In our previous post, we’ve discussed how simple financial issues can escalate to bigger problems that can impact your business growth. That said, while it’s true that the overall performance of the company reflects on its financial health, its stability and future growth rely on another fundamental aspect – People.

It’s impossible to find a business who have no issues with their human resources. From meeting recruitment needs to manage employees’ performance, business owners – especially those who own SMBs – faces a lot of challenges on a daily basis. The thing is, a single oversight on these issues can lead to problems that might cost you money, and even your business.

To help you out, we will present in this post the top issues concerning human resources as well as the ways to solve them.

Attracting and Retaining Top Talents

With the changing demographics of today’s workforce, more and more companies are struggling to find and attract brilliant minds into their business. In fact, statistics show that 65% of recruiters claim talent shortage is the biggest challenge in hiring.

Small business owners, who often operate in shoestring budget, also reported difficulties in hiring. In fact, 52% of SMBs reported scarcity or lack of qualified applicants for their open positions. But that’s just the tip of the iceberg. After the HR successfully sourced and employed new talent, their duty of retaining these talents starts, where the majority of the problems occur.

Solution:

Having an effective recruitment process partnered with an HR software is the best way to address hiring issues on your business. By having the right tools, you’ll be able to create an attractive presence in the digital world that will surely entice potential talents for your business. But aside from right tools, you also need to establish the right process, such as having effective employee engagement plan.

Employee engagement often includes ensuring career development, collaborative work environment, and remuneration and incentives. By fostering a culture of diversity, transparency, support of social issues, inclusive hiring practices, and progressive motivational recognition, you will surely attract and retain the best talent in your company.

Developing Leaders

In our previous post, we discussed how important it is to recruit and develop talented people so the company that you have established will still thrive after you retire in the future. Creating future leaders is one of the most challenging strategic initiatives for business owners, but it’s a crucial step in ensuring the future of the business.

Solution:

There’ll be no leaders if there are no teams. By establishing teams across different areas of your business, you allow your employees to step up and generate new ideas. You can support this type of initiative by funding administrative support services, as well as training programs, cross-training, educational opportunities, certification programs and chances to lead special projects.

Establishing Value-Driven Corporate Culture

As stated earlier, maintaining positive company culture is essential in attracting and keep talents in your business. Many of today’s biggest companies focus on fostering unique company culture since it can affect not only the loyalty of their employees to their company but also their productivity and morale. However, more companies don’t prioritise their company culture – let alone understand their own culture. In fact, fewer than 12% of companies believe they truly understand their culture, according to a research by Deloitte.

Solution:

You don’t have to prepare fancy trips for your employees to establish a healthy company culture. This can be done by fostering open communication and active engagement between the management and the employees. Depending on your industry, engagement can mean supporting community-based programs, participating in government initiatives, or starting company-sponsored programs that promote work-life balance.

Ensuring Health and Safety

Regardless of the nature of your business, you are required to collect and maintain records about professional qualifications and health status of your employees. Health and safety records ensure your employees’ safety while doing their assignment within or outside your business preferences.

If one of your people got into a work-related accident, you have to present to the authorities these documents to prove that you’ve done all the precautionary measures. Otherwise, failure to present these proofs will put your business at risk of legal ramifications and indemnities.

Solution:

To mitigate such problems, you need to ensure accurate records of courses and seminars attended, documents issued, other documents specific to health and safety legislation that your business does as a usual practice.

Measuring HR Performance

Determining the effectiveness of your HR operations is part of the strategic process, which is why it’s not obvious that ranks among the top HR challenges you’ll face in your business.

However, it’s surprising how many companies don’t measure the results of their efforts quantitatively, and even fewer measure their results based on how HR policies affect the business workforce regularly. In fact, the same report stated above from Deloitte states that 64% of companies only measure employee engagement once a year.

Solution:

Aside from having the right HR Tools, measuring HR performance involves a two-pronged approach that includes using subjective assessments into the decision-making such as considering employee potential, identifying candidates for training and development, and planning succession management strategy. It’s also critical to assess if the HR policies align with the company’s long-term goals. Doing so will help you improve areas in your HR that will sustain the future growth of your business.

By having the right strategy and approach, you can achieve a more effective and efficient HR operations and workforce. If you want to learn more about how Business Coaches Sydney can help you with the challenges you are facing in your workforce, as well as on other areas of your business, contact us today at 1300 833 574 or send an email to info@businesscoachessydney.com.au