This article is a part of the Path of Growth in my previous article “What is the Role of Human Resources?” The Path of Growth is all about the people of an organization getting the training and skills needed to advance careers and the organization’s goals. A big part of that is how HR can support your employees.
The top ways HR can support employees is by giving performance guidance, career guidance, and soft skill or general training.
Read below for all the details!
Performance Guidance
All too often employees get fired out of the blue and they don’t understand why. If an employee is lucky, they a yearly review and a first warning when they are not performing as management expects. HR can help navigate the employee performance process.
More Evaluations
Employees need to be updated on how well or not well they’re performing. This is the only way an employee can improve properly without getting disgruntled on the job or badmouthing the organization when they get fired. Employees need performance feedback and then support monthly or quarterly at the least. Yearly performance reviews are not effective.
Tracking and Analysis
Supervisors and managers do the performance evaluations, but HR tracks and analyzes the results. This constant analysis will allow HR to support the employees and support the supervisors or managers at the same time. This will allow any issues to be handled sooner.
Bad Habits
Bad performance for a couple of months is better than twelve months. Issues addressed sooner can be corrected. After a year with no employee feedback, supervisors and managers are in a hard spot trying to address issues that the employee thinks were never an issue. Bad habits may form, and performance may never improve.
Career Guidance
Many organizations only care that a position is filled with a person that can do the job well. Succession planning may only be done for top-level c-suite employees. Training and career advancement within the organization at all levels should be a top priority.
Entry-level positions should be a real starting point for an employee’s career. Organizations need to favour internal promotions and train employees for that next step. Sometimes there may not be an opening higher up but that is okay. Employees that feel valued because of the training will be more loyal and stay longer.
Fear and Loyalty
The fear organizations have about training employees because they may leave is wrong. Employees become loyal because of great training. Naturally, some employees will leave if promotions or career advancement opportunities are not currently available.
Happy Ex-Employees
If an employee leaves an organization that has a great training program and internal promotions policy, they will leave happy. A happy ex-employee is a great thing to have out in the world. They may sing your praises improving word of mouth about your organization. They may even recommend people to apply to work for you.
Soft Skills or General Training
Hard skills are taught by supervisors and managers. These are the on-the-job skills needed to become an expert. Soft skills and other general training may be harder to get from your direct supervisor.
An employee may be told to write letters all day and they get the format needed from their supervisor. The related skills like how to use word processing programs like MS Office or the tricks and shortcuts to speed up performance may not be given by their supervisor. This is where HR can fill the performance gaps allowing supervisors and managers to worry about the work.
Outside Training
HR can create additional training programs or direct employees to outside training. A great example of a computer skills training company is Know It Sooner
. They have training from basic computer and file management skills to becoming a master in Microsoft Office, they will help you become more productive and efficient with your everyday tasks.
What Next?
Ask your employees what support they need to improve their performance, advance their careers, and general training. After that, you can get your HR department to action these tasks for the whole organization.
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All articles on this website were written by Ian Hopfe. Connect with Ian on LinkedIn!