Why now is a great time to rethink and optimize your HR strategy

In times of a sluggish economy, many organizations shift from a growth minded, aggressive change strategy, to a more “sustain and protect revenue” mindset.  This is completely understandable, and often a wise decision. In fact, it can often prove to be a healthy cycle, giving companies the time and space to take a deeper look at their products, offerings, customer service, and back office workflows and platforms, in an effort to improve efficiencies, reduce costs, and bolster their scalability, before the inevitable growth cycle begins again.  

With that in mind, from an HR perspective, now is a great time to review your workflows, internal processes, documentation, software platforms, and employee training efforts. The past three years have been a whirlwind for HR, and it is likely many companies have not truly had the time to adapt, analyze, optimize and build for modern, post pandemic business needs.  As companies have tried to keep up with the pace of change, efforts have likely been focused on hiring and retention of staff, supporting a new remote workforce, and new or changing revenue models.  HR, in many cases, has been, in many cases, running to fast to make changes necessary to recruit, onboard, and train new hires as effectively as they could be, rather using the same methods they used successfully pre-pandemic.

So, how can you best propose new solutions to optimize HR in your organization?  

Don’t make the mistake of solely approaching projects from a technology perspective, while hoping to achieve your goals. Any changes should be approached concurrently as an opportunity to review and optimize underlying business processes. A successful change management project will rely on technology, process, and human elements.

Here are five tips you can use to propose change and optimization of HR in your organization.  

1. Understand the true ROI of any request first.

Thoroughly research your proposed solutions and look at the real costs. Map out your business case and consider service level, internal resource time and cost, lost opportunity, and other factors. For example, the cost of a bad hire due to an incomplete or bad background check can be extremely costly to any organization, with true costs of a bad hire and rehire exceed 30% of the first year’s salary alone. With many skill levels being in such high demand, this could have extremely detrimental impacts.

2. Find vendors who can help take the resource load of your company when deploying solutions.

Understand fully what is involved in your proposed project and break it into easily understandable stages. Identify all internal resources necessary for each stage and work with vendors who take a professional services approach to delivery. Set expectations for resource asks through each phase and define the process as clearly as possible.

3. Have a training and launch plan ready before you propose any new solution.

Work with your selected vendor(s) to understand and prepare a comprehensive, achievable training plan prior to implementing any change. A good vendor will help create a training plan that caters to a company’s current workflows to ease transition.

4. Understand where your current systems, processes or solutions fail, and what is needed to optimize.

Organizations need to be agile and flexible when faced with change management. In a hiring surge, for instance, it’s critical a screening company can handle an increased caseload of job applicants, customer support levels remain able to handle the increase, and turnaround times don’t fall off. If the current provider cannot meet these expectations, refer to the plan you already have built out from Tip #1.

5. Define success and present expectations up front.

Create clear goals, both short and long-term. Define what success looks like for each department and how the solution meets these parameters. Show how it solves each department’s pain point.  For example, if you have had issues staffing up adequately in Customer Support this past few years, because of candidates falling out of your pipeline and taking other offers, work with your Customer Support leadership to understand their needs, explain your proposed solution to them and how it solves for this, and begin to build consensus when it comes to your proposal.

Follow these tips and you will greatly increase your chance of acceptance, and success. When setting out to solve for your business objectives, it’s important to partner with a vendor that focuses less on delivering a “project” on time and under budget and more on delivering an outcome. A new solution vendor should provide support in presenting the value proposition of the project, share the workload in pitching change, and ensure success.

By preparing for, and being able to answer any objections, HR professionals can outline goals and financial and resource investments to organizational leadership. This exercise helps develop a better vision for how technology, process, and staff can work together to bring change to your organization and better prepare you before you find yourself in another unpredictable surge in hiring that takes away your opportunity to do so.

Background screening is a key component in recruiting and retention success. Vault Workforce Screening will act as a partner in helping you identify gaps, plan and scope solutions, integrate, train, launch and continually optimize your screening to adapt to ever-changing regulatory requirements, hiring trends, and new offerings. You'll have access to a dedicated, highly trained support team, who understands your unique needs and workflows, closely monitor your daily account activity, and optimize your program to adapt and scale. Our in-house expert advisors are available for consultation at any time should you have compliance questions or issues that need to be addressed, and regularly proactively update you on trends or upcoming changes in laws or regulations. Contact us today to talk further about how we can help you propose a new screening solution for your organization.