A quick search on LinkedIn will show that businesses are at their most experimental when it comes to understanding employee needs as a puzzle piece to overall business growth. Companies now understand that their HR teams can play a larger role in employee efficiency with a deliberate overhaul (or at least tweaking) of traditional HR processes.
In this post, we’ll show you how your HR teams can approach process improvement in HR workflows in four steps.
With plenty of examples and use cases mentioned here, your HR team will have an excellent starting point for understanding how HR software can specifically align HR processes with employee welfare and organizational goals.
What is HR Process Improvement?
Human Resource Process Improvement is the investment in employee well-being and efficiency by tweaking HR processes. This process improvement leads to higher employee engagement and retention, workforce productivity, and enhanced work-life balance.
Why Should HR Embrace Process Improvement?
HR process improvement directly leads to better employee experience. And when HR creates a positive work environment for its employees, the organization is 1.3 times more likely to outperform.
HR process improvement is continuous, leading to myriad long-term business benefits, including cost savings through a streamlined hiring process, efficiency due to hiring top talent, and a stable group of employees due to low attrition.
Employee expectations now go beyond the compensation package. They want to be involved in business decision-making and have higher expectations related to work flexibility and upskilling. HR process improvement that consistently focuses on these factors will allow you to align your organizational goals with human resource practices.
Common challenges faced by HR departments
When you are looking for gaps and opportunities for improvement in your HR processes, look out for these common challenges HR departments face, regardless of the industry you operate in:
- Non-automated tasks that can quickly be done by AI tools but take away too many hours if done manually
- Siloed HR systems, leading to poor coordination and communication or duplicated data
- Data inaccuracies due to poor data collection processes or haphazard data analysis
- Compliance issues, as HR is responsible for collecting a lot of data for the hiring process and storing information about current employees, they need to fulfill various data privacy requirements.
The above challenges exacerbate issues in seeking, interviewing, recruiting, and onboarding talented employees.
Performance management and payroll also become burdensome. For example, if HR takes a month to verify the references of the person the company wants to hire or delays sending the offer letter, the potential hire may move on.
For current employees, a weak HR process could cause issues with payroll, chaotic appraisal processes, or the inability to address employee concerns regarding the work environment.
Benefits of Optimizing HR Processes
While the overall challenges of HR processes can be chalked up to other external causes, the following benefits can be sustained with improved HR processes:
Improved operational efficiency and productivity
HR’s productivity would improve if redundancies were removed through the HR process. An example is having conflicting policies that were written at different points in time and never consolidated and having to mediate issues based on these incongruous rules.
Also, wouldn’t it be helpful if your HR department did not have to manually collect and compile employee data during appraisal season?
At the recruitment level, the process of building a job description should be optimized. Finally, for payroll, it is vital to have structured, clearly classified pay increase plans. If payroll issues occur due to human error, the business may face lawsuits.
Enhanced employee experience and engagement
An engaged employee will be more involved at the job due to, among other things, frictionless policies that allow them to take leave easily, get paid on time without hiccups, and do their tasks without unnecessary hoops in place due to HR.
An optimized HR process which, for example, promptly communicates to potential hires a clear offer letter and contract with all the required details, such as office address, timings, and other policies, will set a great first impression. Self-service portals for leaves that allow employees to apply for leaves without having to draft long emails each time will also be something that they will appreciate.
Since HR process improvement rests on the foundation of transparency, communication, and flexibility, which are also the tenets of employee engagement, tweaking your HR process will give you the long-term benefit of satisfied employees and higher retention rates.
Improved compliance and risk management
When it comes to compliance with regulations, an optimized process with guardrails and specifications will help significantly. Built-in controls or checklists to improve risk management could include:
- Setting automated reminders for paperwork and submissions related to tax, insurance, quality check inspections, intellectual property licenses, etc.
- Subscribing to legal newsletters such as SHRM, with a focus on industry-specific regulations, employment laws, data privacy laws, and other government websites to stay updated on changes.
- Updating the employee handbook and personnel files regularly with a checklist based on an assessment of modifications that usually come up, such as accommodations, promotion practices, etc.
- Reviewing other P&P documentation for additions and updates every quarter
A Step-by-Step Approach to HR Process Improvement
With so many moving pieces, HR process improvement can be overwhelming. You can break down the complex of HR process improvement in the following four steps:
Step 1: Identify areas for improvement
Since you cannot fix what you don’t know is inefficient, step 1 involves getting a 360-degree view of business bottlenecks and HR gaps. Your HR should run an inclusive feedback process to build a “draft” document containing inputs from all HR staff, executives, department heads, managers, and employees.
Condense all the feedback into a list of goals framed in one line (“I want to improve ______”). Reassess the list based on the Eisenhower Matrix to prioritize these areas of improvement. Then, use the Iceberg Model to find the root cause of gaps. These thinking and brainstorming models can take the guesswork out of the process.
Step 2: Analyze and map existing processes
After identifying ‘what’ (needs to be fixed), you need to understand the ‘how’ in its current state, that is, the current workflows at play.
Thinking tools such as value stream mapping (the flow of information required from the first stage of sourcing raw material to the final step of giving the product to the customer) and swim lane diagrams (identifying work processes and people responsible for each part of the process) give you a granular perspective of your current systems, and identifying barriers becomes easier.
A few common ones are operational costs, error rates, and cycle times. This will constitute your baseline. Now, when you bring in experts who specialize in process improvement, they will have a preliminary idea of how your business currently operates.
Step 3: Develop and implement improvement solutions
Pick from a range of methodologies for process improvements and adapt them to the goals and areas of HR improvements identified in Step 1.
Total Quality Management (TQM) is a popular solution that empowers your employees by making them systematically involved stakeholders in the improvement process through experimentation. The goal of TQM is customer satisfaction with an organization’s daily operations and products. To adapt it to HR process improvement, your goal can be employee satisfaction.
Other examples include the PDCA cycle, that is, the Plan. Do, Check, Act process that creates a loop of improvement initiatives based on constant iterations.
When trying any methodology, gauge potential impact through a test run before rolling out the solution across the board, and ensure stakeholders from various departments are involved so that the solution is not being developed in a silo.
Step 4: Monitor, measure, and continuously improve
The final step is to track the progress of your solutions and iterate as problems or opportunities for scaling appear. When your solutions are tied to a time frame, growth KPI, and feedback mechanism, going through the steps to revise your solution becomes more effortless.
Leveraging Technology for HR Process Improvement
A strong tech stack will make HR process improvement easier to implement and scale. Once you have identified an area of improvement, bring in the relevant AI tool to execute the changes:
HR software and automation tools
Human Resource Information Systems (HRIS) support HR functions by automating core administrative processes. Here are some use cases for HR software and systems:
- Productivity monitoring, wherein you are not just tracking employee hours, you are also tracking their engagement levels.
- Calculating work leave and shift schedules based on historical calculations and other factors you input to help with leave management.
- Rounding integrated personnel data on a unified platform to help calculate appraisals and assist in performance reviews.
- Providing real-time insights of every agent, employee, and contractor who is a part of the organization to help with employee data management.
HR systems that are accessible through mobile apps and other devices and do not have a complicated UI will elevate the effectiveness of the above use cases.
Integration and data management
Your talent management department knows about your employees’ successful projects, the payroll team knows when the next appraisal is due, and the finance team knows if the employee has cashed in their paycheque yet. An AI tool needs all this information to give relevant recommendations for process improvement, so you need to ensure the data is provided efficiently and consistently.
You can do this by following classic data management rules, such as implementing data quality checks, ensuring secure access control, and integrating data in real-time.
Building a Culture of Continuous Improvement
The most apparent sign of employee buy-in is that they are willing to participate in HR process improvement. For continuous improvement with input from employees, you need to build an environment and culture of transparency while also creating an attitude of ownership towards HR processes.
Engaging employees and stakeholders
Do employees notice that the new hire is unable to adjust? They should be trained enough to spot this and help HR develop support mechanisms for that new hire and future employees.
Colleagues are looking for flexible work options while they care for an ailing parent, but there’s no provision. The leadership should ensure the HR rulebook is updated quickly rather than treating it as a one-off case.
Other examples of HR improvement processes that lead to engaged employees include clean and straightforward onboarding, championing the company’s values through HR initiatives (such as offering paid time off to volunteer if community building is a core value), allowing remote work, and putting in place accommodations for employees’ mental health.
Developing a continuous improvement mindset
Executing improvements as a one-time act does not take businesses far.
The goal is to ensure incremental improvements over a long period systematically and consistently. One way to do that is to appoint a team of process improvement experts whose sole task is to drive HR process improvement. If that is not viable, provide your current HR team with learning opportunities, such as sponsoring their certification in HRIS and holding workshops on process methodologies.
You can also incentivize employees to contribute to process improvement strategies.
Aligning HR processes with organizational goals
An HR process that seems at odds with overall organizational goals is like having a rogue HR team. Here’s how you can build synergy:
- An optimized HR process for hiring and onboarding meets the organizational goal of workforce planning. This includes drafting structured and accurate job descriptions to capture the interest of potential hires, automated recruitment rockets to streamline the hiring process and an easy-to-implement onboarding process.
- HR’s well-equipped talent management and development strategy will help meet organizational goals related to increased productivity and engagement and, as a result, boost customer satisfaction.
- A document and data management system by HR would align with the organization’s goal of becoming a data leader.
Alignment between organizational goals/initiatives and HR processes will lead to continuous improvement.
How To Improve HR Processes with Teramind
Teramind is a leading productivity monitoring and business process optimization platform. Here’s how you can use Teramind to improve your HR processes:
- Boost Efficiency with Automated Tracking: Teramind’s automated monitoring features streamline HR processes by providing real-time insights into employee activities, helping HR teams manage performance and productivity with minimal manual effort.
- Optimize Talent Management: Gain actionable data from Teramind’s comprehensive analytics to better understand employee strengths and weaknesses, allowing for more informed decisions on training, development, and team alignment.
- Ensure Compliance with Ease: Leverage Teramind’s robust compliance tools to automatically enforce company policies and industry regulations, reducing the risk of non-compliance and ensuring a consistent and fair workplace.
- Enhance Employee Engagement: Use Teramind’s feedback and performance metrics to identify and address potential issues proactively, fostering a more engaged and motivated workforce while improving overall job satisfaction.
FAQs
How can HR processes be improved?
HR processes can be improved by leveraging technology to automate repetitive tasks, streamlining communication channels, and implementing regular feedback mechanisms. Additionally, utilizing data analytics can help identify inefficiencies and enhance decision-making, ultimately fostering a more agile and responsive HR environment.
What are the 7 HR processes?
The seven essential HR processes include recruitment and selection, onboarding, performance management, employee development, compensation and benefits, compliance, and offboarding. Each process is critical in ensuring effective workforce management, aligning HR functions with organizational goals, and enhancing employee engagement and satisfaction. Optimizing these processes through technology and data-driven strategies can significantly improve overall HR efficiency.
What is the continuous improvement process in HR?
The continuous improvement process in HR involves regularly assessing and enhancing HR practices to increase efficiency and effectiveness. This includes gathering employee feedback, analyzing data for insights, and implementing changes that align with organizational goals, thereby fostering an agile HR environment that adapts to evolving needs.
What are the five stages of process improvement?
The five stages of process improvement are defining the current process, measuring its performance, analyzing data to identify inefficiencies, improving the process through targeted changes, and controlling the new process to ensure sustained improvement. This structured approach helps HR teams enhance efficiency and align their functions with organizational goals.
Conclusion
As the way of doing business changes, a company can keep up by continuously updating and improving its processes to ensure that it has the right talent and is treating its employees in a way that maximizes efficiency and productivity without burning through the business budget.
