How to Make People Love HR Processes | XCD People
While Human Resource Management impacts employees at every stage of the employee lifecycle – from recruitment, hiring, onboarding, training, appraisals, compensation, legal, advice, and offboarding – many employees are simply not very interested in how HR functions. Try not to take it personally.
But in the modern world, this is a problem. With the disruption caused by the Covid-19 pandemic, it’s more important than ever for workforces to be engaged with HRM. It is also increasingly important for HRM to use technology to improve employee experience.
Today, much of the administrative HR burden can be alleviated by affordable self-service software. By using human resources management software, companies can automate some of the duties of Human Resources Management, giving HRM more time to focus on employee experience strategy and creating strategies to promote the wellbeing of staff.
As a consequence, employees’ engagement with HR management systems is crucial to ensure accuracy, effectiveness, and efficiency.
Modern systems aren’t just about technology, they’re about culture and mindset. So, here are a few things you can do to encourage employees to engage with the processes of HR.
Make it Easy
Any customer journey specialist will tell you that each step you add to a process constitutes a point of friction between the customer and the business’ end goal. Amazon’s one-click purchase is the perfect example, a one-step process offers very little opportunity for an online shopper to drop out, get distracted or reconsider.
This is absolutely the thinking we apply to the design of our cloud-based human resources management system. And it’s an approach HR should use when reviewing process, putting yourself in the user’s shoes and honestly appraising every step to ensure it’s quick, essential, and doesn’t require any sort of skill.
Every unnecessary element is another opportunity for them to go and make a cup of tea. Similarly, every badly designed menu, un-intuitive interface and lack of clear functionality will make the rest of their to-do list look more attractive that your process.
But, a great HR management software like ours can be valuable for giving employees a self-service system for onboarding, advice, and accessing information. If human resources software isn’t easy for employees to use, what’s the point?
Make it accessible
In July, KPMG released a report highlighting some of the challenges facing UK organisations. Chief among them was the changing expectations around customer experience. On-demand services like Netflix, Uber and, yes, Amazon, have raised the bar in the consumer world; and this heightening of expectation bleeds through into the interactions people have with their employers.
For younger employees, but increasingly among all age groups, any system that isn’t remotely accessible is now immediately seen as clunky and old fashioned and introduces a significant friction point.
This is why human resources management systems need to be accessible resources that any employee can use without having to develop specialist skills.
One way of making these processes easier and more accessible for employees and employers is HR automation. Automating aspects of HR processes on a self-service system like XCD’s human resources management software makes it easier for employees to get what they need from an HR software.
It’s also important for Human Resources to demonstrate how to use HRM software to the employees, teaching them skills to get the most out of it. This could involve regular demonstrations, tips in a weekly newsletter, or encouraging team members to show the rest of their team how to use it.
Mobile accessibility
One of the best ways of improving the accessibility of human resources is by making it available on mobile.
XCD’s app is an end-to-end mobile solution for the in-house Human Resources Management needs of your business. The mobile app makes accessing and managing data easier for employees. It also allows them to submit requests and receive HR advice no matter where they are in the world, whether they’re in the office or on the go.
This empowers employees to do their own performance management, view payslips and performance appraisal records, and check leave entitlement.
One unique feature that will make employees love XCD’s mobile app is its ability to photograph and upload receipts and instantly approve expenses. Building mobile accessibility into your HR is strategic because it encourages employees to adopt and use this great resource.
Make it a habit
Encouraging people to change their behaviour is fundamentally a communication job. Particularly when you’re trying to get people to form new habits.
In 2009, a UCL psychology researcher called Phillipa Lally observed 96 people over 12 weeks and found it took them between 60 and 254 days to form new habits. The previous received wisdom, which dated back to the 60s, had the number at 21 days.
What does this mean? Scientifically speaking, you’re looking at a huge range when it comes to how quickly people will make your process part of their routine; so your strategy needs to be to tell them, tell them, and tell them again.
Once employees understand how human resources management software functions, they can get into the habit of using it to get HR advice, submit leave requests, access and edit their data, and many more benefits.
Make it beneficial
Currently, only a third of UK-based businesses boast a highly digital HR department, compared to an average of 38% in Europe.
People, on the whole, like to stick with what they know. And if they don’t know HR software, it can take some convincing to adopt HR processes using it. A challenge for Human Resources Management, then, is to demonstrate to employees that these processes benefit them.
The benefits to the business and its workforce that HR processes provide might not always be immediately clear, so make these an integral part of your internal comms plan.
Here are some examples of benefits of using human resources software that HR can incorporate into strategic communications.
Love submitting leave requests
HR departments need to show the benefits of self-service HR processes in practice. For example, this could be demonstrating to employees that they can use HRM software to effortlessly check how much holiday time they have remaining, and submit requests. With automation and shared calendars, these requests can be approved by management in just a few clicks.
Without an HRM software, this can be a lengthy and complicated process. Employees would usually have to submit emails or provide forms, get a line manager’s approval, and have the request approved by HR. Throughout this process, it’s easy to make mistakes that cause a headache for everyone.
By automating this process and providing all the necessary resources in one place, HRM can take all the fuss out of requesting paid time off. This gives employees more flexibility and HR staff more time to focus on other strategy.
Involve employees in management of their details
For new hires, the paperwork part of the recruitment and onboarding process can be time-consuming and frustrating. That’s why automating this process can be more efficient. Instead of having to fill out lots of paperwork, new employees can submit a single form of their employment details to HRM software where it will be stored and used.
If their personal or banking details change, a cloud based HR software allows employees to easily manage and update these. This means employees never have to deal with errors or late paychecks, which adds to satisfaction and confidence.
Make success obvious
An effective way to present this information in a relevant, easily relatable way is to use best practice examples from within your own business. “Team X has completed 100% of process Y this quarter, allowing the business to calculate Z. Let’s hear it for Team X!”
Calling out and celebrating effective engagement not only allows you to demonstrate the value the processes add but can engender a helpful element of interdepartmental competitiveness. If it’s appropriate, this can be stoked further by incorporating elements like an organizational league table, or a top/bottom engagement award/wooden spoon into your comms.
Make yourself available
It’s important when mapping streamlined, self-service HR processes that employees’ connection to the organisation isn’t stripped out along with all the extraneous elements. When people’s interaction with their employer takes place solely through a computer of mobile phone screen, the real human of face of HR can be lost.
Without alternative communications channels people’s identification with and connection to the company culture can suffer. Don’t lose the human touch, make HR available through face to face, instant messaging, social media, an internal social network, even email.
Employees are likely to need HR support that can be best offered by a human resources professional. HR team members should be approachable and be able to give their expert HR advice to employees.
Plus, with the Covid-19 pandemic, remote work has meant that well-being and company culture has taken a hit. To improve employee engagement and relations again, HR departments should be available as a point of contact and advice. It is important for HR strategy following the pandemic to focus on developing trust and help people feel engaged in the workplace, even if they are working remotely because of the coronavirus.
With the reduced burden of administration for Human Resources Management, HRM departments have more time to focus on strategy and helping improve employee experience. This allows HR to focus on the important things like recruitment and hiring, onboarding new employees, managing performance and relations, overseeing training, compensation, and benefits administration, and investigating complaints.
Why XCD?
We’re HR experts who have helped hundreds of Human Resource Management teams transform their employees’ engagement in the processes of HR.
We know that streamlining the management of human resources is what makes employees love HR, which is why we’ve designed our HRMS with usability and efficiency in mind.
Check out our case studies to learn more about how we get people excited about human resources and solve common HR issues.
To find out how our specialists can help with your company’s human resource management, get in touch or book a demo.
