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Clark Schaefer Strategic HR's wheel of HR Services, including HR Strategy, Recruitment, Training & Development, Benefits & Compensation, Communications, Employee Relations, Recordkeeping, and Health, Safety & Security

Understanding the Importance of Organizational Analysis

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HR Question:

Our business needs and demands have grown dramatically as a result of the pandemic, and this is putting a strain on our employees. I want to make sure that we approach the growing and changing needs strategically rather than using a band-aid approach for quick fixes. What do I need to do to make sure we have the right people in the right places to continue our success?

HR Answer:

You are not alone in navigating through a changing business environment as more businesses reopen or ramp up at the same time consumer confidence and demand increases. While having a business that’s growing gives reason for celebration, it often comes with challenges as well. The changes you are navigating can bring about strategic challenges that you hadn’t anticipated, so being thoughtful about how to address them and determining the necessary steps to best manage your growth and achieve your desired business results is key.

A simple framework to think about change is “Strategy > Structure > People”. These are sequential steps, since the first informs the other, and often helps you get to root causes versus putting band-aids on problems. A very effective tool you can use to assess and understand your business and staffing needs holistically is an Organizational Analysis. An Organizational Analysis can help you to determine how your current organization structure is supporting the business results. It will also help you to further identify if your structures, processes, and people strategy are optimal as you move forward.

How to conduct an organizational analysis

An Organizational Analysis begins with an in-depth review of your high-level organization initiatives and structure, including:

  • Vision
  • Mission
  • Strategic goals
  • Financial goals & metrics
  • Business operations
  • Organization values
  • Organization chart

How employee surveys and focus groups can help

To ensure a comprehensive perspective, it can be beneficial to conduct employee surveys and/or focus groups with key team members to get to a deeper understanding of what’s driving your organization, in addition to identifying barriers or inefficiencies. Those closest to the work can often tell you where pain points are, provide suggestions for improvements, or tell you the work that is value add versus not.

Identify gaps and take action

By reviewing all of the data mentioned above, it will present a complete picture of what your organization is doing right and shine a light on gaps or areas that could be improved. From there, specific actions can be identified to create complete alignment throughout your organization and to ensure that you are able to not only maintain but expand upon your current success.

Your organizational analysis could reveal necessary actions such as:

  • Realignment of your organizational structure
  • Redefining operating norms, processes, and procedures
  • Addressing potential root causes which can help improve operations
  • Redesigning job functions and descriptions

The Institute of Organizational Development gives 7 reasons why organizational development is of critical importance to grow business, and an Organizational Analysis is a powerful tool to keep you focused on the big picture and making smart strategic decisions while building your organization from the inside out.

 

HR Strategy often involves thinking ahead to the future and making plans for the growth and development of key players. Strategic HR understands the balance between company strategy and people strategy and can assist you with both needs. Not only do we have the expertise to help you develop a strategic plan for your company, but we also have resources to help you develop your people leaders. Visit our HR Strategy page to learn how we can assist you with your company strategy.

Clark Schaefer Strategic HR's wheel of HR Services, including HR Strategy, Recruitment, Training & Development, Benefits & Compensation, Communications, Employee Relations, Recordkeeping, and Health, Safety & Security

What Is the Business World Doing to Support the Sandwich Generation?

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Question:

With so much focus lately on Millennial’s, I’m curious what employers are doing to support another group of employees — the Sandwich Generation?

Answer:

For employees in the Sandwich Generation who are caring not only for their own children, but also for their aging parents, they often will trudge along to care for the people who matter most. According to the Northeast Business Group on Health “Care-giving Landscape” whitepaper, caregivers miss an average of six days of work each year due to care-giving responsibilities, are less productive because of personal distractions, and are in poorer health than non-care giving colleagues.

The following are some examples of benefits that give the Sandwich Generation the support they need to succeed in and out of the office:  

  • Flexible Work Schedule: For employees with personal obligations during the typical 9-to-5, flexibility allows them to accomplish everything they need without having to take off to catch up.   
  • Child Care Benefits:  Employers can help alleviate the financial burden of child care by subsidizing care options, including backup care.
  • Senior Care Benefits: In addition to helping find care options for the day-to-day, providing tips and guidance gives caregivers confidence to navigate this new role.
  • Financial Planning Assistance: As if managing personal finances wasn’t hard enough, this generation may have a mortgage, while also helping pay college tuition and managing their parents’ estate.  Access to financial planning allows employees to work care-giving related costs into their plan and better prepare for the future.
  • Household Help:  Employers can ease the burden of simple household tasks by providing meal prep, house cleaning and laundry services.  
  • Access to Elder Care Experts:  Senior care needs often arise suddenly, so providing information (through webinars, on-site seminars or simply by giving local expert contact information) can be extremely helpful to employees.

It’s in the employers’ best interest to provide the tools employees need to manage their personal lives so they can do well – and excel – at work.  Employers who offer these types of benefits to employees show they care about the Sandwich Generation employees and want to do what they can to help.

Thank you to Alisa Fedders for providing the content for this HR Question of the Week. Alisa is a Senior HR Consultant with Strategic HR She has nearly 20 years of practical HR experience, working for private companies in HR leadership positions, in addition to her most recent HR consulting experience.

 

HR Strategy often involves thinking ahead to the future and making plans for the growth and development of key players. Strategic HR understands the balance between company strategy and people strategy and can assist you with both needs. Not only do we have the expertise to help you develop a strategic plan for your company, but we also have resources to help you develop your people leaders. Visit our HR Strategy page to learn how we can assist you with your company strategy.

 

 

 

Clark Schaefer Strategic HR's wheel of HR Services, including HR Strategy, Recruitment, Training & Development, Benefits & Compensation, Communications, Employee Relations, Recordkeeping, and Health, Safety & Security

How Can HR Impact the Bottom Line?

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Question:

What are some tactics I can use to show the Executive Suite how HR impacts and contributes to the bottom line?

Answer:

Getting the respect from the C-suite that HR is a value added partner won’t happen overnight; it takes time, patience, and lots of work. There are some key competencies that you need to develop and demonstrate to gain respect from the leadership team – business knowledge, credibility, strategic planning, and metrics.

For executive management to respect HR, they need to see that you really understand all aspects of the business such as the organization’s products and/or services, competitors, customers, financials, and the strategic goals and objectives. Take time to learn about each of these areas so you can communicate accurately inside and outside the organization. Keep in mind, these things change and you’ll need to make sure you are staying up to date on business developments inside your organization and within the industry.

Understanding the business overall helps, but this needs to be coupled with establishing credibility in the organization as well. You will need to:

  • Be responsive (answer your phone and return calls in a timely manner)
  • Keep commitments (show up and be on time to meetings)
  • Share insights on issues being discussed (even if your view is different)
  • Demonstrate the value of human resources activities (we can be a cost saver too)
  • Interface with management whenever possible (build those personal relationships)
  • Be ethical!

For the HR impact to be aligned with the company goals HR also needs to set strategic goals that are directly tied to the business. To do this, you need to use the organization’s strategies and develop a list of the human resources strategies that would support each one. For every activity that human resources performs, you should ask, “Which business strategy does this support?” If you can’t answer the question, ask yourself “Why not?” or “Are we missing a business strategy/goal?” If your organization doesn’t have a strategic plan, HR can take the lead by developing one for HR.

The HR impact on the bottom-line is about metrics…HR needs to be able to measure activities and show cost savings and benefits to the organization. Numbers speak very loudly to management and being able to share HR’s numbers will speak volumes. Some examples: How much is the new program saving you on turnover or absenteeism?  What is a lack of training costing the company?

Lastly, we recommend that you take additional steps to ensure that you are positioning yourself to be viewed as a strategic partner. Some ways to do this may include:

  • Getting more involved (participating on employee task teams)
  • Participating in the organization’s strategic planning session (invite yourself or offer input)
  • Walking the talk (be a company champion and lead by example)
  • Volunteering to lead a company wide activity (not just the company picnic)

As with any strategy, careful planning and thought need to go into each of these activities. You’ll need to create a plan outlining what you need to do, how you are going to do it, and when it will be accomplished. Putting the plan to paper will help you stay on target and meet your goals. Don’t give up…it can take a lot of time and patience, but eventually the executive team is going to see the HR impact and the value brought to the bottom-line.

In summary, a HR Zone article notes: When you strip everything back, it is fair to say that a business is only really as good as the people working within it. Without people, you simply don’t have a company (in fact, the literal definition of a company is ‘a group of people’), and it is HR that is responsible for those people – attracting them, developing them, and strategically organizing them in a way that enables the business to perform at its best.

 

HR Strategy involves thinking ahead to the future and strategizing to meet goals and objectives. It also entails working cohesively with the corporate strategy. Strategic HR knows how integral human resources is to the success of an organization and can assist you with HR strategy needs. Visit our HR Strategy page  to learn more about how we can help you create your strategy and align your HR needs with the corporate strategy.

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Benefits of Using Employee Engagement Surveys

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Question:

What is an employee engagement survey and why would our company need one?

Answer:

Employee engagement surveys are a great tool to have to help businesses get their employees involved and actively engaged in operations. Basically, it’s a survey that gives employees the opportunity to share their opinions on the business-related issues of their company to help improve business functionality. Surveys are often administered anonymously and cover topics such as operations, benefits, culture and satisfaction to name a few of the more common ones.

  1. The first step in conducting an employee survey is be sure the company is committed to taking action based on the input of the employees and to define what that action will be. Action may include telling employees their recommendations cannot be implemented because of certain factors (i.e. cost, time, resources). Responses will need to be sincere and honest and might include ways for employees to overcome any obstacles presented.
  2. The next step is to plan and construct the survey. There are many online tools and resources to help you create and administer an employee survey. Decide if you will want to have recipients answer questions anonymously. You’ll likely get a larger number of responses and higher quality input by allowing respondents to provide anonymous responses. Using a third party administrator or a highly trusted staff member can be critical to “selling” the anonymity of the survey. If promising secrecy, but sure the survey is conducted with the utmost of confidentiality and explain that in detail to participants.
  3. Finally determine a plan of action for your line of questioning. What are some trouble-spots in your company that you would like to explore and learn more about? Are you having high turnover? An increase in safety problems? Is productivity down or customer complaints up? Or are you trying to get a read on the pulse of your company and it’s culture? Pick the areas you can tackle and target questions that will help you get the information you need to move forward. Don’t tackle too much in one survey or you will lose employee interest and patience. Your questions can be canned or customized to your situation, long or short, choice-based or open-ended. If this is your first survey, we find even the basic questions can be helpful
    • What do you like most about our organization?
    • Why do you come to work every day here rather than for another company?
    • What would you like to see improved at our organization?
    • Would you recommend our organization to a friend as a good place to work? Why or why not?

Once the survey document is complete it’s time to administer the questionnaire. Some great online solutions include SurveyMethods and SurveyMonkey. Both offer various service levels of membership from free to paid access depending on the features you need for your survey. Both allow you to trial these tools to determine what level you need and to see the reporting features provided.

The survey results should help you make improvements and focus on strengths in your organization. You’ll find the feedback from employees will help with developing communications, recruiting techniques, benefits, and more. Employees who operate in the day-to-day of the business tend to have practical suggestions that may not be “huge” or “costly” to implement but can make a big impact. Overall outcomes can include increased safety, productivity, quality, profitability, lower turnover, and higher levels of customer satisfaction. Not to mention that by simply asking employees for their opinions it can heighten their engagement and give them a sense of satisfaction and worth. You’ll see even more value as you repeat the employee survey year after year to assess the improvements.

 

Has your organization become stagnant? Are you experiencing unusual turnover or employee discontent? Often the simple answer is to simply ASK your employees “what’s going on?” Strategic HR has worked with many organizations, of all sizes and in various industries, to help diagnosis engagement problems and determine the appropriate course of action. Whether it’s an employee survey, focus group, or face-to-face interviews, Strategic HR is your neutral third party solution for finding answers to your questions. Contact us today to find out how we can help you with your particular situation.

Clark Schaefer Strategic HR's wheel of HR Services, including HR Strategy, Recruitment, Training & Development, Benefits & Compensation, Communications, Employee Relations, Recordkeeping, and Health, Safety & Security

Why Should We Provide Civility Training at Our Company?

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Question:

What is Civility Training and should I be offering it at my work-site?  I have done the typical harassment, communication, and customer service training – is Civility Training different?

Answer:

Civility Training is a new approach for training.  It is workplace training that includes:

  • Harassment,
  • Bullying,
  • Cultural sensitivity,
  • Diversity, and
  • Professional Etiquette – all rolled into one.  

Yes, Civility Training is similar to those you have been offering in the past but this training folds all of those issues together and provides learners with practical tools for creating respectful, inclusive, and professional work environments – ultimately leading to improved employee relations and less harassment complaints.  These types of programs not only speak to behaviors, but also challenges the attendees to look introspectively and develop a self awareness of their own actions and communication styles with those around them.

There are some things to keep in mind according to  the National Labor Relations Act (NLRA) regarding Civility Training.  Jonathan Segal, an attorney with Duane Morris in Philadelphia and New York noted: that the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) general counsel has said that the following rule, which some employers may want to implement as one way to promote civility, would in fact violate the NLRA: “Be respectful to the company, other employees, customers, partners and competitors.” The general counsel has found that this rule would potentially interfere with employees’ right to engage in protected concerted activity.  ​Civility training should be conducted with NLRB decisions in mind.

It is also important to note that in October 2017, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission announced that it would be offering two new training’s for employees that appear to be what would be considered “Civility Training”.  These training’s are expected to move away from the traditional harassment definition training and move more toward the promotion of inclusion and respect in the workplace.  These are exciting training alternatives in the workplace and will definitely open up discussion and communication on workplace behavior.

 

HR Strategy often involves thinking ahead to the future and making plans for the growth and development of key players. Strategic HR understands the balance between company strategy and people strategy and can assist you with both needs. Not only do we have the expertise to help you develop a strategic plan for your company, but we also have resources to help you develop your people leaders. Visit our HR Strategy page to learn how we can assist you with your company strategy.

Clark Schaefer Strategic HR's wheel of HR Services, including HR Strategy, Recruitment, Training & Development, Benefits & Compensation, Communications, Employee Relations, Recordkeeping, and Health, Safety & Security

Understanding The Options Like a PEO, ASO, or HRO to Grow Your Human Resources Function

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Question:

As a growing employer, we are getting to the point that we need someone to take over the human resources function.  As the Controller, I have been handling payroll and benefits but as we get bigger, it is becoming more difficult to handle.  I have had a few colleagues recommend using an outsourced HR option like a PEO, ASO, or HRO .  What does that mean and how would that impact our company?

Answer:

First congratulations on your growth!  It is fabulous that you are growing but with it comes significant challenges for your human resources function.  The good news is there are lots of options and considerations as you move into this next stage.  A brief summary of the options is included below.  Regardless of the direction, be sure you do your homework – ask lots of questions and get references.  Not all PEO, ASO, or HRO agencies look / act the same – you need to make sure you know the difference and what services you are getting.

One option is a PEO – a Professional Employer Organization.  A PEO handles most of the administration of certain HR operations such as payroll processing, health insurance administration, state unemployment insurance, and worker’s compensation.  

Reasons a PEO may be a good solution for your business are:

  • If you need to offer health insurance but are either too small to get reasonable rates or have a high risk workforce.
  • If your workers compensation costs are too high and you need a group rated program to help obtain the coverage at a reasonable rate.

Issues to consider with a PEO:

  • The PEO will employ your employees and lease them back to you.
  • Your organization will need to comply with employment laws based on the size of the PEO not the size of your business (i.e. if you are under 50 employees, you may have to comply with laws required for companies over 50 such as FMLA and ACA)
  • Most PEOs are purely administrative and do not help with employee relations coaching and recruitment of key talent.

Another option is using an ASO – an Administrative Services Organization.  An ASO will handle the administrative aspects of your business.  For example, you may hire a payroll provider that will process your payroll and payroll related taxes.  You may also hire an ASO for benefits management, workers compensation, or unemployment compensation.  Things to consider with an ASO is that they are handling the administrative tasks only, you will still be responsible for “feeding the information” to the provider to get the job done which in many cases is half the work.

A third option is using an HRO – an Outsourced HR Solution to assist with the management of your human resources function to allow you to focus on the strategic initiatives of the business rather than the operations of HR. Just like any large organization with an HR Team, an outsourced HR provider should align with your strategy through the management and administration of all aspects of HR such as:

  • Recruitment
  • Onboarding
  • Training and Development
  • Employee Surveys
  • Compensation and Benefits (i.e. job descriptions, compensation structure, benefits, and workers compensation)
  • Communications (i.e. employee handbook)
  • Employee Relations
  • Recordkeeping (i.e. processing payroll in-house or with a provider)
  • Health, Safety and Security
  • Workplace Compliance

All three options: PEO, ASO, or HRO will help take some of the duties off your plate, they just do them in different ways and in varying levels.  Be sure you understand the cost and impact of all of these options before diving in.  Many become a commitment for at least a year so step lightly.

 

When you are in the infancy stage of an HR Department, oftentimes your “strategy” is to just get things up and running. There is so much to Human Resources Management that it can be difficult to know where to start while being confident you aren’t forgetting something important. Strategic HR feels your pain having helped many small companies start or grow their HR function. Let us share our years of experience getting HR “off the ground”.  Visit our website today to learn more.