How to Improve People Operations with Digital Solutions
Is People Operations versus Human Resource Operations a case of po-tei-to po-tah-to? HR operations refer to the service HR departments provide to other units, primarily managing the employee cycle.
So, what is People Operations then?
It is a strategic business function that focuses on putting the employee first by humanizing impersonal systems and continuously improving employee engagement, development, and retention (AIHR).
No matter what an organization provides as a service or product, all organizations have people at the core of getting things done. How talent is managed differs from organization to organization, depending on needs and capacity. Regardless of those needs and capacities, digital-facing solutions are always a plus, and this is your guide to some of them.
Is this digital transformation guide for your organization :
- Small to medium size organizations, with
- Gaps in its people management strategy; that is
- Curious about what digital solutions are doable, and
- Looking for practical ways to implement them.
If you’re thinking “yes” to at least 2 of the points above, here are five things you can do across key parts of your talent management function.
Recruitment
Digital solutions allow organizations to handle recruitment from end to end or in specific phases, depending on an organization’s needs. They also allow them to avoid traditional hiring constraints like a limited talent pool and time intensiveness.
Job seekers and talent, in general, are online, so go where they are. Sites like LinkedIn and Indeed allow recruiters to post job ads that give information about the role they are recruiting for and how they can apply. You can boost the ad by paying promotion fees to reach more candidates. Another approach is sharing the opportunity as a social media post that employees and other connections are encouraged to share on their networks.
ATS: If you are looking for more “hands-on” solutions, Applicant Tracking Systems are software that makes recruitment more effective by collecting information on applicants, sorting through applications to identify suitable candidates, and making recommendations. They are built to make the recruitment process as effective as possible and can handle scheduling interviews, send notifications and alerts, and automate email responses. BambooHR, Greenhouse, and Zoho are some of the most popular.
Add a Careers page to your company’s website that documents your work culture, roles, and updates on openings. You can also create a talent bank by including an option for people interested in working with you to fill in basic information and upload a resume on the careers page.
On LinkedIn, the Easy Apply option makes it easy for candidates to apply for jobs at your organization on the app, and their data is forwarded to whatever ATS you use.
Employee Onboarding
Onboarding is the first impression you make on a new hire. It is the process that is supposed to introduce a new employee to the company and set them up in the best possible way for success. First impressions matter. Glassdoor found that companies with a strong onboarding process improve new employee retention by 82% and productivity by 70%. Most onboarding processes are marked by information overload; every piece of paper written about the company (ok, maybe not every) is thrown at the new person. Tasks are assigned with rapid-fire, and little support is provided. Practical steps you can take to make this process easier include;
- Sending forms, they need to fill over email for them to sign using digital signatures before their first day.
- Prepare an e-handbook that contains information about their role.
- Assign an employee they can shadow, someone to be their point person during the onboarding process. This person would check-in and should be available to answer questions. Use platforms like Slack to make communication more effective.
- Create a simple online to-do list (on Google Keep, for example) or dashboard to document and track the itinerary for the process and update it as you go along. The new hire should have access to it.
Using communication platforms like Slack or Google chat is a great way to improve communications. They are not overly formal like emails, are real-time, provide features like channels for teams or projects, document sharing, groups, and even taking notes in your messages to yourself. Employees can also mute notifications whenever they are off work and need the chatter to pause.
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Learning and Development
Productivity and performance are enhanced through learning and development. Learning is becoming increasingly digital today, and while sites like Coursera and Udemy are great for personal development, they are also valuable for organizations. With courses, projects, and even boot camps on almost every topic, across different sectors and industries, you can prepare training programs within and across teams based on online courses. Employees can also be encouraged to enroll in courses relevant to their work and even other interests that might not be work-related. Coursera, for example, offers subscription plans for businesses and organizations to give their employees unlimited access to the Coursera catalog. If you are on a budget, you can always encourage employees to audit relevant courses when that option is available.
Training doesn’t always have to be centralized, with all employees gathered together in one accord. Integrating online courses into your people development and skills program saves you from scheduling issues and the cost of developing programs from scratch.
Project Management and Delivery
“This meeting could have been an email.” There is a lot of that going around these days as employees become more aware of how much time is spent in meetings. Meetings have always been a part of work culture, and a belief that the more meetings, the more results. However, having a lot of meetings doesn’t equate to having the results you need, and this approach leans towards micromanagement. We came across a recent tweet that it is important to hire the right people and entrust them to get things done. Why? So you don’t have to micromanage and waste resources like time and effort.
However, this doesn’t mean you should take a laissez-faire approach to project management and delivery. Your one thing for project management and delivery is to minimize the meetings (that focus on planning and tracking) and introduce project management software to improve how you manage projects and everyday activities. While this software became popular during the lockdown, they are valuable for teams that aren’t remote as well. Notion, Trello, and Clickup are some of the digital tools that allow you to manage the workflow across teams and activities. Different tools have different features, but at the very least, they allow you to create tasks, set deadlines on them, update their status, assign responsibility, and link to the relevant resources and documentation per task. These tools help team members stay accountable and give managers an eagle-eye view of how things are going.
These tools are not meant to replace meetings, but they can make them more effective. We suggest having a beginning of-week meeting to coordinate, non-meeting check-ins during the week (where necessary), and end-of-weekly progress meetings.
Feedback Mechanisms
Leading, managing, and developing people should never be a one-way process, not if it is to be effective. An organization’s strategy should not be divorced from the people who implement it, and this applies to more than just its people strategy. Getting employee feedback is an important way to evaluate the strategies you have in place and how well they work. It also allows you to check in with how employees feel in general. Pulse Surveys are quick surveys usually conducted to understand opinions and feelings on an issue.
A pulse survey is a short and regular set of questions sent to employees. As the term “pulse” suggests, it is carried out to continuously gain employees’ views on job-related roles, communication and relationships, and the overall work environment.
You can encourage feedback from them by conducting regular (weekly, monthly, bimonthly, etc.) pulse surveys. Using tools like survey monkey and google forms, you can create your survey, share it with team members, and monitor responses in one easy-to-use system. If you are feeling fancy, you can check out these recommendations for pulse survey tools.
Conducting these surveys signals that their opinions matter to the organization and can prompt them to be more involved in other more elaborate feedback mechanisms you may decide to employ, including just having conversations.
At Gumi, People Solutions and Digital Transformation are key pillars through which we help organizations innovate to operate at maximum efficiency. If you’re looking to speak to someone who knows what they are talking about, you can get on a brief call with a Consultant by reaching out to us at hello@gumi.company.
