Major Issues in the HR Department and Proposed Solutions

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The human resource (HR) department deals with a wide range of activities related to hiring and management of employees within the organization. Some of the responsibilities of the HR include job designs which involves job description, strategic prioritization as well as recruitment ads (Stone, Cox & Gavin, 2020). Other major functions include performance management, compensation and benefits management, maintaining health and safety of the employees, training and development of the existing employees, and navigating legal requirements in regard to the employees’ issues. The HR department faces numerous problems as they try to comply with their tasks including employee retention as well as ensuring workplace diversity. The significance of retaining employees in an organization is that saves the time and other resources that are used to train new employees. On the other hand, recruiting diversity helps in improving the image of the organization, allowing the society feel represented in the organization. However, keeping up with these two tasks is a major challenge for the HR.

Employee retention is one of the major challenges that face the human resource department (Irabor & Okolie, 2019). Losing an employee whether through resignation or termination can be a great loss to an organization as the cost of rehiring another employee are so high. For example, it is estimated that an organization has to spend more than 4,000 dollars to hire a new employee and this can be attributed to the associated costs including recruiting, hiring and training of new employees. Besides, the costs continue to escalate especially when the organization has to pay workers for overtime which they have to cover after one of the employees has left the organization. In addition, there are costs that can add to the high cost of hiring a new employee including hidden costs to turnover, and this impacts to the overall budgeting of the organization. As a result of this, the overall employee morale as well the brand image of the organization can suffer. Resignation or the termination of the employees’ contract may result to resentment within the workforce, with the remaining employees becoming disengaged and may began to seek new employment elsewhere, especially if they fell that they are not valued or motivated in the current place of work.

There are various solutions that can be used to solve the employee retention problem in an organization. One of the solutions include starting the employees with a strong onboard process upon hiring. Many employees often feel that they are not properly welcomed in their place of work, and this might encourage early resentment to the job position. According to statistics, only 12% of the employees feel that their organization does a great job of onboarding after hiring; this is a very low number, and this may be one of the major reasons why many employees resign or terminate their contracts (Anton & Ryan Cox, 2019). An effective onboarding process for the employees can be one of the best tools that an organization can use to increase employee retention in the organization, as it helps to get the employees on the job quickly and efficiently, encouraging employer-employee engagement right from the beginning. Due to effective engagement, the employees are already made aware of what they are expected to do and the organization is aware of what to expect from the employees in regard to performance and productivity. Based on this, an effective onboarding process is one that outlines the jo requirements, goals as well as the organization polices and procedures.

Another solution to improving the retention rates among the employees include offering a competitive pay (Zaharee et al., 2018). Many employees resign from their work because they feel that they are underpaid, while people from other organizations working under the same job description have a higher and better remuneration. Based on this, an employee will quit working from their current organization and seek new employment opportunity from the competitive organization. It is important for organizations to research what their competitors pay their employees and make an increment to their current workforce as this will play a major role in improving the relationship between the employer and the employees. Salary increment can help reduce the number of employees seeking better employment opportunities from well-paying organizations, and this will eventually work in reducing the extra cost incurred from hiring and training new employees.

Another solution to improve the retention rate among the employees include holding regular performance reviews (Khayinga & Muathe, 2018). The HR is responsible in evaluating the performance of the employees and rewarding them through various rewards including promotion and recognition. Lack of employee performance reduces the HR’s ability to recognize areas in the employees that require to be improved to help improve their performance and the overall productivity. Performance evaluation and reviews can be conducted quarterly, semi-annually and even annually to help provide the managers with information regarding the performance of the employees, and this will work to help improve areas that show weakness. Employee performance reviews helps the employee to set goals, understand what is expected of them in the organization, and help the managers in offering rewards for better performance for meeting the set organizational goals. Based on this, the HR department can set a performance system that will help in simplifying the process of evaluating the performance of the employees and provide valuable feedback that will help the employees improve their productivity.

Workplace diversity is another major problem that face the HR department; this is a common problem in many organizations across the globe (Cletus et al., 2018). Every organization requires to have a workforce that is representative of their society. However, this is not the case in many organizations as they tend to hire the same type of employees with the same ideas; this way of hiring is not only bad for the organization, but it is illegal, especially if the organization has no varied reason for rejecting candidates from other races or gender. Equality is one of the major issues in the contemporary society and this means that every organization need to employ at least a specific number of people from various ethnicities and gender to be termed as representative of the society in which the organization is build. Besides, lack of diversity may impact negatively to the organization through stifled creativity and innovativeness.

A major solution to improving workplace diversity includes training the HR managers on diversity and inclusion (Kang & Kaplan, 2019). Most recruiting managers are not aware of the benefits of diverse recruitment, which means that the organizations become the losing side. Training the managers to become race and gender tolerant can be a major step towards increased diversity in the organization, as the managers are able to identify and address diversity issues in the organization and act immediately. With diverse knowledge on diversity and inclusion in the workplace, the HR will begin looking in new places to find a more diverse pool of candidates. They can also engage in referral programs to help attract more diverse workforce.

In conclusion, the HR department has one of the most challenging roles in the organizations which includes managing employees and hiring talents that will help achieve the set goals. As a result, they face major challenges including employee retention and lack of diversity in the workforce. These two challenges have proven to be costly to the organization as they help in building the organization’s image to the consumers. Lack of diverse recruiting in an organization is illegal, and this may open the organization to a possibility of law suits, and this can damage the image of the organization.

References

Anton Shufutinsky PhD, D., & Ryan Cox, M. B. A. (2019). Losing talent on day one: Onboarding millennial employees in health care organizations. Organization Development Journal, 37(4), 33-51.

Cletus, H. E., Mahmood, N. A., Umar, A., & Ibrahim, A. D. (2018). Prospects and challenges of workplace diversity in modern day organizations: A critical review. HOLISTICA–Journal of Business and Public Administration, 9(2), 35-52.

Irabor, I. E., & Okolie, U. C. (2019). A review of employees’ job satisfaction and its affect on their retention. Annals of Spiru Haret University. Economic Series, 19(2), 93-114.

Kang, S. K., & Kaplan, S. (2019). Working toward gender diversity and inclusion in medicine: myths and solutions. The Lancet, 393(10171), 579-586.

Khayinga, C. M., & Muathe, S. (2018). Human Capital Development and organizational performance: review & critique of literature and A research agenda. International journal for innovation education and research, 6(2), 144-153.

Stone, R. J., Cox, A., & Gavin, M. (2020). Human resource management. John Wiley & Sons.

Zaharee, M., Lipkie, T., Mehlman, S. K., & Neylon, S. K. (2018). Recruitment and Retention of Early-Career Technical Talent: What Young Employees Want from Employers A study of the workplace attributes that attract early-career workers suggests that Millennials may not be so different from earlier generations. Research-Technology Management, 61(5), 51-61.