Speaker 1: These days, HR is no longer a mere administrative department, but an innovative and strategic hub that plays a vital role in ensuring business success. This is demonstrated by how HR has impacted the businesses during the pandemic. According to Sage's People's Research, 87% of C-suite executives credit their HR departments with having accelerated change throughout their organizations during COVID-19. However, the same research also reveals that only 52% of the C-suite believes that HR's new strategic position will last. So how can you keep the momentum going for your HR department? Among many other things, you'll need to implement HR best practices that will boost efficiency and lead to increased business performance. In this Learning Byte, we'll talk about seven human resources best practices that are crucial to effective human resource management. Before that, remember to subscribe to our channel, hit the notification button, and like this video. Hi there, I'm Nelly van Linden and welcome to another episode of Learning Bytes. Today, we'll talk about seven HR best practices. First things first, what exactly are HR best practices? Essentially, they are a set of human resources, management processes, and actions that work universally, so it doesn't matter which industry you're in. Jeffrey Pfeffer has written two books on this topic, Competitive Advantage Through People and the Human Equation, Building Profits by Putting People First. In these books, he proposes that a set of HR best practices can increase a company's profit. Let's take a closer look. 1. Providing security to employees Life is unpredictable, and work can be a very important stable factor. In fact, in 2020, a survey found that job security is the third most important factor for employees, second only to salary and location. Job security is essential and underpins almost everything HR does. In practice, there will be two contracts between the employee and the employer, a formal contract, labor for money, and an informal contract. You put in some extra effort, we take good care of you. But employment security doesn't just benefit employees. For organizations, it ensures good retention, thus lowering the cost of turnover that the organization will have to endure. 2. Selective hiring An organization's greatest asset is its people. Hiring employees who add value is one of the most important responsibilities of HR. Research shows that the difference in performance between an average performer and a high performer can be as high as 400%. It's clear, bringing in the right people is crucial for building a competitive advantage. In today's digital world, there are a lot of different recruitment tools we can use to make the right selection. Think of personality assessments, work tests, and reference checks. The goal of these pre-employment assessments is to uncover three key candidate characteristics. 1. Ability Does the candidate have the right technical and soft skills to do the job? And are they smart enough to do the job well? 2. Trainability Can we train this candidate to improve their skills? Do they have the aptitude to learn and keep developing? 3. Commitment Will this candidate commit to their work and the organization? And will we be able to retain them once they are up to speed and fully productive? 3. Self-managed and effective teams Creating and developing teams like this is one of HR's key responsibilities. According to an article published in the Harvard Business Review, the best problem-solving teams are characterized by two traits, cognitive diversity and psychological safety. Thanks to the cognitive diversity, the teams are able to generate more and different ideas. And thanks to the psychological safety, they feel comfortable sharing these ideas with their team. Effective HRM includes directly supporting teamwork by getting involved in how teams are organized. This can be done in several ways, including measuring team performance, rewarding team excellence, advising management on techniques and tools to facilitate teamwork. HR also needs to encourage different teams to work together within the organization. A team is usually part of a larger entity, such as another team or department. These larger entities also need to work together. Facilitating this collaboration helps to build an efficient and effective organization. 4. Fair and performance-based compensation If you hire the right people, you want to provide above-average compensation. These are the people that will add the most value to your company, so you want to retain them and pay them fairly. Your compensation package can take the form of financial pay and employee benefits. You should keep up with market trends across your field and adjacent fields to understand the average rate of pay and where your company ranks in the compensation offer. And competitive pay is more important than ever. According to a survey from Manpower Group, 69% of employers are reporting difficulty filling vacancies. Offering fair and performance-based compensation will help you build a good employer brand and give you an edge in the war for talent. 5. Training in relevant skills After recruiting the best people, you need to ensure that they remain the frontrunners in the field. This has become even more relevant today thanks to the exponential growth of technology. Not to mention, the COVID-19 pandemic has also highlighted the need for more training in soft skills like adaptability and learning agility. L&D is your key to develop an organization in which the rate of learning matches the pace of change. Keep in mind that training is something that should happen continuously with constant updates and improvement, rather than remaining a one-off exercise. 6. Creating flexible work opportunities The pandemic has changed employees' expectations when it comes to work, in particular the where and the how. Bloomberg reveals that 39% of workers would consider quitting if their employers weren't flexible about remote work. At the same time, there are also many employees that would much prefer returning to the office. This new situation requires companies to have policies in place to facilitate both kinds of work while also ensuring effective collaboration and good performance. The ADECO Group recommends employers to address inequalities to allow a greater section of your workforce more flexibility by redesigning jobs. Invest in IT infrastructure to make remote work a safe option by investing in cybersecurity. Reskill and upskill by identifying the digital skills gap of your workforce and arrange training to help your employees navigate remote working. Promote management based on the principles of empathy, agility, and creativity. 7. Making information easily accessible Information sharing is essential. Open communication about strategy, financials, and operations creates a culture of trust. It truly involves employees in the business. Furthermore, if you want your people to share their ideas, they need to have an informed understanding of what's going on in the business. HR activities that can contribute to communication across the workforce include creating subgroups for people from diverse backgrounds, producing internal newsletters and updates, facilitating information sharing sessions between different departments. There you have it, seven HR best practices that touch upon different areas of HR, from talent acquisition to learning and development. Do you have other best practices that you'd like to share? Do not forget to subscribe to the channel, hit the notification bell, and like this video. Bye.