Trends Your HR Team Needs to Follow in 2019

The efficiency of your HR department closely reflects the efficiency of your entire organization. People in your HR are responsible for the way in which your team performs, the way in which it’s organized and, overall, the satisfaction of your staff with your organization as a whole. Metaphorically speaking, it would be safe to say that your company’s PR is responsible for the way in which your business is seen from the outside and that your company’s HR is responsible for the way in which your business is seen from the inside of the business. With that in mind, there are several HR trends you need to follow in 2019 to achieve greater results. Here are six of them.

• Greater emphasis on recruitment marketing

A lot of people think that recruiting is all about picking suiting candidates. However, what if no candidates that respond to your recruitment call are good enough? On the other hand, wouldn’t it be quite easy if the majority of applicants were to meet your criteria? What a lot of entrepreneurs don’t know is that they’re the ones who make a difference when it comes to who responds to a job opening in your company. This is a duty of your HR and it’s called recruiting marketing. The first thing you have to do here is to polish your website (this is where HR and digital marketing overlap). Other than this, you need to leverage storytelling and utilize your social recruiting tactics. All of this serves the same purpose, a more efficient recruitment marketing.

• Employee monitoring and evaluation

Price’s law of productivity clearly states that only a handful of your employees do the bulk of the work. Recognizing these employees and especially those who aren’t trying as hard is probably the single most important role of your HR. The biggest challenge that your employee monitoring efforts had to deal with was the fact that it seemed too imposing. Nowadays, with the help of a great employee monitoring software, these things can be done in a more efficient and subtle way. This can show you what your employees are doing when they’re supposed to be working. Based on this, you get to make an evaluation report, which will determine that employee’s future in your organization.

• Emphasis on employee loyalty

There are some methods that universally work when it comes to generating employee loyalty, yet, no one can guarantee you how much effect they’ll have. At the end of the day, it’s up to the personal preferences of your employees. Some of them only care about their ability to advance in your organization. Others try hard out of respect for you and their coworkers. Then, there are some who just want to feel appreciated and valued for the work they do. The latter can be achieved with simple techniques like giving out hand-written thank-you notes or awarding hard-working team member with a universal gift card as an indicator of appreciation. It’s the job of your HR to know which method will be the most effective for which employee.

• Humanization of your company

Since the earliest days of HR as a concept, one of its key responsibilities was to be the human side, the soul of your company. This should be the place where your employees come when they have a concern or a complaint to make, a place for your employees to be heard. The problem, however, lies in the fact that, since its early days, the HR department kept expanding and received a bulk of other (equally as important) duties and responsibilities. In 2019, we might just see a tad of a trend reversal, where HR departments all over the world start putting more and more emphasis on what they were originally meant for.

• Better employee management

Previously, we’ve discussed the issue of monitoring and evaluation, well, one of its main purposes is to provide your business with a better general idea of how to manage your staff. There are some people who are just not cut out from what your company needs. It’s easy to act admirably in an interview but the truth is that you don’t know just how hard-working or efficient a person is until you hire them. However, a talented HR can discover one’s hidden talents, as well. Just because someone is not that great at a post that they’re currently in, this doesn’t mean that they won’t be effective someplace else. After all, allowing your employee to make a lateral movement is a lot more cost-effective than making a new hire.

• Fighting unconscious bias

The biggest problem about bias is the fact that it’s not always something that you’re aware of doing. For instance, an extrovert is more likely to leave a great impression during an interview than an introvert is. Later on, this will cause you to have a slightly more positive opinion about the extroverted employee. This means that you’ll be slightly more impressed with their performance and slightly less disappointed when they underperform. Sure, the very word slightly makes it seem like this is not that big of a deal, however A) this accumulates over the course of time and B) it causes the sense of injustice around the office. A great HR can help you rectify this image and notify you if you’re being unconsciously biased. The first step in rectifying an error lies in knowing that you’re making it, in the first place.

Conclusion

As you can see, the bulk of these trends don’t require much in the form of technological innovation or re-training of your staff. All that you need is a new point of view of the HR industry and a slight strategic alteration of their already existent duties. It may not seem like much, but it definitely makes a difference in your staff management.