The three biggest challenges in HR

For employers and HR departments alike, understanding HR challenges is key to managing workforce productivity and ensuring a positive workplace culture. HR issues impact all aspects of an organisation, from recruitment and workforce diversity to resource management and leadership development.

Many HR challenges have been brought to light over the course of the pandemic, as the COVID-19 crisis stretched HR departments thin, managing furlough, employee relationships and wellbeing concerns. Human Resources management requires flexibility and continuous learning to overcome challenges and ensure your organisation is operating at its optimum productivity, no matter what life throws our way. 

As a software supplier, it’s in our interest to understand the challenges Human Resources face to provide innovate solutions, so we have pooled common HR challenges from our conversations with HR consultants to explore the issues and challenges for HR professionals in their daily practice. 

Lack of time for HR strategy

One of the top HR challenges is that it seems there are never enough hours in the day! The day-to-day administrative tasks that make up a considerable portion of Human Resource management often end up taking over most of the time HR professionals have. 

Driving organisational strategy is impossible for stressed out, time poor, professionals who feel like they spend their lives firefighting. Many companies identified that HR professionals are still feeling buried by processes and administration, like hamsters on wheels. Wasting your HR team’s time on endless paperwork is not only limiting to your Human Resource management’s capabilities, but is a drain on your business productivity. 

If this feels too familiar, check out how to get off the HR hamster wheel. 

Employers can leverage the potential of paperless HR solutions to eliminate the time challenges for their teams. XCD’s end-to-end HR and Payroll single software solution might just be the answer your HR leaders are crying out for.

Payroll and HR technology has the power to transform how your Human Resources teams operate by using automated workflows to streamline time-consuming daily tasks. Using HR tech frees up crucial time for your HR teams to focus on strategic organisational decisions, to boost employee engagement, employee experience and employee retention to reduce business bottom line costs. 

Getting the right people into the right roles

We’ve been reading about the war for talent for a long time. Now, as we try to navigate the ever-changing post-pandemic landscape, a common challenge for many organisations is attracting and recruiting the top talent for your organisation.

With ‘GenZ’ hitting the workforce, finding and hiring the right talent is more complex than ever. Attracting the right hire for each job role isn’t all about salaries and company benefits any more. Over the course of the COVID-19 pandemic, employers and HR leaders have been placed under scrutiny.

New employees want to see that an organisation is focusing on mental health and wellbeing policies, diversity and inclusion and work-from-home, amongst other flexible working factors. Recruitment and talent management in your organisation must focus on nurturing talent from hiring all the way through the employee lifecycle.

Once your new hire joins your team, a major challenge for HR can be ensuring your onboarding process is simple and smooth, making new employees reach ideal productivity levels sooner. Not only this, onboarding software can make all training easily accessible for your new employees, from mental health awareness training to diversity policies and company handbooks. 

XCD’s recruiting and onboarding software can provide your HR department with all of the tools they need to ensure the onboarding process is seamless and effective. 

An often untapped resource for HR managers and employers is your existing assets: your current employees. Human resource management can leverage the human capital which already exists in your organisation. 

Upskill your existing employees and promote internal progression by offering performance management and development paths for your employees. Enabling employees to progress in the organisation not only motivates your workforce to optimise their productivity to achieve targets, but can increase retention rates. 

No matter whether your business focuses on upskilling your employees or hiring fresh talent, getting the right individuals into the right roles solves many workplace issues and creates a work environment that shows their HR and employers actively invest in their people. 

Get tooled up, there’s a talent war on.

Harnessing all the HR data

HR has more data than any business discipline. HR data can be a pivotal element of business decision-making when utilised properly. But a challenge for HR professionals is often not knowing where to start with the bank of data which Human Resources have access to. 

Understanding how to effectively use HR data in HR reporting and analytics is the key to elevating your Human Resources management capabilities. Learning to use all that information to drive useful, insight-backed workforce strategy is the number one challenge our consultants reported.

Although, it’s important to be aware that much HR data is highly sensitive, which means it can be an issue if you haven’t got your GDPR policies in order – here’s a GDPR for HR best practice guide.

Self-service HR and payroll software eliminates many of the HR problems surrounding GDPR compliance for HR teams, as employees have total control over the data that they input into the HR system. Using a mobile app, employees can monitor their own data and opt-out of any areas or third-party applications which they do not wish to share their data with. 

Having all of your organisation’s HR data accessible from one single solution can minimise many of the issues and HRM challenges which HR professionals may face in collecting and analysing data sets. 

Find out why implementing a single HR data solution is so important.

Book a demo to see first-hand how XCD’s software can help you overcome these common HR challenges, or get in touch if you have any further queries.