7 Human Resources Best Practices
Although HR has evolved over the years, its enduring core practices remain the same, serving as guidelines for HR professionals everywhere to follow.
If you’re an HR professional yourself or thinking about starting a career in HR, you might be wondering how these practices have persisted through time. What is it about them and what makes them important?
Well, we’re here to answer all your questions surrounding the best practices in human resource management.
First, let’s give context to what Human Resource Best Practices are.
What are Human Resource Best Practices?
Simply put, Human Resource Best Practices are a string of HRM processes and actions that work universally and have proven to be effective.
It’s the idea that there’s a universal set of HR practices that can provide companies with optimate business performance, no matter which industry they’re applied to.
However, it’s hard to deny that the principle of best fits works too. It’s another HR school of thought that argues HR policies should align with business strategies and goals.
To help HR professionals focus their efforts on Human Resource Best Practices, we’ve put together a list of HR practices that you can apply to your own.
The 7 Best HR Practices
As proposed by Jeffrey Pfeffer, here are the best set of practices that can increase a company’s profit, as well as improve its engagement and retention.
1. Providing security to employees
The number one reason why employees go to work is to be able to provide for themselves and their families. There’s no denying that life is unpredictable, so having an employer that can offer stable and secure employment is important to most people.
Employment security allows employees to go home after work and relax knowing that they have a job to go back to tomorrow, which enables them to support themselves and their loved ones.
When there’s a threat to employment security, the effects are immediately felt throughout the organisation. These can manifest in overall lower employee productivity, affecting the daily operations of a company.
Besides employees, employment security benefits companies as well. When employees resign or get laid off, it’s the company that pays the price because they’ve invested in selecting and training these employees.
2. Selective hiring
Selective hiring allows organisations to bring in more people who would add value to the company.
As an HR professional, you want to hire people who are right for the job. You can’t just hire anyone, even those with impressive credentials.
After all, the secret to building a competitive advantage is by bringing the most qualified and driven people to your side. This means you have to maximise the available recruitment resources in order to find the right people.
3. Self-managed and effective teams
It goes without saying that teamwork is the key to achieving goals and driving success, which couldn’t be any more true in a corporate setting.
Teams are essential because of the people who think differently but work towards the same goal. When people in a team are thinking differently, more ideas are created, which are then processed and combined to generate the ultimate best idea.
One of HR’s key responsibilities is to nurture and encourage high-performing teams, usually by providing them with tools that would make their tasks easier or by rewarding team excellence.
4. Performance-based compensation
When you hire the right people, you want to compensate them fairly, above average even, if possible. These are the people who can add value to your company and paying them fairly is the best way to keep them on your side.
On the other hand, compensating people above the average comes with potential downsides. It may encourage low-performing employees to not improve the quality of their work.
Formulating a competitive compensation package is a balance between fair base pay and great employee benefits. Once you’re able to find that balance, expect that the most valuable people in your organisation won’t entertain the thought of leaving and moving to another company.
5. Training in relevant skills
Hiring the best people isn’t enough. Organisations need to make sure that every team member remains a frontrunner in their respective fields, so this is where training and development enters the picture.
Learning has become integral to company growth and sustaining a competitive advantage, so companies are expected to invest heavily in training their employees. There needs to be time and budget set aside for strengthening people’s skillset.
As more Gen Zs enter the workforce, companies need to step up their game in order to retain their pool of talented and driven young employees. The next generation of workers are after development opportunities and see these as a way to grow as a professional.
6. Creating a flat, egalitarian organisation
One of the best practices in human resource management is treating everyone as equals, even though structures and hierarchies exist in any organisation.
Every employee is valuable and capable of helping the company grow, and should be treated as such. Building an egalitarian culture in the workplace proves that everyone deserves equal respect and could be essential to the organisation’s growth.
7. Making information accessible
One of the things that most companies struggle with is making relevant information accessible to every member of the organisation.
The reason why information dissemination and sharing is important is that it creates a culture where people feel they’re trusted. Employees appreciate it when they’re in the loop of what’s happening in and out of the company.
Plus, if employees understand what’s happening, they may be able to contribute valuable ideas. You never know where the best idea can come from.
Building an effective workplace as an HR professional
Creating a workplace with satisfied and productive employees requires a lot of work. From providing employment security to making company information more accessible, HR professionals need to set up a system that would make every employee feel encouraged and appreciated.
If your organisation is dedicated to these HR best practices and their principles, then expect a workplace with happier employees and higher employee retention.
