How to Future Proof HR Processes for the Growth of Your Business

Regardless of whether you’re a large, established enterprise or a smaller, growing company, HR processes are an integral element of a successful, growing business.

As your business grows, the needs of your people will change, so you’ll need to adapt your HR strategies and processes to meet the demand. HR strategies are essential when it comes to developing and managing company values, training and recruitment and remaining consistent yet adaptable throughout the growth of a business. HR is a pivotal factor to grow businesses of all sizes, as it enables organisations to manage their human capital effectively and reduce bottom line costs.  

Regardless of the size of a company, the one thing that they will always have in common is need for happy and healthy employees to help drive success and the business growth. This is where HR comes in. The part that human resources plays in a growing enterprise is an important one, yet it is often overlooked. This is due to the belief that HR is not needed until a company becomes a larger organisation. 

At the start of 2021, there were 5.5 million SMEs in the UK, accounting for 99% of the entire business population. In smaller businesses, issues that would often fall under human resources often end up getting picked up by employees who are doing other full time jobs. This not only takes valuable employees away from their day-to-day roles, but the HR processes which they’re trying to juggle will not be completed effectively.

Of course, even once your business becomes a larger organisation, growth remains a pivotal business goal. As all HR professionals and employers know, Human Resources provides businesses with insights to drive an increase in efficiency and productivity in your organisation throughout your business lifecycle. 

HR software facilitates the effective implementation of important HR strategies and HR processes to grow a business. HR software systems such as HRIS (Human Resources Information Systems) and HRMS (Human Resources Management Systems) provide HR teams with the information and tools needed to provide actionable business strategies for growth. From recruitment and onboarding to employee experience and performance, investing resources into a HR department whilst your business is growing can help you to keep up with competitors and future proof your long-term success. 

You may also be interested in: What’s the difference between HCM / HRIS / HRMS / ERM?

HR software can help to streamline business processes throughout the growth of your organisation, particularly in these key areas:

• Recruitment for Business Growth
• Effective Onboarding Practices
• Training and Developing Your Workforce
• Instilling and Ensuring Company Culture as you Grow
• Performance Management of your People
• HR Strategies for Business Success

Recruitment for Business Growth

Recruitment is an integral HR process and a key part of any business strategy, no matter your company size. Hiring new employees can be a difficult and long process, as you have to sift through multiple applications and interviews to find the right employee. This can take a lot of time, particularly for small businesses, and time is a precious commodity.

Making the right decisions during the recruitment process is key to future proof business growth as you are directly investing in the future of your business operations. In the case of SMEs, recruitment is particularly essential as recruiting the right people can define the future of the business by maintaining or boosting growth and efficiency.

Every business will have a Hiring Manager responsible for recruiting, but having a dedicated HR system and developing a recruitment strategy to help this process become more efficient. HR software can support the recruitment process by providing the framework for a consistent recruiting process. 

Consistent recruitment is key as your business expands as potential hires pass the same pre-employment checks and can be effectively interviewed to assess their suitability for a role. XCD’s recruiting and onboarding solution provides HR departments with the resources and platform you need to ensure a consistent and effective recruitment process for the growth of your business. 

Enable your HR teams to attract and recruit the top talent on the market for your organisation using a HR system that streamlines and automates admin-heavy tasks, so you can focus on finding the applicant who matches you business’ desire for growth. 

Effective Onboarding Practices

The onboarding process is key to the growth of a business, particularly for fast-growing businesses who need their people trained up as quickly as possible. The first 6 months of an employee’s lifecycle are the most costly for businesses as it can take time for a new hire to find their feet and reach optimum productivity levels. 

The onboarding process is a new hire’s first glimpse into their new job, so creating an effective onboarding experience can make them feel welcome, motivated and help them to hit the ground running. For businesses of all sizes, from SMEs to larger organisations, effective onboarding is key to business growth. 

For small businesses, SMEs and large organisations, recruitment can use up a lot of time and money so ensuring that you retain your employees is key. A good onboarding experience can retain your new recruit for the long-term. WeLoveSalt show how an effective onboarding strategy can result in employee retention and details why a HR is important for a company of any size.

Self-service, cloud-based HR software can facilitate a positive onboarding experience for new hires and encourage employee engagement from the outset. XCD’s onboarding solution allows for new employees to access their training programs online weeks before they begin their role. Encouraging new hires to prepare for their first few weeks in your business before they arrive by using HR software is an effective method to improve inclusivity and productivity from the outset of an employee lifecycle. 

Training and Developing Your Workforce

We’ve got to the good stuff. Hold on to your hats. 

You’ve found the perfect candidate, and their onboarding went well, but how do you ensure they continue their development in your company and grow alongside your business. It seems redundant and obvious to suggest that training and development is key to business growth. Training and development increases the value of your employees in an organisation, so it’s clear that this will impact your business’ ability to grow. 

But implementing strategic training and development processes in the workplace can bolster an employee’s natural progression in the business, encourage employee engagement and their investment in the business. Time-consuming training days are often drains on company resources, as training can get lost amid the social aspect of the day. 

With cloud based HR software, employees gain access to training at any time with self-service HR solutions, so their training can be better integrated with the workload. Using cloud-based training and development solutions makes for more streamlined, efficient process when it comes to implementing growth strategies, training and developing of employees of all levels. 

Instilling and Ensuring Company Culture As You Grow

Strategic Human Resources management can help SMEs and smaller businesses to grow in line with their values by instilling company culture in business objectives. For larger organisations, ensuring this company culture is key to the continued growth and reputation of your brand. 

HR typically have a huge role in developing, implementing and ensuring company culture throughout the growth of a business. Company culture often defines how a business operates, from open communication between managers and their staff, marketing campaigns for recruitment and motivating the workplace. 

It is HR’s job to maintain and manage the culture as the company expands. Without a dedicated HR team, a company risks losing its value, culture and growth, which is of particular concern for SMEs. HR can ensure that the open form of communication you had when it was just a few employees remains the same. As a business grows it can become trickier to ensure company culture without a dedicated HR leaders and professionals to develop strategies to maintain it.

HR departments are all about supporting the business strategy. HR professionals can work alongside management, analysing the trends in their culture and in their industry to ensure that their workforce’s identity remains strong and consistent.

You may also be interested in: 5 ways to Rebuild Company Culture

Performance Management of Your People

Managing the performance of your employees is a key responsibility of HR. Monitoring and regularly assessing your employee’s performance is crucial to ensure consistent growth for your business and your people. When employees are aware of HR performance strategies it can motivate the workforce and make managers and workers determined to improve overall employee engagement. 

Creating an HR strategy that prioritises performance management is key to a business of any size, however SMEs and smaller businesses feel the impact of this more dramatically. In a smaller organisation, HR people can benefit by identifying exactly what is holding employees back, and what needs to be changed to aid business growth. With an effective HRMS in place, this process is made quick and easy. 

XCD’s performance management software makes it simple for HR managers to regularly monitor employees and create a more collaborative approach to drive performance. For more advice on this, we have recently discussed effective ways to make performance management perform in your organisation.  

HR Strategies for Business Success 

All businesses can benefit from taking stock and evaluating their business operations: what’s going well, and what’s not-so. Expanding your understanding of what’s working for your business is key to growing your success. 

To evaluate the success of HR processes in your organisation, it’s vital for Human Resources to regularly audit and review their employee data to improve the efficiency of their people strategies. This process of continuous people analytics can reduce bottom line cost and drive the growth of your organisation by highlighting drains on resources. 

With a smaller business, it can be easier to keep track of employees and sort out any issues that may be arising. However, small businesses are often accompanied by rapid growth in the early stages with lots of new employees joining and it can become increasingly difficult to keep track of employees without the using HR systems such as a HRIS or HRMS. 

When using HR software, collecting employee data is significantly faster and easier. HR software enables business growth as your team aren’t spending extra man hours on data and analysis that HR systems could do for you. Using an HR software to automate the process of collecting employee data will save Human Resources both time and money. 

XCD’s HR reporting and analytics capabilities have over 150 reports, customisable to needs of small, medium and large businesses and can provide actionable insights and analysis for HR teams to implement in their future strategies. 

You may also be interested in: How to Kickstart Your People Analytics

Regardless of your business size, HR software can bolster your business growth. If you want to see for yourself XCD’s transformative capabilities, book a demo with us today.