HR solutions for workplace challenges

Based on feedback, we've gathered a few common, general challenges that HR staff regularly have to contend with. Fortunately, there are HR solutions that make these challenges easy to overcome. Read on to find out which HR solutions you can choose from for each workplace challenge.

1. Keeping in touch with employees

Challenge:

You often hear that HR has to fight for employees' attention and to get its message through at all. This is true both when the colleagues to be reached have a company email address (mostly white-collar workers) and when it comes to blue-collar workers, i.e. those doing manual work. In the former case, you have to stand out among the huge number of email messages — an average of 121 a day — so that HR emails are read in time. In the latter case, it also causes headaches which communication channel can be used to reach staff. In the absence of a company email address and devices, the notice board is still often used today as a communication channel among blue-collar workers. But this method is extremely outdated. What's more, when using it, there's absolutely  no way to establish whether everyone concerned saw and read the notice board's content in time. Fortunately, there's a better solution than this!

HR solution:

It's worth establishing an internal communication channel that

• doesn't require a company email address — 83% of manual workers don't have a company email address,
• requires no new device
• is accessible from anywhere and any time with internet access
• works excellently on your smartphone (too)

Several such internal communication tools are available: e.g. Staffbase, Beekeeper, or CHEQ.

2. Recruiting talent

Challenge:

In some fields there are fewer and fewer genuinely talented and skilled workers. On top of that, every company is competing for excellent staff. So there's a constant battle for a company/HR professional to have the best employee working for them. Recruiting talent is no easy task. It requires time and energy on the employer's part, but the following HR solutions support talent recruitment.

HR solutions:

1. Employer branding

It's worth building a strong employer brand image, as this helps attract talent. According to one survey, 75% of job seekers consider the image formed of a company when looking for a job. In addition, companies with a strong and positive employer brand enjoy further favourable advantages compared with their peers:

• up to 50% lower recruitment costs
• applicants who are nearly 50% more highly qualified than average
• 28% lower staff turnover
• a 2x faster selection and hiring procedure

2. Nurturing the relationship with former colleagues

It's worth maintaining the relationship with those talented professionals too who resigned, or whom the company had to let go at a given moment. If the parting was friendly, there's every chance that these professionals might return in the future. CHEQ makes communicating with them easier (too). You can create a separate CHEQ interface for them, which makes it possible for former employees to see only the information that may concern them, e.g. open positions, employee referrals, alumni gatherings, and so on.

Good relationships nurtured with former workers can also speed up talent recruitment and reduce the costs spent on it. Because even if the former colleague themselves doesn't find an attractive new position in the company's offering, they may be able to recommend someone for it.

3. Onboarding

Challenge:

Onboarding new workers and supporting their integration into company culture is no small task either. This is proven by the fact that 88% of companies are unable to onboard effectively. For office staff it's relatively easy to handle and track. For blue-collar workers, however, this is already a bigger challenge. In any case, it's extremely important that every new employee gets the best possible onboarding experience, since according to surveys 80% of employees who are dissatisfied with their onboarding soon start looking for a new job.

HR solution:

We've written before about how best to onboard new colleagues, especially blue-collar workers, so that

• we give them the best possible experience,
• we effectively pass on to them the knowledge they need to do their work and
• we integrate them into the company culture.

An e-book has also been created to accompany the article, in which we present a checklist for the successful digital onboarding of blue-collar workers. You can download it for free HERE.

4. Engaging employees

Challenge:

Engaging and activating employees is a universal challenge worldwide. According to a Gallup survey, more and more American employees are becoming disengaged, and the situation is probably no better here in Hungary. It's hard to get most employees to do anything beyond the expected minimum for the company's sake, to give feedback, to make proactive suggestions, and so on.

HR solution:

The basis of employee engagement is two-way information flow. You have to build a company culture that supports two-way communication. And you have to choose a communication channel accordingly, for example CHEQ. Through this communication channel not only can HR and management initiate a conversation with employees, but employees can also initiate one with management and HR. What's more, on sensitive topics they can do so anonymously. This is extremely important, especially when there previously was no active communication between employees and management within the company. In that case, trust has to be built first.

In addition, we mustn't forget that we have to ask employees for feedback, and by responding to it we can share further information. If we only ever proclaim news but never ask employees' opinions or don't listen to them, then on what grounds do we expect employees to take part actively and of their own accord in the life of the company on the rare occasions when we ask them to?

Have a genuine dialogue with your colleagues and engaging them will become easier and easier too!

5. Employee retention

Challenge:

I don't think this challenge needs much explaining. Every company fights to secure the more talented workers, and they can't even sit back once the professional accepts their offer. Because if

• they can't keep their promises,
• they provide a poor onboarding experience,
• they don't offer an opportunity to grow/develop further
• the employee finds the work environment toxic,
• or any other difference of opinion arises between employee and employer,

then the employee can go to work elsewhere at any time, even for the competition. That's exactly why enormous attention has to be paid to employee retention, which is no small task.

HR solutions:

1. Employee retention is also greatly helped by nurturing a favourable employer brand, part of which is a pleasant company atmosphere or culture. You have to create a work environment where employees feel good and where they're proud to come to work. This can be built with two-way, transparent and regular communication, since dialogue is the basis of every well-functioning relationship.

2. Of course, employee retention also has to be supported on the financial side — that is, alongside a competitive salary it's worth designing benefit packages that can be attractive to employees. The easiest way to do this is to design the benefit packages with employees' involvement.

3. It's also worth mapping out a career path together with the employee, since this too can contribute to retaining talent. As can further training opportunities.

4. In addition, it's advisable to listen to individual employee needs and reach a mutual agreement accordingly. For example, if an employee works in logistics and often goes on long trips with the shipment, you can offer the employee, as a workplace benefit, additional paid rest days on top of the mandatory paid days off. Or give them the option to choose how the company handles their overtime: payment vs. an extra day off.

6. Training the workforce

Challenge:

To stay competitive, it's essential that employees' knowledge is up to date. But this is only possible with continuous development and training. However, HR often runs into the problem that colleagues working in production can't be “taken” off work even for a single day to send them to training. This would mean halting production, which many companies aren't willing to take on. You can't really blame management for this, since there's no guarantee that employees would perform better after the training. Because of these and similar fears on management's part, it's extremely hard for HR to organise training sessions and to get colleagues to complete them if the training takes place outside working hours.

HR solutions:

Thanks to digitalisation, there are now several options for training the workforce; there's no need to take them off work as a group and send them to training in person. It's entirely feasible for them to train themselves through online courses whenever their time allows, or to learn about a particular important piece of information from company announcements.

Whichever solution you'd choose, CHEQ supports both. You can send image and video material in announcements, and you can even deploy it in the field of microlearning. What's more, through CHEQ you can also assess employees' knowledge in moments and process the results. This way you'll know exactly in which areas colleagues need further support. You can read more about how CHEQ supports microlearning here.

7. Managing diversity — aligning cultural differences

Challenge:

In the Central and Eastern European region, more and more foreigners are working. This is partly the effect of migration, partly of the war raging next door, and partly of the transformation of the global labour market. In the region, and so in Hungary too, more and more Ukrainians, Filipinos, Mongolians, Chinese, Burmese, and so on are working. Their culture differs from ours, and communicating with them isn't easy either, because of language barriers.

HR solution:

It's worth nurturing the relationship with these foreign colleagues through a communication channel that they can use without involving an interpreter. CHEQ, for example, lets every colleague use the tool in the language of their choice. What's more, HR only has to write the announcements in one language, which the system translates into the other languages with one click. Through simplified multilingual communication, foreign colleagues can be involved too. They also feel like part of the team, so integrating them into the company culture can be faster too.

Alongside multilingual communication, it's also advisable to carry out cultural education, within which colleagues of different nationalities can get to know each other's traditions better.

Besides the challenges listed above, HR certainly often faces further difficulties too. But you can't list everything in a single article and present a whole series of useful HR solutions to go with it. I hope you understand that. That said, if you're curious about what solutions CHEQ can offer for YOUR specific HR and internal communication challenges, then request our free demo, where you'll get answers to your questions from one of our expert colleagues.