The role played by HR professionals has often been a thankless one. Usually written off as mere administrators and paper pushers, many tend to underestimate the importance of good HR management.

From recruiting skilled employees to identifying potential skill gaps, HR management has come a long way over the years. 

Faced with an increasingly challenging economy and shifting demographics, organizations have begun looking inward as it becomes increasingly clear that Human Resource Management (HRM) is the way forward.

Simply put, HRM focuses on the recruitment, training, and retention of skilled and dedicated employees within the organization. Rather than treating employees as mere laborers, senior business leaders have come to the realization that employees are both a resource and an investment. 

Besides engaging with them, HRM emphasizes the need to provide employees with career prospects and opportunities for professional development. This ensures that employees have plenty of reasons to remain loyal to an organization.

On paper, the idea of HRM is a simple one, however, the reality is very much different. Effective HRM calls for a complete overhaul of organizational SOPs, a paradigm shift, and the right software. 

In this article, we take a look at how HR professionals can kick-start HRM in their respective organizations.

Embrace employee progression

It goes without saying that high-performing employees are the most ambitious and hardest to retain. High-performers give their all and expect to be allowed to scale the corporate ladder as quickly as they can.

Unfortunately, all too often, managers or supervisors may be reluctant to lose such a capable staff member. As a result, some may resort to intentionally sabotaging an employee’s future career prospects in said organization or denying them opportunities for further development.

Besides being both unprofessional and selfish, this management style will more often than not backfire and result in the organization losing out on highly skilled employees.

From individual contributors to managers, HR professionals, and business leaders should ensure that their employees have ample opportunities for career progression. While a department may lose out on a high-performing team member, losing him/her to a competing business is even worse.

Develop specialized training programs

The relationship between both employer and employee is a two-way road with employees providing manpower and skills while employers ensure that their staff are sufficiently compensated for their time.

Whether it’s offering competitive salaries to providing avenues for professional development, HRM is concerned with all aspects of employee recruitment and retention. In today’s competitive work environment, employees understand that jobs are no longer for life.

Because of this, employees are constantly on the lookout for better opportunities to further themselves. Specialized training programs coupled with opportunities for career advancement can be some of the strongest reasons why talented employees choose to stay on with a particular organization.

Provide flexible work arrangements

Administrative tasks tend to make up a large part of the HR professional’s day which often leaves them preoccupied with less time for more value-added tasks. This is why offering flexible work arrangements can be beneficial in more ways than one.

Firstly, a rising number of employees are demanding flexible work arrangements such as telecommuting and remote working to be made available to them. 

By making such arrangements available, organizations may be able to get an advantage over their less flexible competitors by improving their employee’s work-life balance.

With an ever-worsening economic outlook, it would also be prudent for an organization to reduce its footprint by renting or leasing out smaller premises thus slashing unneeded business expenses.

Make transparency a priority

Transparency is a crucial aspect of HRM as it is key to cultivating a healthy workplace relationship between employers and employees. All too often, employees are kept on a strictly “need-to-know” basis as a means of exercising control over their behavior.

Consequently, the lack of communication and trust between both parties leads to stress and frustration which can be damaging to the organization. From a 2017 survey conducted by Robert Half, 78 percent of CFOs anticipated an increase in staff stress levels over the next 3 years.

Long working hours, an uncertain economy, and stiff competition all mean that employees in Singapore are often highly stressed. From an organizational point of view, this is certainly unacceptable as it will likely lead to increased rates of employee burnout in the long run. 

Business leaders need to adopt a policy of transparency that encourages the sharing of information to encourage employees to speak up at all times. While difficult at first, fostering a sense of trust between both employer and employee is essential for the successful implementation of HRM.

As our economies shift towards a knowledge and skill-based model, a new approach is needed to better manage and motivate employees. HRM is one such approach that HR professionals would do well to become better acquainted with.

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IQ Dynamics is one of Singapore’s top HRMS vendors with users spread across the world. We provide HR teams with an integrated suite of HR and Talent modules to reduce processing time and errors, increasing employee productivity in enterprises.

If you are keen to find out more, feel free to contact us here for more information today!