10 of Today’s Common Human Resource Challenges
HR has to face more challenges than any other department within a company. Its role involves everything from finding the right employees to managing them, helping them develop skills, take care of their payrolls, and everything in between.
It seems like HR’s work is never done, and they always have new challenges they have to face to help the company grow and make all employees feel happy and motivated. We can’t go over all those challenges, but check these functions to get a better idea of everything an HR team has to do daily.
1. Implementing Laws and Regulations
Employment laws keep changing all the time, and many business owners struggle to keep up. If you ignore those laws, you could end up having to pay vast amounts of money in court and possibly lose the entire company.
Making sure that your business runs according to your area, state, and country’s laws and regulations is difficult but essential nonetheless. One of HR’s most significant roles is to make sure that the company is running under the current labor laws at all times.
2. Management Changes
As a business grows, it faces new challenges on all fronts, including marketing, structure, and internal processes. While most of the workforce won’t have a problem keeping up, some employees won’t adapt so quickly.
An HR team has a huge role in communicating these changes to all employees and ensuring that everyone has the needed skills to move on. The better they are at what they do, the faster your company will bounce back and keep moving forward.
3. Developing Leadership
Most companies have an average performance, and the only way to improve their operation is to allow HR to train and educate the entire workforce. The people with the most talent have the biggest chances of becoming leaders, and it’s HR’s responsibility to find those people and prepare them for all future challenges. That includes a lot of training, motivation, and effort.
4. Employee Training and Development
Training and investing in entry-level employees is another common HR challenge. Sometimes businesses run on a tight budget; other times, they lack people with the right skills. It’s HR’s job to crunch the numbers and come up with the best possible solution.
It can be an online course, a group activity, or hiring senior leadership to get things done. In other words, HR helps employees grow and improve their skills.
5. Adapting to New Technologies
Technology is changing faster than ever before, and businesses have to adapt if they want to stay in tune with industry standards. However, getting your employees to embrace new technologies and learn the required skills is often easier said than done. HR plays a significant role in communicating changes to employees and finding the right motivation to help them adapt as soon as possible.
6. Payroll Management
Employee compensation is a huge problem for many companies that can’t find the right formula to calculate payrolls for each employee. Many different factors have to be considered, including expenses, taxes, training costs, etc. Your HR team must create and maintain an internal system that ensures all workers are paid equally and implement a program that motivates them to perform even better.
7. Managing Benefit Packages
The Affordable Care Act has ruined many local businesses in the past as it forces owners to choose if they will cover employee healthcare costs or not. If the company wants to pay for everything, they could lose more money than they make – if it doesn’t want to cover the costs, they might lose a key employee.
HR has to create a detailed plan and think about such costs before they start hiring new employees. It’s a huge logistic challenge HR teams all over the globe face every single day.
8. Finding New Talents
Employee recruitment might seem like a straight-up activity, but it’s far from easy. Businesses always have to balance between finding the best people for the job and keeping the business running. After all, you can’t know how someone behaves before you give them a job.
The HR department is made up of people who know how to recognize talent when they see it. It’s their job to decide which people are the best choice, saving the company a lot of time, money, and headaches in the process.
9. Retraining New Talents
Finding talented employees is one thing, but getting them to work on new skills is something completely different. HR has to know how to attract talent and motivate them enough to stay with the company in the future. It’s a tricky challenge that often makes or breaks the company.
10. Diversity and Discrimination
Sadly, diversity and discrimination are the most common challenges for any HR team. While most modern companies have some policies regarding diversity, making sure that everyone is on the same page isn’t easy at all.
HR has to create those policies, put them in place, and ensure that everyone is treated equally. Many companies introduce these rules during the recruitment process to ensure diversity.
The Bottom Line
HR has an essential role in keeping the entire organization running according to all laws and rules. Every person that comes into contact with a company first goes through an evaluation by the HR team.
Without HR, businesses would quickly lose track of the market changes, employee training, and management. That’s why you shouldn’t hate the people at HR. Their job description is to solve problems before they happen and ensure steady growth for the company.