When the dust settles as the economic recovery slowly continues, what will be the new function of the forever changed HR department? Those in the know realize that the newly evolved HR practitioners will now be more of strategic partners to their organizations rather than being just in the “people business”. The new role means integrating people strategies with business strategies in an effective way to move the company forward and add to the company’s bottom line.
Besides handling the traditional HR functions of hiring, handling benefits, and being the keepers of policies and procedures, HR managers need to transition into contributing to accomplishing organizational goals and objectives. In this role, the HR manager must thoroughly know the business, its customers and its products in order to create the right work positions and work environment, and hire the right employees with the competence and commitment to service the clients well. A recent article in Harvard Business School’s BNET website states that HR must play an active and guiding role in enabling the company to choose its people well, invest in them, support their growth and respect their needs, while fostering innovations needed to achieve the strategic business objectives. This vital role requires competence in coaching leaders in behaviors that will create and sustain a flexible and adaptive workforce, and in innovating at the accelerated rate of change of a global post-industrial economy.
While the HR practitioner is busy being a strategic business partner in an already downsized division, what happens to the traditional HR duties of hiring and on boarding personnel? How about a non-traditional form of “outsourcing” these processes by using self-service technology offered by third-party providers of Human Resources solutions! HR departments can streamline processes using the third-party provider’s technology and offerings while maintaining in-house control by accessing offerings via self-service online platforms. This option is a smart one for HR practitioners who want to keep the traditional functions in-house, yet are in need of an efficient way to eliminate the time consuming and error prone paper-based processes.
Simply put, technology that streamlines the background screening and hiring processes can lead to more informed hiring decisions, which should ultimately put the right person in the right job thereby reducing turnover and costs. An effective on boarding solution allows applicants to enter their information and credentials directly into an online application or kiosk, thus eliminating the data entry time. This improves the productivity of the HR department by freeing employees to focus on other tasks like helping to grow the business. It also reduces time lost chasing down errors now caught in real-time through predefined validated fields. In addition, a self-service solution enables the HR department to manage the new hire process and documents more efficiently by not only storing those documents electronically, but also by presenting forms to be signed when needed and as needed in a logical workflow. This streamlined approach ensures legal compliance as well as productivity and profitability. It’s a win-win for the busy HR practitioner!
For more information on how CARCO’s Onboarding Solution can help you streamline your processes so you can focus on the challenges of being a strong strategic partner to your organization, please visit www.carcogroup.com or email us a sales@carcogroup.com.
