Giving HR its merited attention
Unfortunately, in many instances and in various work places, human resources (HR) is not given the due importance and attention it deserves.
This despite the fact that HR strongly supports and impacts the health and progress of the organisation. Human resources related problems spread very fast. They can affect the functions within other departments. This may lead to possible disengagement or lack of motivation. This, in turn, may affect the entire business operations and productivity.
There may be various reasons why the organisation fails to give this business function its merited attention. Lack of time, lack of understanding of its role, lack of an organised, well trained team are just three recurrent issues that come to mind. Also true is that nowadays organisations are finding it difficult to focus and work coherently on the biggest HR challenge: employee retention. HR is struggling to recruit new talented employees. This recruitment focus is draining HR’s resources from focusing on retaining and motivating the current talented staff from developing and enhancing their own skills and expertise. This is particularly so for the smaller organisations whereby typically an HR department is run and handled by one person. This would mean that HR is operating below optimum level. This person may not focus on the high-level work (strategy), but instead, is taking on a support-level role and focusing on tactics.
If we want to achieve business growth, then HR must – inevitably – become one of the top business priorities within the organisation. And yes, whether we like it or not, we do need help to make this possible.
What are the options?
There is no off-the-shelf solution. Each organisation requires its own solution and approach.
Handing off HR responsibilities to external experts takes a good amount of concerns off the business agenda.
Engaging an external, professional HR company to handle the organisation’s HR affairs will have a twofold positive impact – the organisation gets to focus on its core operations, while the professional service provider will handle or guide you with your HR functions and/or concerns.
SurgeAdvisory is well positioned and has the experience of handling such services. We provide tailored services under which an organisation outsources all or part of its HR functions.
Outsourcing all the HR functions can be a good, practical and cost-effective solution for small-sized businesses. Outsourcing part of the HR functions may be a better solution for the larger organisations. This is so because the more tactical aspects are handled by the company. This may include the implementation of recruitment and retention strategies, payroll, and so on. This means that a few functions are handled in-house and others are outsourced to a professional service provider. This would typically mean that the employer remains the on-site HR person.
Strategic Support
Even if an organisation does engage an external HR expert for its day-to-day organisations, most experts may also help in making decisions more strategically. This would mean that the HR results may also lead to aspects such as improved customer service.
Why do this?
The golden rule many tend to oversee or underestimate – our employees are the foundation of our business. Failing to handle their concerns or any other employment-related promptly and in the right manner, is putting your business at risk.
At SurgeAdvisory, we work with clients on various aspects of their HR management and development strategy, planning as well as its implementation. In other words, we can do parts of or the entire HR job. For more information please click here.
About the author
Maria Bartolo Zahra is Managing Director and HR Advisor at SurgeAdvisory. She has over fifteen years of human resources and business advisory experience.