back to the main page
Lock In Long-Term Benefits with Three Key Strategies for HR
What’s one of the best ways for HR departments to cope with today’s tough economy? Begin planning now for the next 10 years.
That’s the advice of Jay Richey, director of HCM applications marketing at Oracle, who adds that although strategies for the next 12 months are important, organizations that consider long-term trends will be more competitive after a turnaround.
“A 5- to 10-year perspective is essential given the ongoing decline in the global workforce,” he explains. According to industry estimates, while the worldwide workforce grew by about 1 percent throughout the 1990s, increases over the next decade could fall to half that rate.
At the same time, organizations are seeing a rise in “disengaged” employees—those who work dispassionately or openly criticize their organizations, which hurts customer service, sales, and profitability.
Fortunately, HR departments can make three key moves today to maintain a committed workforce and reduce operating costs in the years ahead.
- Increase Effectiveness through Enhanced Workforce Communications
Implementing tools and processes to enhance and encourage continuous communications with the workforce will help decrease costs and increase employee engagement, which is directly linked to employees’ interactions with customers, and impacts sales and profitability. “Strong two-way communications reduce the risk that employees don’t fully understand what’s expected of them while also increasing employee engagement,” Richey explains.
- Reduce Operational Costs by Automating HR Services
Use employee portals, HR help desks, and similar tools to streamline HR processes and shield HR analysts from routine tasks and inquiries. The payoff can be significant: According to a recent CedarCrestone analysis, a typical 10,000-person organization that hasn’t automated services might spend $30 for each of the 276,000 HR transactions it can expect each year. Self-service approaches can cut those costs by 16 percent, for a potential savings of more than $1 million in a single year.
- Position for Organizational Growth by Integrating Talent Management and ERP
Choosing a single vendor for talent-management and ERP systems assures that employee data flows smoothly between HR databases and core back-office applications, such as payroll systems. By having processes in place and integrated, employees have visibility into the organizational goals and understand their role. It also removes the need for additional vendors, licenses, and staff to maintain applications that reside outside the integrated talent management processes. Organizations will have lower operating expenses resulting from reduced turnover and hiring costs, as well as higher employee productivity and better information to make crucial business decisions.
back to the top
|
