits & Compensation, and Human Resources to do it successfully. The absence of one of these HR partners makes the team less effective and the employee experience becomes marginalized.
Recruiting, Where The Employee Experience Begins
In 2015, filing a job cost an average of $4,000 and took an average of 52 days.[1] Making it necessary for employers to explore ways to proactively optimize recruiting practices and focus on retention, so that changing jobs is not the fastest way to a promotion, more compensation, better benefits, or better working conditions.
The recruitment process is an employee’s first opportunity to form an opinion of a company. Candidates that have a negative experience during the recruiting phase of their experience will never forget it. It can cloud their perception of all other experiences going forward. Recruiting functions to ensure that the right people are being staffed in the right positions based on their abilities and the expressed needs of the company and hiring manager. The efficiency and viability of any company starts with attracting that right talent. Therefore, the recruiting process plays a crucial role in the success of a company. How well they are able to source, screen, assess, and move prospective talent through a complicated process can have a significant impact on a company’s ability to do business efficiently and profitably.
The Impact of Benefits & Compensation
Compensation is the employer’s way of expressing how they feel about the worth and value of the employee and the position. It typically refers to salary, or the financial compensation agreed upon between the employee and employer for the job.
Benefits are in most cases considered a non-financial form of compensation offered in addition to salary. Employees today are motivated and incentivized as much by benefits as they are by salary. Trends show they are often more interested in the total value of their compensation and benefits and extra perks vs. salary. A company’s ability to meet the demand for comprehensive compensation or an attractive Total Rewards package that include extra perks or ‘fringe benefits” is key to remaining competitive and attractive to todays talent pool. A solid employee centric collaborative partnership between Recruiting and Compensation & Benefits is key to identifying how best to appeal candidates.
Human Resources, Maintaining Engagement
We’ve hired the right talent in the right role, with an agreeable compensation package, but there’s still work to be done. There are many reasons why an employee may be motivated to call a company home – the opportunity for greater upward mobility, opportunities for learning and development, or greater compensation and benefits – are just a few examples. A strategic Human Resources team is one that is perpetually assessing their employee community, reviewing turnover metrics, and conducting a review of the market to identify innovative ways to engage and retain their talent which directly correlate to decreased turnover cost, lower absenteeism and an increase in overall revenue. Companies with employee engagement programs achieve 26% greater year-over-year increase in annual company revenue, compared to those who do not have formal programs. [2]
An HR team that works collaboratively to anticipate and understand the needs of employees before the recruiting process begins are more likely to attract engaged committed talent to the workplace; which is essential to business success.
[1] Talent Acquisition Factbook 2015, Bersin by Deloitte, April 2015
[2] Gallup daily tracking, January 2016