Employee well-being is a crucial aspect of a healthy business. Keeping your staff happy and well looked after is beneficial for businesses’ overall success, because satisfied staff are more likely to be prepared to go the extra mile for their company. Disillusioned staff, however, don’t have much incentive to perform.
Ultimately, employers that are able to get staff to feel as though their intentions align with those of the company tend to end up with happy staff. The business’s success is the staff’s success.
Achieving this kind of dynamic among staff and within a company is mostly up to the human resources department, implementing and monitoring company policies, communicating with employees and management and so much more.
HR, however, isn’t an exact science – nothing that involves humans and human behaviour is – so it can be difficult and complicated to get right. While there are many general rules and philosophies that can (and ought to be) followed, there are also plenty of things that are dependent on the specific company in question.
Undoubtedly, HR departments are becoming more advanced and insightful than ever before, dealing with things that previously weren’t even viewed as problems. But, with that, there are also more problems creeping in.
It’s kind of a “the more you know” kind of situation; being willing to really deal with human resources requires a willingness to accept that there may be more problems than previously thought.
Of course, being willing to identify the extent of employee issues within the professional environment requires a comprehensive understanding of what HR departments do and are responsible for.
Companies That offer human resources software solutions in the UK include:
What is Human Resources (HR)?
The concept of human resources has changed a great deal over time, and these days, it’s generally accepted that HR is all about the management of a company’s human capital. That includes employees, contractors and any (and all) other types of staff members.
In the past, HR hasn’t always been viewed in the most serious light, viewed by many as a mere means of recruitment, monitoring of performance and so on.
However, over the years, it’s become increasingly evident that a strong, well-functioning HR department can make the world of difference for a successful business, taking care of not only recruitment and dismissals but also managing conflict, monitoring employee satisfaction, and more.
More generally, HR departments now put time into establishing a healthy and inclusive company culture, guided by the business’s goals and objectives.
The strategy has become far more holistic, including both administrative tasks relating to employees, as well as managing all human relations between employee and employer, among all employees, between management and employer and so on.
Naturally, now that the definition of HR has been somewhat extended, so too has the potential for problems to arise.
The Main HR Issues Facing Businesses Today
HR-related issues faced by companies tend to vary in extent from one business to the next, depending on things like the industry, company size, business culture, relative success and more.
Overall, there are 6 main HR issues that tend to affect businesses, albeit to different degrees.
1. Recruitment
Recruitment is an absolutely essential part of any company process. Not only is it important to get the hiring process right, but HR departments are responsible for hiring the right people and executing the hiring process in a timely fashion.
Recruitment needs to be done fairly quickly in order to fill vacancies, on the one hand, and to be able to secure top talent. Unfortunately, if recruiters aren’t proactive, they’ll end up wasting time and missing out on hiring the best people for the jobs.
Another aspect of recruitment that adds an additional level of difficulty to the process is the necessity of finding the right prospective employees, both in terms of their skills, experience and qualifications, but also their ability to fit into the business in question.
So, within HR, recruiters are responsible for finding high-quality potential employees fairly quickly who fit in with the company’s culture.
This is difficult as it is, and ends up being even more challenging when hiring highly specialised and skilled employees.
For instance, if you need to employ a senior software developer, it’s likely that there will be plenty of competition among potential employers as skilled software developers are few and far between, so their skills are highly sought after. Thus, recruiters need to be on the ball.
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2. Diversity, Equity and Inclusion
Employees and management both actively contribute to achieving the company’s goals regarding diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI), but it’s up to the HR department to make sure this happens. This means, both monitoring things constantly and intervening where necessary.
A business’s ability to achieve healthy diversity, equity and inclusion is important in that it affects both current and prospective employees. Indeed, job seekers are more likely to be keen to work for your company if they can see there is a concerted effort to achieve diversity, equity and inclusion in the workplace.
For HR, this can be difficult in terms of combatting implicit hiring biases and a lack of diversity in new hires (with regard to gender, race, disability, religion and more), among other things.
DEI isn’t just a quick and easy thing to achieve, so sometimes, as long as there’s a clear and authentic effort to achieve DEI, this could be enough. This may include initiatives like setting clear and defined DEI goals, implementing bias training and expanding recruitment processes.
It’s also essential to acknowledge that diversity, equity and inclusion aren’t objectives that are achieved and then forgotten about. They are constant challenges that require awareness, and in many cases, the goalposts are constantly changing, making it even more difficult but just as important.
3. Employee Retention and Dealing with Layoffs
A high employee retention rate is an indicator of a successful business and healthy work environment, and it’s often something prospective employees look out for when job hunting.
There’s a good reason that it’s valued – it’s incredibly hard to achieve, in some industries more than others. Retaining employees, especially top employees, means that the company in question needs to have enough to offer employees, and on top of that, it needs to follow through.
In addition to just looking good, high staff turnover tends to be expensive for businesses. It’s expensive to let go of employees, go through the recruitment and hiring phase and train new staff.
Ultimately, high staff turnover and attrition are undesirable for businesses wanting to eliminate unnecessary costs, build company culture, maintain productivity and just generally run successful a business in the long term.
Some of the risks involved pertain to employees becoming bored and disengaged, as well as there being a lack of opportunity for staff to strive towards. These are major factors that HR staff need to be aware of and attempt to mitigate. Thus, it’s important to maintain efforts to keep employees engaged, by means of providing incentives to work hard, upskill and more.
Layoffs, on the other hand, are also challenging to deal with. Whether layoffs are necessary from a financial perspective or due to company restructuring or something else, it’s essential that the right people are terminated and that their termination is handled in the most appropriate way possible.
In some cases, especially when dealing with mass layoffs (otherwise known as reductions in workforce or RIF), this may result in distrust from remaining employees, legal and compliance issues and the challenge of needing to figure out how to get the remaining staff to achieve the same goals as before (or as close before as possible).
These are serious challenges that need to be preempted, monitored and handled with care. As always, clear and honest communication between HR, employees and management tends to be the secret.
4. Work Environment
Since the Covid-19 pandemic hit in 2020, far more people have adopted remote work. Before then, the idea of working from home certainly existed in some industries, but many experts have asserted that if the pandemic hadn’t forced employers to make it possible across industries, it may have been a very long time before proper remote work became normalised.
Of course, in the years following the most extreme period of Covid-19 and global lockdowns, we’ve seen a mixture of work environments, with some people going back to the office (out of both necessity and choice) and others sticking to their new flexible lifestyle. In some cases, employees have the option of adopting hybrid work scenarios, working in-office a few days a week and from home on alternating days.
Whatever the case may be, this has added an element of complexity to employee management from the perspective of HR employees. They need to monitor staff working in office, from home and between the two, which means keeping track of who’s where and what they’re up to. It also introduces an element of extra trust.
Part of managing different work environments is monitoring employees and being able to discern what is and isn’t productive, there’s no straightforward answer – it varies from one person to the next, as well as in different industries, companies and more.
HR departments are also responsible for ensuring that the overall work environment, both physical (in office) and virtual (remotely) is healthy, respectful, appropriate and ultimately, conducive to hard work and happy employees who feel safe and protected.
5. Balancing Employee and Management Wants and Needs
Within a company, everybody has wants and needs – employees, employers and management. Often, these wants and needs vary from one person to the next, and it’s up to HR personnel to manage these wants and needs as best as possible to try and find a happy middle ground where everyone is as happy as possible.
It’s unlikely that you’ll ever have a scenario in which everyone is completely happy, but at the end of the day, it’s a juggling game. Sometimes, HR needs to be the “bad guy”, so to speak, and make difficult calls.
Of course, employee wants and needs aren’t necessarily arbitrary (although they can be). Most often, they pertain to their levels of satisfaction, potential to move forward within the business and more.
Some disagreement within a business is normal and even somewhat necessary in order for goals to be achieved – it’s about having varying opinions, and sometimes, those come from employees, employers and management too.
Generally speaking, management has power over employees and employers have the final say over both management and employees. But sometimes, HR needs to get involved to mediate disagreements for the sake of the company as a whole.
The role of HR is to protect everybody and not take sides, so their role is to mediate and try to find a happy balance between everybody’s wants and needs to achieve the best possible outcome for all involved.
6. Burnout
The term “burnout” has become a bit of a catchphrase in recent years, but not without good reason. In the era of “grind” and “hustle culture”, in the language of Gen Z – or just plain hard work, for the Millennials, Gen X’ers and Boomers out there – burnout seems to be becoming more and more of an issue.
That is, people working super hard without a healthy work-life balance and eventually getting to a point where they can’t any more. Burning the candle at both ends has been made to seem attractive and even necessary in some industries especially, but ultimately, it ends up being unproductive.
While companies should certainly strive to have their employees work hard, there needs to be an awareness of proper work hours, healthy boundaries between work and personal time and what should and shouldn’t be expected from employees.
For the most part, it’s up to HR to keep this in check, and a big part of this comes down to the company’s overall culture.
On the one hand, a company may promote hard work and working tirelessly; coming in early and leaving late; normalising contacting staff after hours and more. This implies that there are no boundaries and that there is a lack of respect for employees, their time and their mental health.
On the other hand, many modern companies manage to promote and encourage hard work while accepting that the ultimate productivity doesn’t necessarily come from working 12-hour days. Businesses like this tend to highlight employee satisfaction and happiness, encouraging them to work realistic hours and maintain boundaries.
By opting for the latter, businesses, via HR, will be able to help employees prioritise their mental health and professional satisfaction. While they may not be working as many hours a week, they’re more likely to be more productive and more incentivised to do well, avoiding burnout.
At the end of the day, burnout is for employees as well as their employers, and it’s up to HR to create a healthy company culture that avoids this. Of course, this is easier said than done, because it’s a constant juggling act, so helping staff avoid burnout is a real challenge for HR departments.
Helping HR Avoid These Challenges
From difficulties involved in both recruitment and layoffs alike to achieving DEI in the workplace avoiding burnout among many other issues, human resources departments really have their work cut out for them.
Not only is every business and every work environment different, but situations are also constantly changing, meaning that HR needs to be keeping close and constant tabs and every aspect of the business.
One significant way in which these challenges are being mitigated is by means of not only increased awareness but by using human resources management software (HRMS). HRMS can help automate plenty of processes, giving staff more time and improving efficiency and accuracy too.
Of course, this doesn’t solve all the challenges faced by HR staff and departments, but it’s a step in the right direction.
Ultimately, for HR departments to be able to succeed, it’s essential that they prioritise communication with employees and employers and identify and maintain an awareness of the above challenges (and any others that may arise).