By now we are all too familiar with the Great Resignation and the shift to remote work triggered by the pandemic. What many people failed to recognize was the disproportionate burden this placed on HR professionals. Not only did they have to process terminations and recruit for empty positions, they also had to rethink every traditional HR function to ensure that processes and policies were suited to a drastically different working reality. Is it any surprise that we wound up with so many open positions in HR?
Hopefully your organization has been spared, but this year at Benelogic, we’ve seen significant staffing changing with almost every client. In the most extreme cases, the entire HR staff is brand new. These teams are now faced with the daunting task of trying to figure out what their daily job tasks are and the processes needed to get them done.
Turnover is tough in any position, and HR is no exception.
1. Loss of Knowledge - too often, we see new staff struggle to figure out what needs to be done and how to do it. The nuances of processes, standards, protocols, often get lost especially if the departure is abrupt. The biggest challenge is that disruptions in HR often have far reaching ripple effects in the company because they can impact the broader employee population.
2. Inadequate Documentation - HR often is the last to document their processes while they focus on the training and onboarding needs of other areas. This is particularly evident in those infrequent tasks that are done annually or quarterly. Over time, someone simply makes sure it gets done. When that isn’t written down or discoverable by someone new, a well-oiled HR team can start to falter. This can put new staff in the extremely uncomfortable position of having to basically recreate their jobs from scratch and make up new processes as they go.
3. Lack of Technology and Automated Processes – One great way to address a lot of the issues is to leverage technology and automate routine processes as much as possible, so HR can focus on the more value-added and critical aspects of their jobs. When there isn’t technology in place, often an organization’s solution is to throw people at the problem. And that can work until you face points 1 and 2 above. It’s also difficult to implement new technology with new staff. You need to understand the processes before you can streamline them.
Benelogic’s benefit management products and services are tools that can become a real safety net, alleviating many of these issues for our clients. Our dedicated client service managers hold institutional knowledge which can help with continuity and transitions. Most of the processes put in place to keep the benefit machine churning during the plan year run without HR intervention or involvement. Imports, data transmissions, and data management require few inputs from HR and new staff can easily be trained on the system. Regular client meetings and relationship building often allow our dedicated team to be pulled into the transition process so we can ensure benefit management continues without interruption. If we get advance notice of a staffing change, we’ll be ready to help incoming staff get up to speed quickly.
If you are facing these any of these concerns or want to be better positioned for an uncertain future, give us a call. We’re here to help.