Why Investing in your HR Department Makes Sense

by Startacus Admin

We have said it before and we are going to say it again – your people are your biggest asset. Finding and retaining well-qualified and productive staff is essential for success.

High staff retention is vital

Every time you lose a member of your team, you have to spend time and money advertising the role, wading through applications and interviewing people. In addition, you have to put each new member of staff through your induction process, as well as train and assess them.

Add in the fact that a new employee slows down the rate of production while others on the team settle them in and show them the job, and you can see how expensive recruiting a new member of staff actually is. Therefore, you really want to retain your staff. If you want more details and data that proves that a high rate of staff turnover hits your bottom line, click this link, and read some of the studies.

How your HR department helps you to retain staff

There are several ways to improve staff retention, but one of the most important is investing in your HR department. Studies show that the way this team does their job plays a big role in how easy it is to keep employees happy, and encourage them to continue to work for you.

Run an efficient payroll

A good HR team will make sure everyone is paid correctly, and on time. This is more important than most business owners realise. Nobody wants to work for a company that does not pay them properly. Late payments create feelings of uncertainty in a workforce, which can lead to people choosing to work elsewhere.

Monitor productivity

If you set things up properly, you can use your HR team to help you to monitor productivity and absenteeism. Both of which are important for staff retention. If just one employee’s absenteeism gets out of control, other members of staff end up having to take up the slack. This means that the rest of the team are working under almost constant stress. Eventually they end up feeling taken advantage of. Studies show that, in that situation, the chances of them looking elsewhere for work are far higher.

Equipping your HR team to succeed

The first step to enabling your HR team to support your business is to recognise their role in doing so. Just because they are not involved in the actual production or delivery of goods does not mean they are not of vital importance to your company. You need to treat your HR department as an asset, and make good use of them.

If you hold a morning, or team, meeting, make sure they attend. Set the scene for your other managers. Make it clear that if the HR team needs information by a certain point in the day, they get it.

However, it has to be a two way street. If your line managers need something from the HR department, e.g. productivity reports, or timely warnings that members of staff’s absenteeism is getting out of control they need to provide that information.

To make it possible for your human resources to operate efficiently it is well worth investing in some specialist software from a company like CascadeHR. The software they, and some other firms, produce is specifically designed to allow your human resources department to work more efficiently. As a result, the cost of buying the software is recouped in no time.

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Published on: 2nd November 2016