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Why Smoother HR Processes Matter for Growing Businesses

Written by

Talent Garden

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The quality of your HR processes greatly influences the employee experience of your team members, as well as how smoothly your company runs in general. For this reason, many organizations strive to make their HR processes run as smoothly as possible, especially startups and SMEs. We’re going to take a look at some of the challenges standing in the way of smooth HR processes and how you can try to overcome them. Before that, however, we’re going to take a look at the benefits that efficient, effective HR processes can have for your organization and why you should strive to achieve them.

The impact of smooth HR processes for startups

Establishing smoother HR processes can have a range of benefits for businesses, particularly those which are just starting out.

Streamlined talent acquisition

If you’re just setting up your company, chances are you’re going to be actively trying to acquire talented individuals to work alongside you. Having effective HR processes in place will help you streamline talent acquisition, ensuring that you’re hiring the right people efficiently and effectively. Utilizing effective HR processes means that you can post job advertisements in the right places and keep apprised of the candidates that are applying. Once the application window has closed, you need to be able to efficiently search through your applications, quickly eliminating those which aren’t suitable while ensuring that ideal candidates don’t fall through the net. Having smooth HR processes in place will also help to simplify the interview process, making it less of a hassle for you as the interviewer and ensuring applicants have a positive experience.

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The majority of recruiters state that the interview process takes them between one and two weeks. Smoother HR processes can help to cut this time substantially, saving time for recruiters and getting new hires into the business more quickly.

Seamless onboarding and employee integration

Not only do smooth HR processes help to simplify the process of hiring employees, but they also make their initial integration into the organization run much more smoothly. Onboarding is a series of processes that a new hire undergoes when first joining a new company, during which they’ll learn about their job role, the company’s culture and values and complete any necessary administrative tasks. Getting this process right is essential in ensuring that new employees fit seamlessly into the organization, that they quickly get up to speed, and can perform well in their new role. A series of effective HR processes will ensure that your new hires are provided with adequate training materials to help them do their job. This is especially important if you’re employing remote workers who must be remotely onboarded.

Strong performance management

HR processes are not only important during the hiring process, but they’re also crucial in ensuring the continued performance of existing employees. A good employee career tracking system will help managers to stay on top of the progress of their teams. This includes flagging up any potential coaching opportunities and any successes which should be celebrated. Providing regular reviews and actionable feedback is key in helping your employees to develop. However, this is clearly an area where many organizations need to improve, with only 8% of organizations ranking their performance management processes as ‘highly effective’. Smoother HR Processes

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Seamless payroll and benefits administration

By making sure you’re employees are paid correctly and on time is a surefire way to make sure that they’re happy. Smoothing out your HR processes is a great first step to guaranteeing that this happens, as it will enable you to accurately track your employees’ attendance, paid annual leave hours, and other payroll processes. One of the best ways that startups can manage their payroll processes is to invest in payroll software for small business owners. Especially as they also make sure that you are compliant with the tax laws and regulations of the country, you are in whether that’s setting up a pension scheme in the UK or paying the right regional tax in Spain. The right software will help to reduce the amount of time spent on payroll admin as well as remove the risk of potentially costly errors that small businesses may struggle to swallow.

Forward-thinking talent development and training

Training and developing the skills of your employees is a great way to increase their job satisfaction and reduce employee churn, as well as providing benefits for your business, such as increased productivity and a better company reputation. Smoother HR Processes

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Implementing strong HR processes can help you to stay on top of your talent development initiatives, allowing you to track which employees have received which training and how they performed while undertaking it. This means that should a vacancy emerge elsewhere in the company, you have a good idea of which existing employees have the desired skills to fill the position and may be a good candidate for promotion.

Overcoming challenges for smoother HR processes

We’ve discussed the benefits that efficient and effective HR processes can present for your company, so now it’s time to look at how you can overcome some of the challenges standing in the way of smooth HR processes.

Adopt HR technology solutions

There are a variety of HR technology solutions available that can help you streamline your HR processes. Using these pieces of software can hugely assist with your HR processes, improving them and giving you more time to focus on other areas that require your attention. For example, recruitment software can integrate your entire recruitment process, making it easier to compare potential candidates as all their information is collected on the same platform. Timesheet software is another great tool, as it offers multiple features that will help you when it comes to attendance, performance, and productivity tracking. Helping you to maintain a clear view of your employee’s progress and development whilst also providing you with actionable updates and insights about a project's status. The great thing about these softwares is that they won’t just make your HR processes more efficient; they’ll also influence the rest of your business by helping and empowering your employees.

Establish standardized and documented HR policies

Implementing standard operating procedures (SOPs) will provide clear, step-by-step instructions for everyday processes and routine activities that are crucial to the organisation's function. It’s important to clearly document HR policies, making them easy to access and understand for any organisation member. Often, these policies will be included in an employee handbook, making it easy to onboard new hires and bring them up to speed with the expectations of the business. Both SOPs and documented HR policies should be easily accessible and searchable to anybody who may require them and should be regularly updated to reflect changes in the business and legislation.

Invest in HR knowledge and resources

In order to develop smooth HR processes, many organizations will invest large amounts of money into their HR departments, equipping them with the right knowledge and resources to run the department effectively and efficiently. Smoother HR Processes

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Investment areas include HR technology, learning and development, staffing and recruiting, and talent management. When it comes to hiring more staff, this may seem like a tricky sell to small startups with fewer employees. But, it’s important to have HR professionals in place as your organization begins to grow so that they can deal effectively with the various HR issues that will arise as the workforce expands.

Foster effective communication and collaboration

HR processes can only run smoothly when everybody is aware of how they should be run and plays a part in implementing them. To facilitate this, it’s important to foster a culture of effective communication and collaboration. It’s an area that many businesses are choosing to invest in. The two most common areas for increased software spending among businesses are web conferencing and collaboration. These give employees the ability to work together coherently, sharing ideas and collaborating on projects, regardless of whether they’re together in the office or spread around the globe. Smoother HR Processes

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Communication and collaboration are the best ways to ensure that everybody is aware of the HR procedures and policies and knows how to follow them properly. Not only that, but it enables everybody to have a hand in deciding how these processes are formed and implemented.

Continuously evaluate and enhance

Eventually, you’ll reach a point where your HR processes are well-established and running efficiently. At that point, your work is done, right? If only it were that easy! A key aspect of continuous improvement culture is that processes and policies are constantly evaluated and enhanced. Otherwise, there’s no way to ensure that the initiatives you put in place will stand the test of time and remain relevant as rules and regulations change. You should work to analyze the success of your HR processes and not be afraid to implement changes if you find that the performance is lacking in some areas. Having well-documented, searchable HR policies will help you to easily update them when necessary. As for your processes, keep apprised of new technologies that can help you to automate existing workflows and save you time.

Final thoughts

Streamlining, optimizing, and automating your HR processes can save you time and resources, freeing you up to focus on other, more pressing areas of your business. A range of technologies are available to help you develop smooth HR processes, from payroll software that helps you to take control of your finances to time management software that helps you determine what your employees are doing and which projects are taking up a lot of time. By investing in your HR, keeping your policies up to date, and fostering communication, you’ll secure the smooth running of your HR department and your organization as a whole–for now and well into the future.

Article updated on: 09 August 2023

Written by

Talent Garden, Digital Skills Academy

Why Smoother HR Processes Matter for Growing Businesses