In the fast paced modern business world HR Departments have never been under so much pressure to process higher volumes of work, provide a greater breadth of service and balance day to day transactional work with proactive strategic work.
Little wonder many HR Departments struggle to keep up with demands from businesses and in many cases are barely able to deal with transactional case work to a consistent high quality standard, let alone work in a proactive and strategic way.
Common problems encountered tend to be; lack of resources and / or multiple skills in the department; HR and Payroll systems which are not “fit for purpose”, lack of flexibility, little available time to problem solve or be proactive; line managers who still expect HR to deal with their people issues; HR not understood by the business and administrative processes which consume huge amounts of time and resource.
There are, however, a number of “best in class” measures that an HR Department can adopt to provide an efficient, customer focussed function that works with the business as an “internal customer”. And this doesn’t necessarily require additional staff, money or time.
The following practical tools have been developed over a number of years working across many HR Departments in different business sectors and organisations. Some or all of these steps can be employed to make a significant impact on HR service delivery.
Where is your HR department currently? (Diagnostic)
Take the time to ask your HR team where the bottlenecks and problems are and what the possible solutions might be.
Speak to your customers, i.e line managers, employees and suppliers and gain their feedback on the quality of service they perceive they are receiving and what could be done to improve them or expand them. Run internal HR customer satisfaction surveys.
Review your HR technology and systems against the original specifications and see if there are any functions you could make better use of.
Clarify what type and level of service HR will provide to the business. In light of this, do the job roles, current skill levels and structure of the HR function fully support this?
How efficient are you at delivering your service? (Processes & Measurements)
Review all your processes, forms, documents, letters, filing & storage systems and process map your employee life cycle activities, both as it is and as it should be, and use this opportunity to eradicate duplication, non value added activities, overly long or complex processes & areas of high concentrations of time.
Ensure you have quality and corporate governance processes in place.
Assign clear areas of responsibility to each member of the HR team and ensure all members of the HR team understand where responsibility and accountabilities lie with team members.
Put in place regular processes and systems for listening to the “voice of the customer” and obtaining feedback on the quality of service and new opportunities for providing additional services.
Use the “in house” experts in I.T. or HR systems people to develop and enhance existing technology.
Develop performance measures for both the HR Department and for service provided to the business.
These should include: mix and volume of work received in the department, time spent on tasks, accuracy levels, skill levels of team members, and turnaround time of work processing.
How effectively does HR work with the business? (culture)
Define who your customers are and in what ways do they access your services.
Ensure all members of the HR team understand “good customer service” and check to make sure all the systems, processes, documentation which customer’s access are “user friendly”.
Set up regular forums and opportunities to engage with your customers to share information and have quality discussions around service improvement areas.
Educate and up skill your line managers to become effective people managers and to understand the importance of working to processes and procedures to enhance the quality of service to them. Place part of the accountability for effective service provision on your customers in providing timely, complete and accurate information.
How well do you harness technology to provide your services? (systems)
Ensure the systems your customers use are intuitive and user friendly.
Automate your processes as much as possible.
Ask your customers what management data would enhance their ability to manage business better and produce regular people and business dashboards which are easy to understand. These might include, cost of recruitment, sick pay costs, lost time rate and FTE days lost.
Introduce Employee and Management self service wherever possible, to automate leave applications, learning event requests, vacancy applications, and to provide a virtual HR office for employees.
How effectively does HR sell & market its services & successes to the business? (communication)
Ensure there is a clear HR strategy and/or action plan linked to the Business Strategy. Communicate this to the business. Present a clear case for HR in the business.
Proactively seek out and engage with key stakeholders. Understand their issues and concerns and proactively find ways to achieve quick wins.
Pilot initiatives and use the success to promote HR activities to other parts of the business. Use managers who have had positive experience of HR to promote HR to other business people. Use them as champions.
Thank you to Peter Cablis (M.A., B.A. (Hons), FCIPD) for his insight and ideas.
For more details regarding this article please contact Kim MacNamara on 0845 4133200 or solutions@ashleykatehr.com
This article is taken from our latest HR Newsletter copies of which are available on our website www.ashleykatehr.com
On 24th April 2013 a select group of the top UK’s HR Directors gathered at Evershed’s boardroom in Leeds for the latest Ashley Kate’s HR Directors Boardroom meeting. The meeting was chaired by Simon Rice-Birchall of Evershed’s International Employment Law Group and led by Tony Cooke – HR Director Adidas Group.
