Top 5 HR Challenges and their Solutions

It is always a tricky business when it comes to managing people. With the advancement of the digital age, human resource management has become more complex due to the following things: the transparency of social media, the persistence of software updates and the remoteness of international teams. All these things make it extremely difficult for human resource professionals to manage people because they now have to devote additional time, money and effort to attract and retain employees in the organization.

Let us now focus our attention on the different HR challenges in the workplace and the different things that these professionals can do to overcome them.

1. Attracting top talent

As mentioned earlier in the blog, the number one challenge for an HR professional is to attract and retain the best talent. The reason being, it takes lots of commitment, time and hard work. To attract the right talent, it is important to specify the job requirements properly along with job role clarity and specifying the expectations from the selected candidates for the open position. The challenge is that the requirements for the open position keeps on changing and the organizational culture keeps on adapting which makes it very difficult to accomplish the objective of attracting top talent.

How to overcome this HR challenge?

Start by looking at the right online mediums where the job seekers are present. There are different platforms where it is possible for you to stay in contact with top talent segregated on the basis of skills, industry and job level. Visit different job boards to attract the right talent which will give you enough time to screen the candidates.

Once you start the screening candidates, concentrate on whether they are the right fit for your organization and then for the open position. Start looking for small cues that give you confidence that they love learning, are up for a challenge and are comfortable with change. Find out how technologically savvy, they are and how they deal with the feedback.

By focusing on these qualities, you will be able to attract the right talent and create a team of employees who are likely to achieve your business objectives even if they keep on evolving over time.

2. Compliance with employment laws and regulation

It is a constant struggle for HR professionals to keep up to date with the constantly evolving employment laws and regulations in their state and country. There are certain HR professionals who choose to ignore the employment laws by believing that they don’t apply to their business. But, by doing this they are attracting unnecessary lawsuits, audits, or even a big loss for the organization.

How to overcome this HR challenge?

To resolve this challenge, every HR professional irrespective of whether it is a big or small organization needs to ensure that they follow the local, state and federal labor laws to the “t”. There are different laws in the country from hiring practices, wage payment to workplace safety. If you need any resource, visit the U.S. Department of Labor’s Employment Law Guide.

3. Embracing change with grace and ease

It is often said that the only thing that is certain is change. In an organization, change can act as a shapeshifter that can influence the business environment, competitors, customers, and workplace. Irrespective of whether the change affects the management, structure or technology of the organization, humans are always afraid of change because it gives them a feeling of uncertainty and anxiety.

The responsibility of the HR professionals is to ensure that the employees in an organization adapt to the change gracefully, which is one of the most recurring challenges faced by them. The problem is that the HR professionals are not only tasked with the management of employee morale, happiness, and cooperation in the event of a change but also constantly upskilling employees to meet the changing needs of an organization.

How to overcome this HR challenge?

There is no single way to overcome this HR challenge. The best thing that you can do is to effectively communicate with the employees before, during and after the times of change. Warn the employees of an upcoming change so that they get better equipped for the change. Provide training on the hard and soft skills to make employees overcome the fear of change. This way they will feel more secure and capable to embrace change.

4. Developing the leaders for tomorrow

The team leader is the captain of the ship and the performance of the team depends more and less on the leader. There are certain employees who leave the organization due to poor relationships with their direct managers. This makes it extremely critical for an HR professional to develop talented and aspiring leaders.

This is easier said than done. The reason being, grooming current employees for leadership positions does not work, especially when the leaders in the making keep leaving the organization. This is especially a case more often found in the Millennial heavy workforce. This makes it a critical challenge for HR professionals to overcome.

How to overcome this HR challenge?

The best way to overcome this challenge is by providing proper training to the employees with a clear career progression path. This gives an assurance to the employees about their job security and they understand that you value them as employees and see leadership potential in them.

5. Managing a diverse workforce

Today, due to globalization organizations have started to expand their business in different countries and states making it a global affair. Today, organizations have different offices across different countries with a head office. This means more sales and diversified employee experience, ideas, and perspectives.

But, with this diversity, it becomes very difficult for HR professionals to manage diverse cultures in the workplace. The HR professionals need to follow local policies and procedures to create a workplace which is comfortable, warming and free from any conflicts for everyone.

How to overcome this HR challenge?

Organize cultural awareness programs in your organization so that employees can recognize the benefits of diversity like better ideas, innovations and wider candidate reach. It is equally important for you to organize team building exercises so that it gives an opportunity for employees from different cultures to bond with each other so that they can accomplish a common business goal.

Credits @ https://www.talentnow.com/hr-challenges-solutions/

Recruitment Bad Habits Every Recruiter Should Avoid

As a recruiter, you quite often blame your hiring managers, competitors, time constraint or even lack of good candidates for your inability to close a hiring position. But have your ever wondered if the problem lies with you only, or more specifically your inefficient work habits? Your work habits determine your productivity and the amount of success that you can get while finding and acquiring candidates. They also shape different types of strategies that you use every time at work.

But, there are times when these habits become old and obsolete in this ever changing world of recruitment. It is during such times that you become your own worst enemy by staying stuck in the confined world of tried and tested hiring mechanisms. The problem is, as professionals you believe that what has worked in the past will work even in the future.

As human beings, we are creature of habits. Every individual has some or the other habit that helps them in their life. According to a research conducted by Duke University, 40% of what you do in your daily life is not a conscious decision that you take, it is a habit. And it is very easy to fall prey to bad habits. Let us look at some recruitment bad habits that can cause your downfall as a recruiter.

1. You have stopped using the phone for communicating with candidates

Sourcing candidates through job boards is fine, but you cannot always rely on merely posting an ad or sending a message in the hope that the candidates will respond to your job descriptions. The problem starts when the recruiters give up the habit of using a landline to proactively reach out to the candidates and spread their network.

The landline is the most underutilized medium of communication amongst recruiters as they have tossed aside real conversations in favor of emails, InMails and LinkedIn conversation requests. It is true that you have found new mediums to communicate with candidates, but the habit of ignoring the use of landline to source candidates will hurt your hiring efforts. While mobile phones have become a norm nowadays it is being used for anything and everything apart from the primary function of communicating with people.

According to a survey conducted by SocialTalent, It was discovered that the best response rates from passive candidates were reported by recruiters who use the telephone to reach out to candidates on a regular basis. In fact, 50% of recruiters who said they used the phone to engage with passive candidates on a regular basis, reported response rates of 40% or more. And none of the recruiters who used the phone to contact potential candidates, reported response rates any lower than 10%.

In contrast, of the recruiters who use LinkedIn connection requests as their primary method of communication with passive candidates, just 22% reported response rates of 40% or more. That means that using the phone is over twice as successful as using a connection request when it comes to engaging with passive candidates, meaning that recruiters who use the phone, are twice as productive as those who don’t. This goes to show that as a recruiter if you use the phone as your number one tool it will help you to close more jobs.

2. Concentrating on the same hiring metrics that you have been using since long

It is extremely critical for you as a recruiter to select the right metrics when it comes to demonstrating and quantifying the impact that high-performing new hires have on corporate revenue. This makes it crucial for recruiters to use the right recruitment metrics while creating and analysing report in an applicant tracking system.

The problem starts when the recruiters keep on concentrating on a select few metrics that they have been using for the past decade without adding any new metrics depending on the changing nature of business and industry. This can be a real deal breaker which can hurt your recruiting efforts in the long run.

One of the examples is when when you concentrate only on a single metric like where the candidates are applying from and not on other related metrics like how many of those applying are actually hired from different sources, there is a possibility that you may see only half the picture (in this case only popular application sources and not the most effective source).

3. Making false promises

We all know that recruitment is a high pressure job and as a recruiter you need to do everything to ensure that there is no loss of business due to client backout. For example a situation where you are falling behind the recruitment target, but take on more business and make commitments you know you will not be able to fulfill.

Such habits can earn you a very bad reputation, especially when you don’t fulfill your commitments. Never make false promises in the hope that you will be able to make successful placements for the client. This habit is not limited to only overcommitting. It can even include: overstating salaries, wrongly put job descriptions and falsely improving the quality of the candidates in the database. In this candidate driven market, these fake promises can break your career as a recruiter by harming your reputation.

The best way to overcome this habit is by being truthful to your clients. You can then provide alternatives to them in terms of the candidates that are available to you. But, inform them that they need to train the candidates for requisite on-the-job skills. This way you can save yourself from damaging your career as a recruiter.

4. Not taking enough risk by sticking to a status quo

There are certain recruiters who follow the same dull routine everyday following the same lines for enquiry, utilizing the same tools, sending similar sounding messages with the same opening and closing lines thereby not taking enough risks to progress. This becomes a habit that reflects in the way job descriptions are posted on job boards. Recruiters use the same style or tone in the job ad which becomes a routine thing that does not yield results. The key is to be imaginative while writing job descriptions.

Try these things to give freshness to your job descriptions:

• Set the tone right straight away with a perfect job title
• Catch the attention of the candidates through a brief, engaging summary of the job
• Be specific while outlining the job responsibilities
• Clearly state the desired experience
• Provide an overview of the organization
• Give useful insight about the package being offered

Conclusion

Forming a bad habit is easy. but it requires a strong willpower to break the habit by making adequate changes. The best way to deal with the situation is to reduce the frequency of the habit and not the habit itself. For example; if you have the habit of checking Facebook Feed or Twitter twice every 60 seconds, curb the habit to only twice in 60 minutes. This self-control will help you to decrease the bad habits with time subconsciously.

Make conscious changes in your daily habits to overcome those that hamper your recruiting efforts. Although the list of unproductive and repetitive bad habits can be long, there is always a chance to break them. There will always be a risk of falling behind. But by working on the bad habits and willing to correct them you are giving yourself a great chance to boost your potential to recruit the best talent for your client.

Note:- This article was originally published on – https://www.talentnow.com/recruitment-bad-habits-every-recruiter-should-avoid/