Problems HR Faces

If you work in Human Resources, many things might have sprung to mind when you read the title of this article. As routine as your morning Kopi, come incidence and plights that you encounter on an almost daily basis. This is whether it’s onboarding new employees, finding the right job fit for them, or communicating company policies and protocols. You love the challenge of your job but can’t help but think that even a HR superhuman like yourself, could sometimes use a little break from mind melding, x-ray vision, and typing words at the speed of light.

You may breathe a sigh of relief to find, that you are not alone in this. If you feel like a nagging parent that despite greatest efforts to get your 4 teenage boys to understand the importance of a chore roster is met with hormone charged grunts and music blasting through headphones, you might need a little assistance in getting your point across. Most employees know what they are getting themselves into, well, so they think. Whether it is the job of their dreams or an extremely attractive package, a challenge every company faces is employee engagement, in the long run. This is when the honeymoon period is over and even companies that have mastered onboarding like a well-oiled machine might struggle to hold on to talent. We’ve heard it time and time again “employees are a company’s greatest assets” This may be true, but keeping them involved and happy can be a greater challenge.

Unfortunately workplace compliance does not come in a one size fits all sneaker. There’s no unspoken rule when it comes to the code of conduct or the integral pillars of integrity that represent your brand, such as anti-money laundering and anti-bribery. Believe it or not, it is common for employees of different levels not to understand the ins and outs of what their company stands for. When lines are blurred they can be easily crossed without a second thought for ones career or even the company’s reputation. Without this understanding, a common goal is impossible and you can expect that John from investor relations ‘didn’t know he was not allowed to accept fancy gifts from clients’.

According to the Washington Post, a study found that basically every single person hates performance reviews. This might even include the person conducting them. You may be a star performer when it comes to your job but that doesn’t mean you know how to seamlessly lead an annual review. Often it is clear what areas employees need to work on or what topics need to be covered to get specific results, but when it comes to delivery we can all admit that intensions get lost in translation. Onboarding new talent can be a double-edged sword. Attending overly vague induction programs or turning up for your first day without an allocated computer can leave new employees feeling lost with the sense of why am I here? On the flip side poorly designed onboarding with an abundance of non-crucial company information could leave them feeling overwhelmed in their first days at work. Neither is an ideal scenario for your company, but sadly is more common than most think.

Now let’s take look into the future. We are not talking about flying photocopy machines yet, but interactive e-learning could be the way forward when it comes to teaching simple or complex topics to a large array of people. The cost saving element is the first advantage as videos or interactive quizzes can be posted virtually anywhere. Using a broad platform ranging from your company website to YouTube, makes these tools readily available at any time. It is said that simple black and white images help with knowledge retention and your audience is much more likely to take away essential information rather that being distracted by flashes of colour or superficial embellishments on a PowerPoint slide.

Many new employees fall victim to the excitement of landing the job of their dreams bug. Symptoms include not paying any attention to how to make claims or understanding entitled compensation. Company policies can be complicated at the best of times and although they may be clearly stated in your beast-of-a-company-manual, often by the time the need arises it can feel like an arduous task to sift through this information. On top of this, providing an easy reference for them to come back to or share with colleagues when the need arises will save you many headaches.

So how does a superhuman HR manager overcome the seemingly impossible? Simply, with a little help in communication. Often all the facts are there plain and simple, as someone has taken the time to painstakingly type out informative documents, company policies and many more useful resources. Getting employees to actually read and digest such information can seem like another task they need to tick off their already full ‘to-do list’. In this day and age we constantly feel swept off our feet. Time is always of the essence and we are easily distracted…*checks phone. Engagement is more crucial than ever.

While we may not have 20 minutes to read through strategically placed documents, we most probably have 3. With simpleshow’s engaging and to the point explainer videos your company’s complex information can be broken down and easily digested. Covering all the relevant information whether it’s induction, training and development or even a new recycling initiative that needs to reach employees ears. With the human brain processing 1 minute of moving images at the rate of 1.8 million written words, explainer videos can be an invaluable tool that all HR professionals can refer to. Your employees can walk away with a clear message and you can go back to what you do best…saving the HR world.