The One-place Guide to HR Challenges and Solutions [2024 Updated]

The HR landscape and the way we manage people are changing. With digital disruptions, workplace cultural shifts, and employees now expecting more from their companies, managers are asking themselves:

• Are people engaged, or do they think our team-building exercises are stupid?
• How do we actually ‘do’ HR? Should we try getting a new software?
• Isn’t AI going to steal everyone’s jobs anyway?

Are you feeling lost and confused?

In this guide, you’ll find some common human resource challenges and their solutions.

What Is Human Resource Management?

Before we dive into the challenges an HR professional faces, let’s cover the basics:

What is human resource management?

According to Wikipedia:

“Human resource management (HRM or HR) is the strategic approach to the effective and efficient management of people in a company or organization such that they help their business gain a competitive advantage. It is designed to maximize employee performance in service of an employer’s strategic objectives.”

The primary role of the HR department is to hire new talent and manage internal company resources. An HR professional is often defined as a “people person.” They communicate, represent the company’s and its employees’ interests, and make sure that the entire functioning of the company remains smooth and effective.

HR Statistics Every HR Professional Should Know About

Here are some insightful HR statistics to help HR and non-HR professionals make the right decisions for your employees and your company.

1. 43% of HR professionals cited the top reason for difficulty finding the right employee as “competition from other employers.” (Source)

2. Almost 30% of job seekers have left a job within the first 90 days of starting — 43% cite that their day-to-day role wasn’t what they expected. (Source)

3. 76 percent of new employees want on-the-job training. (Source)

4. 23% of employees reported feeling burned out at work very often or always, while an additional 44% reported feeling burned out sometimes. (Source)

5. Only 51% of companies agree that the diversity of their employees mirrors the diversity of the market they serve. (Source)

6. 60 percent of job seekers quit in the middle of filling out online job applications because of their length or complexity. (Source)

7. One in every four employees doesn’t feel safe voicing their opinions about work-related issues. (Source)

8. On average, a higher retention rate can maximize a company’s profits up to four times. (Source)

9. Employee recognition programs can reduce the turnover rate by up to 31%. (Source)

10. According to LinkedIn research, 25% of candidates said that better company culture is among their top reasons for changing jobs. (Source)

11. 60% of HR professionals spend more than 10 hours per week on compliance-related activities. (Source)

12. 74% of HR professionals believe that AI will play a significant role in HR in the next five years. (Source)

13. Companies using AI-powered recruiting tools have seen a 38% increase in their quality of hires. (Source)

Human Resource Challenges and Solutions

The HR personnel from every industry often face fluctuations in the global economy. It can affect every business aspect inversely, which might also include meeting much more strategic organizational disputes, which the HR domain has never come across in the past.

A study by Glassdoor reveals that organizations investing in a strong candidate experience have the potential to boost the overall quality of their new hires up to 70%.

Investing in robust candidate exposure isn’t an impossible feat to achieve!

Even though the problems faced by your team might seem bigger, the solutions which the companies can take up are quite simple when put into action. The major emphasis should be on employee engagement, flexibility, leadership, and diversity, summed up by various micro factors.

1. Retain all the top talents

The majority of the companies believe that recruitment is a huge challenge. But retaining high-performing employees can boost the morale of the entire team. 

This can go a long way in comparison to organic recruitment. Yet, it can get difficult to recognize top talents in the company without proper data or tools.

The best way to deal with it:

Not only will employee retention reduce the requirement to fetch new talent, but it will also provide you with the materials to promote your in-house team to better leadership positions.

Don’t just focus on those with the higher-order designation. From the secretary to the manager, treat everyone equally, encourage them to grow as a person, and retain them.

2. Attract top talent

Major reasons such as business reputation and company culture have hindered HR culture, with digital and mobile culture failing to generate corporate loyalty while helping companies retain their staff.

The best way to deal with it:

With the best HR tools and software in the market, you can attract the right talent. This can also happen when you publicize professional development opportunities and company-sponsored virtual events. There are a number of websites available to find the best resume and right fit for the role—leverage all these resources to hire smartly.

3. Build leadership within the team

Lack of leadership and guidance in a workplace can be a roadblock to even the smartest of the employees. They tend to lose motivation and confine themselves to finishing their tasks on time and not taking up any additional responsibilities.

The best way to deal with it:

While the HR team might find it challenging to attract and retain talent, the best way to find them is by developing leadership from the root of the company. Leadership is often built by demonstrating them to your team members. 

You can include cross-training, certification programs, educational offers, and providing employees with the chance to take up specialized projects.

4. Create a value-oriented company culture

Your company culture would play a vital role in every business aspect. Millennials are looking for a healthy company culture more than salary and benefits. When you are not able to understand these vital core points, you risk losing your talents.

The best way to deal with it:

Companies such as Google and Pinterest are built upon strongly-held company culture. When you empower your employees with recognition, power, and incentives, you are allowing them to grow in real-time. 

Encourage your employees to work on what interests them apart from what they have mentioned in their job description, except for the hobbies section.

Recommended Read: 20 Impactful and Motivating Employee Feedback Examples

5. Bridge cultural differences

Fostering globalization means involving more opportunities than setting new hiring quotas. This process might seem hollow unless the HR department has taken over cultural diversity issues on a serious note.

The best way to deal with it:

It’s time to apply more strategic marketing, advertising, and effective communication to highlight various cultural efforts and practices. 

Every company can publicize its cultural differences when they post about company perks, networking opportunities, and learning programs. This can also increase your business proficiency.

6. Handle change management

Be it bringing in changes in the company structure or company policies, it might be challenging when you have to explain “change” to your manager along with rank-and-file workers. Change is often seen as an intimidating factor among many employees.

The best way to deal with it:

Address any concerns quickly by working across from top to bottom of the command chain. Manage cultural diversities smartly. Keep your organization informed on how the changes will reflect on performance assessments, pay, hours of work, and much more important factors.

7. Measure the effectiveness of your HR processes

The majority of the companies don’t compare their results with the overall impact on how HR policies can affect their employees. A few HR policies may turn out to be boisterous too and might not come in handy when needed.

The best way to deal with it:

With our HR software solutions, you can easily automate your data collection to receive objective results. This will help you make decisions on identifying employee potential, training them with advanced succession management strategies. 

Assess how your HR policies contribute to your company’s success in the long run by discussing them with your team members.

8. Encourage high-end learning

Learning never ceases, even when you end up on the higher ladder of designations. It is not just segregated from what we learn in school or university. But many employees stagnate by the time they get promotions.

The best way to deal with it:

Increase your employees’ skills by motivating and helping them work harder at what they are doing. This can add inversely to staff loyalty while, at the same time, encouraging transparency in the team. You can increase their promotions and salary when they are fit to deal with responsibilities. 

Here is how you can help them improvise on their skills:

1. Recommend opportunities for skills training.
2. Earn industry certifications.
3. Take part in mentoring and coaching sessions.

 The responsibility of HR departments lies in using these results to focus on improving employee engagement.

9. Comply with local legislation

While labor laws can become more employee-friendly, they can pose a huge threat to organizations irrespective of their size. Hence you need to ensure that you comply with all the legislation in place.

The best way to deal with it:

Since smaller organizations don’t have a focused HR department, they shouldn’t hesitate to seek help from statutory compliance agencies. They can help you interpret the rules and regulations correctly while not over-committing to any of your employees.

10. Secure your data and integrity

Since most employers are in favor of work-from-home, they face threats of data misuse and leakage,  as well as failure to use antivirus software to check for malware. However, the organization will be deemed unfriendly if they ban the usage of personal devices during their work hours. 

The best way to deal with it:

Companies should educate their employees regarding password rules, phishing emails, and desktop rules. There should be strong data protection policies to provide the company’s and the user’s data safe. Conducting regular audits can also safeguard you from the attacks of hackers.

11. Implement benefits packages

With many benefits packages available, many businesses have found it hard to reciprocate them. There have been concerns regarding the rise in healthcare costs. 

The best way to deal with it:

Companies can benefit by investing in small businesses’ healthcare plans, which can even help you take up tax credits to reduce costs. Combined with wellness programs, this can go a long way for the employees.

12. Manage wide diversity

There has been a positive impact on businesses owing to globalization. People recognize your brand more often when you take it overseas. There has been an expansion of customers beyond their traditional Head Offices while talent sources are across the globe. 

This translates to more sales and broadening of employee ideas, experiences and perspectives. On the other hand, it also comes with a huge risk of lawsuits failing to protect employees facing harassment.

The best way to deal with it:

Every blessing has a drawback in disguise. When you are managing diverse resources, you should pay attention to local procedures and policies. The HR department is responsible for creating a comfortable, conflict-free, and warm atmosphere for everyone to work.

Make way for diversity programs to keep your employees informed about the changes taking place in the organization. Keep them informed about their rights and what lawsuits would be applicable to them.

13. Create a quality employee experience

With respect to a fast-paced, constantly changing employee culture, we can easily expect high turnover rates. Most of the HRs wouldn’t miss a beat to hire the right team. The barrier they face would be to sustain them. This is one of the largest HR challenges they need to overcome. The 2018 Job Seeker study states that nearly ⅓ of job seekers would leave a job within 90 days of their tenure. 43% of them stated that the role was not up to their expectations. 

The best way to deal with it:

While employees are happy with the roles and responsibilities of the workplace, they wouldn’t mind seeking employment anywhere else.

You need to provide them reasons to stay. You can handle it by hosting cultural awareness programs to recognize employee benefits beyond diversity, such as innovative ideas and customer growth. Team building activities can also bring in the desired harmony at your workplace.

14. Use mentorship to train your employees

Even though employees can possess talent and skill-set, they might find it difficult to leave their previous work and adapt to the new culture. They get overwhelmed by the thought of adapting to many things. This can make even the best employees might find it difficult.

The best way to deal with it:

Mentorship programs are the best way to tackle these difficulties. When you club your long-term employees to new hires, you can help the employees get rid of formal hiccups. The mentor can help every new hire learn about the company culture as well as standard procedures.

This should begin as soon as the onboarding process starts. This process can offer a better understanding of the company, break the ice, and make the newcomers feel more comfortable. 

15. Pay well

Even when the work culture is excellent, the kind of finance offered is important. Many companies are clueless about how to structure their employee compensation. Many small businesses are compelled to compete with businesses of smaller size and MNCs dealing with high payroll budgets. 

There are many factors involved in this specific segment, including benefits, cost, taxes, training, and other expenses.

The best way to deal with it:

Companies need to gel up with their employee expectations in terms of salary. They should come up with reward programs to compensate low wages while providing incentive programs meant specially for profit sharing as well as bonuses. This can act as a win-win for both the company and the employee.

16. Adapt to ever-growing technology

Technology has played a huge role in recent years. We were expected to adapt to it even before the onset of COVID-19. Since remote working is a norm nowadays, you need to provide the latest technologies on the work front. The heat can rise when you lack guidance from the superior authority.

The best way to deal with it:

HR department’s requirements can be met with technological advancements within a company. Involve technologies such as HR Chatbots to analyze people-centric data for ensuring attendance management, allowances, and payslip generation via conversational interfaces.

With AI, predictive analytics, and RPA, you can automate all those redundant tasks while paving way for other brainy tasks at hand. You can additionally streamline basic forms like employee feedback, job applications, etc with ready-to-fill dynamic QR codes.

With the bigger volume, variety, and velocity of data available, you can understand why and when things went wrong and rectify them. Investing in the right HR management system (HRMS) can act as a savior to your HR department’s technological needs.

17. Employment verification

There are many ways that candidates can commit resume fraud when applying for jobs: lying about their experience, licenses, or education. Cases of exaggerating duties or management experience, or even omitting details such as reasons for leaving a previous job are a few major concerns to be taken into account.

The best way to deal with it:

The only surefire way to protect your business from fraud is to verify the candidate’s education and employment history. Employment verification is the process to confirm a person’s past or current job status. It ensures the candidate has the relevant experience to perform the intended job well.

7 Must-Have Tools for HR Managers Make Their Work Easier

Recruiting, building, and managing an effective workforce is a tough gig. But the right tools for HR can give you the upper hand.

Look for smart, simple tools that are convenient to use and that actually deliver results. Here are some best tools for HRs to make your job easier.

Recruitment – SpringRecruit

SpringRecruit is a free-forever applicant tracking system (ATS). An ATS helps you organize and keep track of all of your job openings, resumes, candidates, and contacts.

Wondering how SpringRecruit can help you? It will:

• Make hiring easy, better, and faster.
• Provide built-in reports and visually appealing dashboards.
• Track every stage of the recruitment process.
• Provide a funnel view to track the candidates.
• Create multiple job postings and customize the career page.
• Customize your recruitment stages.
• Offer social media Integration.

and more… 

Recognition – EngageWith

EngageWith is an employee recognition and rewards platform that enriches your company culture. Employees can recognize their colleagues by giving them Kudos or Shoutouts for a job well done. 

It can also be used to celebrate and reward/gift employees on their birthdays and milestones like work anniversaries.

People Management – Lattice

Lattice is the people management platform that helps People Leaders develop engaged, and high-performing teams even when all the team members are remote. Lattice adapts to fit your company’s performance management model whether you run annual performance reviews or quarterly development cycles.

Team Building – Trivia

Trivia helps teams forge stronger connections by enabling people to conduct team-building activities and games and feel more productive.

Trivia brings together teams to play real-time games right inside Slack, Microsoft Teams, and Google Chat. Because of its seamless integration with these communication tools, employees can get started with quick breaks at any point of the day without any prior planning. It helps in building a more engaging and exciting workspace.

Employee Feedback – Qualtrics

Qualtrics’ powerful, easy-to-use platform gathers feedback about employee experiences – from onboarding, employee engagement, 360 programs, technology experiences, and more.

Bring in high-performing employees and stronger teams with 360-degree feedback insights that drive development, productivity, and engagement. Quickly and easily see where to focus your efforts to develop your top performers.

Payroll – Keka

Keka is an all-in-one payroll software with everything you need to manage and disburse salaries to your employees.

It is fully integrated workflows to seamlessly handle leaves, attendance, revisions, bonuses, and more. It provides an employee-centric experience that helps and minimizes queries for HR & Finance. It includes the features of time tracking, attendance management, and leave management systems.

Employee Background Verification: SpringVerify

SpringVerify is a modern take on the age-old problem of background verification being costly, tedious, and out of reach for small businesses reach.  The platform offers seamless background verification with minimal effort required from both the company and the employee.

FAQs

Summary

Building a strong team means building a strong foundation for your business to grow and thrive in the future. And for that, your HR process needs to be smooth, effective, and convenient. You can experience success by mitigating the roadblocks in your HR processes and allowing your team to explore more opportunities. 

Employers who put employees on their first pedal are more likely to emerge as market leaders. Ensure that you adopt employee-friendly practices in your team to succeed in the long run.

Originally published on June 28, 2021 05:03 PM, updated Nov 27, 2023