1. Rewards and recognition
At its core, employee recognition is the open acknowledgment and appreciation expressed for an employee’s contributions to the organization. Rewards and recognition programs can impact many aspects of a business, including employee engagement, turnover, productivity, and morale. Enterprise HR teams can leverage employee recognition software to help manage their rewards and team member appreciation and celebration initiatives.
2. 360 feedback
360 feedback is a system where employees are given anonymous and confidential feedback on their competencies by their direct reports, manager, peers, and even customers. To conduct feedback 360, an online anonymous feedback form is sent to about 7 to 12 people that covers questions on a broad range of competencies related to the employee’s job.
This system enables HR to collect unbiased feedback, better understand HR development requirements (training, behavioral, leadership etc.), and get a holistic perspective about a potential leadership candidate.
3. Knowledge-sharing culture
Knowledge sharing is an internal knowledge management process that empowers employees to exchange information or skills with their peers. Sharing knowledge improves your employees’ sense of belonging within the organization, improves teamwork, increases engagement, reduces support training costs and tickets, and enables the entire workforce to become experts in their field and their organization. To build a knowledge-sharing culture, HR teams can:
- Hire a knowledge manager.
- Invest in a knowledge base software tool.
- Creating a set of internal guidelines to explain how employees should share their knowledge can make the process easier for them to follow.
4. Transparency
Your employees often may not like or agree with a particular decision, but clueing them in on it will impact their attitude towards it. Transparency is one of the essential HR best practices as it fosters trust, trust fosters security, and security fosters loyalty.
Access to business information should be available to all employees to foster buy-in through inclusivity. Sharing business successes and failures with your employees makes them feel motivated and engaged with the organization.
5. Ongoing training program
Engaged employees are always more productive and motivated to do jobs in the best way possible, which is why providing ongoing employee training and development programs is one of the most crucial HR best practices. Effective training enhances your employees’ knowledge and makes them proficient in their jobs to give better results. Furthermore, regular learning and development initiatives create a culture of engagement, make individuals feel valued and invested in their work, prevent workplace contentedness, and keep employees motivated.
6. Engagement and open communication
Keeping employees engaged in today’s competitive marketplace is critical to a business’s success. When employees find their jobs challenging, engaging, and rewarding, they’re more likely to stick around and invest themselves in their work. Open and transparent communication encourages innovation, collaboration, and sharing of ideas and experiences.
7. Compliance
Lack of compliance with local, national, and international labor legislation can blow any of your HR practices out of the water. Therefore, it is crucial to have a labor law expert on board, either as an employee or as a service provider, to whom you can run all your HR policies, procedures, and contracts for approval before implementing. Also, ensure that management and staff are updated with their rights and legal parameters.
8. Prioritize workplace safety
​​Although workplace safety has always been important, there is definitely a renewed focus on this critical HR practice since COVID. Here are a few things for the HR teams to consider when working to create a safe environment for their employees:
- Regularly sanitize desks and computer monitors with disinfectant.
- Follow social distancing while placing employee desks.
- Mandate wearing masks for all employees.
- Implement workplace safety programs.
- Personal protective equipment should be safely designed, constructed, and fit comfortably.
- Employers should encourage employees to take regular breaks to prevent tiredness and fatigue.
9. Flexible work opportunities
Employees are attracted to flexible working schedules because flexibility makes them more productive by giving them the freedom to work – when and how they want. The luxury of the non-traditional work schedule reduces employee stress, increasing their productivity.
Organizations offer flexible work hours to promote a healthy work-life balance, attract top talent, boost employee morale, and promote employee engagement and retention.
10. Cloud-based HR software
HR software help manage, optimize, and automate HR tasks. These systems are often cloud-based subscription models that easily integrate with existing apps and can be customized to suit an organization’s needs, goals and budget. Implementing HR software is a vital HR best practice because they help reduce time spent on low-impact admin tasks, sparing the HR professionals more time to spend on the most—productive, strategic outcomes. Other significant benefits include:
- Reduced human error.
- Improved data organization.
- Robust people analytics
- Continuous feedback.
- Compliance with federal regulations.
11. Selective hiring
Selective hiring enables organizations to bring in employees who add value. It involves developing hiring strategies that are more proactive in their approach to attract highly-qualified candidates with specific skill sets. Selective hiring includes – HR teams conducting a thorough job analysis of the vacant positions, looking into the publicly available labor force data to target recruits, and reaching out to current employees for referrals.
12. High-performance teams
High-performance teams are crucial for any company when it comes to achieving success. Creating and nurturing high-performance, effective teams is one of HR’s key responsibilities. A highly effective team is innovative in problem-solving and is known for displaying a high level of communication and collaboration, delivering consistent and superior results.
Community Manager.