Why it’s worth investing in the best people to look after your people
Take care of your employees, and they will take care of your business. It’s a common corporate mantra, especially in the modern workplace. However, it’s also one that is actually rarely stuck by. Because looking after your people means more than beanbags in the office and cake on a Friday. To really look after a workforce, you need the best people to do it. People who understand rights, training, culture and mindset. It takes the best HR people.
Good staff retention is the holy grail for most organisations. It’s a way to maintain commercial momentum and save on expensive recruitment. However, in the search for this, it’s easy to get caught up in little details and forget about what it really takes to look after employees. Here we’ll look at how to value and care for staff, the benefits this brings to your business, and where good HR personnel fits in.
Understanding and investing in your staff
What does it really take to care for and value your workforce, then? It’s all to do with balance and collaboration. There are some key ways that an employer should look after and invest in their people. Most businesses achieve this through their HR departments.
Alignment
Productive team members need to be aligned with the mission of the business. Everyone should be working towards a common goal. This is a cultural thing, and goes way deeper than all-staff lectures and quotes on the wall. Good onboarding can make the difference as to whether a person feels able to invest themselves in your organisation and go the long haul.
Training
A study made by LinkedIn found that 94% of workers have left a job because they didn’t receive training. Training is by far the most active way that an employer can show that they care for and value their employees. It’s also something that immediately and significantly improves the performance of a business.
Benefits
Most businesses attract good staff with a benefits package. This might include health cover, bonus structure, and additional allowances on statutory benefits such as maternity or sickness leave. Clearly you need to have good staff who can set up and administrate these benefits.
Balance
Of course, life is about more than work. It’s impossible to completely separate work life and personal life, so to really care for your people you must support the balance. This might include integrating personal events such as parenthood, long term illness, development opportunities, and caring responsibilities.
Safety
You can maintain the safety of your employees via workplace maintenance, policies, training, and regulatory understanding. The safety and wellbeing of staff is at the very least legislative compliance, and at most it’s a reflection of value in your staff.
Business Benefits
Each of the factors above has a correlating benefit to your business. Because the adage is true: take care of your employees and they will, indeed, take care of your business. Ultimately, staff need the best people to look after their interests. While the remit of HR departments will vary depending on the size and structure of organisation, they tend to cover all of the areas that we’ve talked about. This makes them pretty important, wouldn’t you say? So, a business may list all of the individual ways that they will seek to look after their people. However, this should start with one key step: to source good people to set up and manage all of these actions.
What do good HR people know?
So it’s clear that if you have knowledgeable and productive HR staff, the care of your workforce is in good hands. Don’t forget that ultimately, policy and culture comes from the top. However, by collaborating with good HR people you can ensure that you’re going in the right direction.
Work culture trends
By this we don’t mean what other people are doing. Experienced HR professionals can use their knowledge to understand and implement the working cultures that are productive for businesses and staff alike. This involves thinking outside the box; not following the herd.
Employment law
There is so much employment legislation to keep abreast of, whatever the size of your workforce. Changes happen all the time, such as IR35, gender pay gap reporting, and changes in NI contributions. It’s impossible to do this as an additional part of another role. This accumulated knowledge is why it’s worth seeking experience when it comes to employing your HR team.
Productive training
There’s a school of thought that training is a waste of time. Yet at the same time, such a huge proportion of the workforce has left a role due to the lack of it. This demonstrates the gap between training geared to tick a box and productive training. It therefore takes expertise to strike a balance and provide the dynamic environment that retains good staff.
Creative thinking
While so much of HR is seen as regulatory knowledge and process, it’s also creative. This level of professionalism is a huge benefit of sourcing the best people to look after your people. They proactively find ways to develop culture and working practices, set goals and tap into the creativity of those around them.
Constructive communication
If you think of an HR department as the liaison between the business and the people, it’s clear to see why communication skills are so important. Your HR team must be able to demonstrate clinical analysis whilst displaying sensitivity. They manage people through huge personal milestones as well as the day to day. This is why your business relies on recruiting the right people.
How to get good HR people
Of course it makes sense to find the best people to look after your people. So why do businesses settle for a limited pool of applicants? It can feel a bit “catch 22”. Unless you are one yourself, how can you tell when an HR person is the right fit for your business? That’s where using experts can really pay off. Specialist targeted recruitment does the tricky part for you. A consultant service like HR Talent will make sure that your pool of applicants is made up of the best. Then it’s just a case of matching the ideal individual fit and your business is good to go!
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