Why Should HR be an Integral Part of Every Organisation?

For many years, we know that the role of HR in a company has been growing. Their responsibilities now seem to reach far and wide. The impact HR has on the business as a whole has never been greater, and neither has the pressure. With so many rapid changes in the work environment and the HR perimeter slowly but steadily expanding, many HR professionals are finding themselves in chaotic and even murky waters.

Fortunately, while HR responsibilities have grown, so has the technology and strategies to support it. There is a wide range of software, best practices and other resources for HR teams to draw on, enabling them to take a decidedly strategic role within their businesses.

Understanding the Full Value of HR

Getting company leaders to understand the full scope and value of HR today is vital. This includes career paths, regulatory standards, learning and development, compensation, benefits and sourcing the best talent. The right moves by HR can save money, improve competitiveness and ultimately lead to business success, while the wrong ones can be devastating.

Part of understanding the value means investing in HR so it can make the best impact. This starts with the right technology; a great HRMS solution can empower HR teams to be more efficient and productive than ever before while making data-driven decisions that just wouldn’t be possible otherwise. 

Once you have the right technology, you can take a look at the true role of Human Resources in businesses today. Here are HR’s top contributing factors that make a difference:

Saving Costs

The best way to prove value in any business is by making an impact on the bottom line. The scope of HR means it can have a significant impact on business finances. Turnover is just one metric, yet it is one of the biggest financial burdens a company has. High turnover and bad hires cost businesses millions every year, and HR can have a direct and immediate impact in this area.

Less cost-cutting and more profitability, HR can also use power tools today to make sure every project and action is the most valuable and cost-effective. With SuccessFactors, Intuitive dashboards and forecasting tools enable managers and HR teams to look at the knock-on effects of certain decisions including the potential effects of moving employees from one position to another or introducing new benefits packages. All of these tools can help ensure that every decision is a cost-effective one. Check out all the SuccessFactors features here.

Skilling Up

Learning is a huge part of any business yet many don’t always see the benefit of development outside of regulatory training and minimum industry requirements. The fact is in today’s work environment it is absolutely vital that companies start to take learning seriously, and HR is ideally positioned to take on this challenge.

The past two decades have seen various factors contributing to a huge experience gap in many industries. The growing impact of AI is also changing job roles and people’s places within them. Combined with an increasing labour shortage, it’s more apparent than ever that hiring alone can’t provide the solution. Today’s workforce will need to be trained for tomorrow’s skills and requirements.

A superior LMS can provide HR teams with the foundations to start building the courses and skills their business needs to succeed in the future. Learning should integrate with career paths and succession to ensure that employee training is aligned with overall business goals and needs. The great thing about making learning and development a focus for your business is that it’s also a huge draw for potential hires. As well as helping to ensure your company has the right talent at the right time, today’s employees are much more likely to choose a company with better training and development opportunities.

A Rewarding Job

Just like learning, benefits are increasingly becoming a huge draw for candidates. Top companies seem to be competing to offer unique and attractive benefits packages, from the standard healthcare to highly desirable flexible working hours. More recently we have even seen the rise of ‘pawternity’ leave for employees to take time off when they get a new puppy. Whatever your opinion on some of the more out-there benefits now available, there’s no doubt that businesses can no longer choose to ignore it or offer the bare minimum if they’re serious about winning and keeping the best talent.

While any business can choose and provide benefits packages, it takes a powerful HRMS to manage compensation successfully. Balancing and allocating budgets including forecasting the most profitable benefits strategy will not help make the business case for benefits to leadership, but it will ensure you’re making the most cost-efficient decision. HR is also uniquely positioned to ensure benefits are integrated completely into the employee experience. From promoting benefits at the recruitment stage to allocating the right benefits at the right time through onboarding and development, HR can make compensation and benefits a real strategic project for businesses.

Continual Improvement

As a strategic process, the role of HR is never done, but continual improvement needs strong analytics. Powerful HR data and analytics can provide the insight you need to make the right moves at the right time. It provides complete transparency across the whole business and can even enable other business functions as well as managers and executives to make decisions that are aligned with overall business goals and targets.

Once you have powerful analytics in place, go beyond basic turnover metrics and discover the data that really reflects your business needs. This includes everything from finding out which training courses develop the most successful leaders to looking at key metrics on a more granular, team-by-team level. Taking both a detailed, singular metric look and a wider holistic approach that cross-compares different metrics together, HR can spot patterns early and make the right decisions when they matter most.

Want to find out how SuccessFactors could help your HR team take on a more strategic role within your business? Book your free demo with us today and start your transformation journey.