HR Management

HR management requires team members to create fair policies that engage employees, create transparency, streamline hiring and onboarding, and ensure that the organization is compliant with federal and local laws. 

And the stakes are high. 

Failing to maintain compliance can result in lawsuits, penalties, and fees. 

Hiring the wrong person— or failing to retain the right one— can result in high turnover costs and delayed productivity. 

Struggling to keep employees updated about company policies or not adapting to support your workforce as needed can result in confusion, frustration, and low employee engagement. 

In this post, we’ll discuss the principles of key aspects of HR management, including best practices for policy creation, supporting your team, improving hiring and onboarding, and ensuring compliance. 

Best Practices for HR Management

There are multiple practices that HR teams can implement to increase employee engagement, ensure compliance with federal and state regulations, and fully support all team members. They include:

• Putting people over policy
• Writing strong HR handbooks 
• Keeping employee handbooks up-to-date
• Attending HR conferences
• Providing solutions for working mothers 

1. People Over Policy: HR’s Vital Role in Employee Engagement

Employee engagement is essential for running a successful business. As long as we’re dealing with human workers instead of robots, people need to care about the work they’re doing, where they do it, and how they do it. Without engagement, inattention and indifference lead to wasteful mistakes.

2. HR Handbook Guide

A well-written company handbook gets your whole workforce on the same page. Inspire new hires and tenured employees alike to help fulfill the company mission and goals. More than just a handbook for discipline and misconduct, your team needs a handbook that helps everyone succeed together.

3. Updating HR Handbooks

Be sure to update your employee handbook regularly to reflect ongoing changes in your industry. Your employee handbook needs to keep pace with the changes in your company. But don’t think about those routine updates as a chore. Rather, look at your quarterly handbook review as an opportunity for continuous improvement.

4. HR Conferences

HR conferences offer significant benefits to all kinds of HR professionals, diversity officers, and additional emerging HR-related roles, as well as other company leaders, including CFOs.

Discover everything you need to know before, during, and after attending an HR conference, including, planning, networking, and making the most out of your time.

5. HR for working mothers

Making up such a large portion of the workforce, how can HR better support and retain working mothers, including new mothers and mothers returning to the workforce? Maternity leave policies and other support programs can improve overall recruitment and retention. When you take better care of the mothers in your workforce, you can improve the whole company culture.

Improving Recruiting, Training, and Onboarding

Recruiting and onboarding can directly impact your business’s productivity. Hiring the wrong person can contribute to high turnover rates and low productivity— as can poor onboarding practices. 

Let’s discuss these practices to improve the recruiting, training, and onboarding processes: 

• Leveraging background checks and references
• Creating meaningful learning opportunities
• Ensuring a human-first approach to recruiting and hiring
• Create stronger employee training with an LMS
• Effectively onboard remote employees
• Using an LMS to improve virtual training completion rates 

1. Don’t Skip These Hiring Steps: Background Checks & References

Many employers are unsure how to handle applicant references and background checks—or whether they are worth the hassle. Too many business owners believe that these steps in the hiring process are too expensive or time-consuming.

Unfortunately, honesty and forwardness are not guaranteed with job applicants and resumes. Background checks offer one big way to improve your hiring process, while checking references ensures you are making the right hire.

2. Meaningful Learning: Changing How Employees Think about Training

Does it seem impossible to get your workforce excited about new training programs? Poorly organized training feels like a waste of time, especially when the information seems unnecessary. To keep employees engaged and motivated, make sure that you are offering a meaningful learning experience that actually engages employees. This may include:

• Offering multiple learning options to accommodate different learning styles
• Allowing for flexibility, when possible, for training 
• Creating short, “stackable” learning that fits into an employee’s existing day 
• Implementing gamification or incentives 

3. Ensuring a Human-First Approach to Recruiting and Hiring

Ensure your recruiting and interview process avoids the feeling of being impersonal or dehumanized. Creating a human-first approach to recruiting and hiring can attract top new talent to your company, and can include the following:

• Proactive and frequent communication
• Set clear expectations 
• Advanced preparation to ensure the process is seamless for your team and applicants
• Making human connections during interviews 
• Emphasize your company culture 
• Be compassionate— job searching is stressful! 
• Create stronger onboarding processes 

4. How to Create an Effective Employee Training Program Using LMS

Instead of developing all your training material from scratch, you can use a Learning Management System with pre-made courses. An LMS makes it easy to customize training programs for the individual needs and goals of each trainee. Use an LMS to promote meaningful learning for the following: 

• Onboarding and orientation
• Safety and compliance
• Technical and soft skills training
• Product and service training
• Culture and diversity training

5. Tips for Remote Onboarding New Employees

Onboarding time is especially important for remote workers who may never experience the office in-person. Take the time and make the extra effort. It will not only start remote employees off on the right foot, it will prove beneficial down line with retention, continuing education, and employee engagement.

Onboarding processes will include:

• Discussing role expectations
• Introducing new hires to their managers and teams 
• Educating employees about company culture and policies 
• Helping employees enroll in benefits 
• Setting up employees with their new equipment and software
• Beginning employee training  

6. Tips for Improving Virtual Training Completion Rates with an LMS

Online training provides great opportunities for employees, but how do you get workers to complete their training? Virtual training can be convenient, but it also may present the following challenges:

• Ensuring accountability, knowing that employees aren’t just rapidly clicking through training or watching videos
• Tracking real progress, such as skill development or knowledge retention and how it impacts performance
• Encouraging completion, including on-time completion for mandatory and encouraged training 

Learning Management Systems (LMS) can improve the quality of your virtual training and its completion rates.

Ensuring Compliance & Efficiency With HR Technology 

HR management software is essential for small and large organizations alike, offering the following benefits:

• Automating and ensuring compliance with industry regulations, state laws, and federal laws— even as they change
• Streamlining HR audit processes for internal and external purposes
• Leveraging talent management features to recruit and hire the right team members 
• Track employee training and skill development through LMS features 
• Provide fast answers to common employee questions 
• Facilitate employee communication to strengthen company culture

Leveraging The Right Tools to Improve HR Management 

Human resources teams need to balance many moving pieces. They must create, communicate, and maintain policies that support employees while protecting the organization they work for. Everything must be carefully documented, from hiring to training to accommodations.

The right strategies, policies, and technology can make your job much easier. Use tools available to you, like hiring platforms or learning management systems, to streamline tasks while maximizing the results.