HR Policies That Can Optimize HR Management | #hrmanagement #hrexecutive

As all professionals working in employee-facing roles will likely understand, the duties HR staff are expected to fulfill have evolved significantly in recent years. Of course, many changes have been accelerated by the rise of remote and hybrid work, structures that apply to an estimated 13% and 28% of full-time employees respectively, and transformed by the increasing adoption of AI tools in HR, of which 84% of professionals are using or planning to use in the near future.

Though investigating the genesis of modern HR practices may be an interesting undertaking, it’s the effects of these changes that truly impact the way HR professionals are expected to perform their roles, including which policies are implemented to improve the way organizations operate.

On one side of the coin, 84% of HR leaders believe the adoption of AI will improve productivity, with 80% feeling the introduction of hybrid roles may lead to a more satisfied workforce. On the other side, expectations may be tempered by data revealing 45% of employees feel burned out by frequent organizational changes. The solution? Professionals must strike a balance between the development of transformative policies and the facilitation of positive employee experiences. 

To help HR teams achieve this, here’s how the right HR policies can optimize HR management.

Image by Drazen Zigic on Freepik

AI-informed recruitment policies 

Though research indicates as many as 65% of American employees are actively searching for a new job, it’s estimated that up to 73% of recruiters are experiencing significant difficulties finding candidates with particular skills. This observable gap between a supposedly large applicant pool and the realistic number of candidates suited to specific roles can cause serious HR headaches. 

To solve this evolving issue, HR professionals must find a way to optimize the hiring process in order to locate suitable candidates as efficiently as possible. Thankfully, this particular problem can be addressed alongside the implementation of considered AI-informed recruitment policies.

Smart AI tools are able to autonomously monitor and evaluate existing recruitment systems to both optimize the selection of suitable candidates, and suggest actionable changes to outdated processes. Ultimately, the development of such systems can help HR professionals to remove unconscious biases, weed out irrelevant applications and speed up the general hiring process.

Unique parameters can be set by HR professionals to autonomously locate candidates with the skills and qualifications required for specific positions, with machine learning algorithms able to identify patterns in hiring behaviors that have proved successful over time. Early adopters of AI hiring policies are already reporting significant optimization improvements, with studies finding:

• 86% of recruiters believe AI has increased the speed at which candidates are hired
• 78% of HR teams claim machine learning improves the quality of candidates hired 
• 68% of recruiters agree AI can help to remove human biases from the hiring process

Automated onboarding processes

For modern organizations, the development of streamlined onboarding processes continues to represent a significant opportunity for HR optimization. Considering that studies have found a carefully considered onboarding process can improve employee retention by as much as 82%, but only 12% of workers believe their organizations to have a good onboarding process, clearly many businesses are running the risk of losing good candidates to poorly optimized HR policies.

To make more efficient use of potentially limited resources, HR professionals must consider the benefits of integrating some form of intelligent automation into existing onboarding policies. If only to reduce the amount of time teams are expected to dedicate towards administrative tasks.

Research indicates 58% of organizations deploy onboarding processes primarily focused on the completion of paperwork and regimented tasks, reducing the amount of time able to be spent on physical training and integration with the existing workforce. Pursuing automated processes can enable HR teams to optimize onboarding procedures to better engage with newly hired workers.

Developing an automated onboarding platform allows HR professionals to suitably prepare new employees for their roles, as well as ensure that they can hit the ground running from their start date, helping to optimize essential processes by:

• Automatically scheduling appointments and meetings
• Providing applicants with necessary resources
• Filing and distributing onboarding documents for review
• Pairing new hires with appropriate mentors

Implementing an automated onboarding policy ensures that new employees are supported and eased into their roles from the moment applications are accepted, simplifying the less personal parts of onboarding to optimize HR management via the prioritization of employee experiences.

Intelligent resource management

For many modern HR professionals, the burden of paperwork and repetitive administrative tasks can remove a lot of joy from their roles. It’s estimated that 90% of employees are troubled by the tedium of performing simple repetitive tasks, which goes some way to explaining why 56% of organizations are exploring the benefits of automating processes to optimize HR management.

One such area that appears well-positioned for automation is resource management, with HR staff often left to shoulder the weight of monitoring, assessing and ensuring the appropriate use of company-owned assets. Rather than being free to focus on employee-facing tasks such as skill development and training, HR teams may be overloaded with resource management tasks.

Thankfully, modern technology systems enable HR professionals to automate and streamline most common inventory management processes to help improve resource allocation policies. Where once staff were tasked with manually monitoring equipment use, ordering new supplies and ensuring the safe and appropriate management of company assets, modern professionals can store and review this data within a single centralized system, accessible from any location.

When implementing an automated inventory management system into existing HR practices, teams are afforded several significant productivity benefits, with common functions including:

• Real-time asset tracking to monitor employee-assigned equipment
• Frequently updated asset usage metrics and maintenance requirements 
• Automated reminders of license renewals, software updates and warranties
• Automated alerts warning of assets not returned within an allotted time frame
• Updated records of both physical assets and employee training programs
• Reminders of scheduled staff training programs to meet compliances

Essentially, by combining the management and monitoring of both physical resources and digital assets within an automated platform, HR teams are able to streamline resource management to optimize wider HR policies, enabling staff to allocate more time resources to employee well-being.

Summary

As more modern organizations continue to be transformed by technological advancements and structural changes, HR professionals must find ways to adapt existing practices to best suit the needs of employees and ensure they’re not restricted by poorly optimized management policies.

By utilizing intelligent tools such as AI and automated systems, HR professionals can streamline administrative tasks and improve the efficiency of essential processes, enabling staff to develop the right HR policies to optimize HR management. Ultimately leading to a much more engaged, productive and efficient workplace well-positioned to benefit from a positive company culture.