Ten best HR practices your organisation could benefit from

An HR is to an organization, what a mother is to a home

It is said that an HR Manager is to an organization, what a mother is to a home. The success of an organization therefore entirely depends on it’s human resources department and its prevailing practices. Gone are the days when human beings were treated on par with machines. Today employers have realized the need for human resource welfare in order to stay in business and to continue to grow. The more happier and well cared for is a company’s work force, the greater would be the company’s success. No organization has ever tasted success without a strong backing from it’s employees. An organization therefore, is not merely bricks, machines or inventories. It’s much more than that. It’s people.
One can never list out completely, all of the effective HR practices and claim to have listed it all, for the art of HR management is very complicate d and it’s abyss unreachable. Some of the effective HR practices have been listed below, although it’s only the tip of an iceberg:
1. Happy employees = Happy organisation

Workplace is an employees’ second home. By providing your employees with a safe, healthy and a hygienic work area, you ensure your employees are comfortable at all time. This reflects in the employees’ productivity. A complaining employee would be less interested in his job while a happy employee is well motivated to do his job well. It also gives the employees, a very positive image of the company and makes them feel that they are very well cared for thereby boosting their morale.
2. Practice transparent and participative management style

Keep your employees well informed on all the aspects of the company. Be it your sales figures, losses, new contracts & sign ups, company objectives and policies. This will make the employees feel t hat they are not working for a faceless employer. Sharing company information, employee participation and being transparent with the employees makes them think of the company as their own, for they know everything of the company including it’s health. They would therefore know what their goals and objectives are without being told. They would be self driven to achieve organizational goals together. This type of a management style goes a long way building employee trust, loyalty and helps in keeping them well motivated.
3. Reward good performances

By paying bonuses to employees who’s performance is very good, the company would be sending a very important message to its employees- that it’s employees are being watched and that a good performance never goes unnoticed or unrewarded. By rewarding an employee a company achieves two motives. Firstly, encouraging the good performer to perform even better by positively reinforcing his performance and secondly, by bringing about a healthy competition amongst other employees to strive and do better. This way both the company and it’s employees are mutually benefited.
4. The effective 360 degree performance feedback system

This is a system of feedback ensures that an employee gets his feedback not only from his superiors but also from his peers and even subordinates! This is a very effective feedback system and a lot of organizations have embraced it. Now, the employee should not only please his superior but also his subordinates in order to prove himself effective. He can use all the feedback that he receives for self development. This is a more reliable way of judging an employee’s overall performance, because the feedback that an employee receives is not a biased one that is received from just one person’s view of him.
5. Employee evaluation

The evaluation system of an organization should b e such that, it directly draws a link between an employee’s performance to the overall organizational goals and objectives. Job responsibilities and description should be very clear to all employees and so should be the reporting structure. Performance appraisal should be done after giving the employees regular counseling and feedback on their outputs. Comparing their past performances to the current performance helps bring out the difference or consistency in their productivity. Care should be taken to ensure that the means of evaluation is fair and unbiased. Feedback about a certain employee when given by both his immediate reporting manager and another manager who is also indirectly effected by this employee, will help in adding that much needed fairness to the system.
6. Exchange of knowledge

Have a storehouse of knowledge in your organization in the form of knowledge sharing portal created either by the company or by the employees themse lves. Having something like this avoids in recreating the wheel. The knowledge will be ready to look up and is especially a boon for a new employee. Sharing knowledge after attending a seminar or a skill enhancement training should be made mandatory for the employees. However, a portal like this should be well organized to avoid accumulation of clutter. Innovative and constructive ideas can be posted on these platforms so that the others could benefit out of it too.
7. Identify and appreciate performers

How would it be if good performers and bad ones were both treated alike? Over time, the good ones would soon cease to be good, because of the lack of motivation in continuing to be so. Therefore, employees who have been very good performers should be recognized and be made known to all the other employees too. Posting their achievements and feats with a picture of theirs in the company’s intranet, display boards helps in giving our performers their much needed motivation. Not only does this recognition and popularity encourage the performer to perform even better, but it also creates a healthy competitive environment within the organization. All the other employees and under performers would take up their jobs as a challenge so that they would be aptly rewarded and recognized for a job well done too.

8. Welcome great ideas and thoughts

Everybody would agree that it’s the people who make for an organization. Each individual is unique. Therefore, by pooling in all these people together and hearing out their ideas makes a company open for innovations. Open house discussions, brain storming, group discussions, suggestion boxes, meeting with the superiors etc., are all ways of getting those million dollar worth ideas out of employees. A successful organization always knows how to tap, nurture and execute a good idea.
9. The rewarding process

Re warding an employee in private is as good as not rewarding him at all. No one really gets to know that he was rewarded. On the other hand, by organizing a function where the best performers are awarded in the presence of a big crowd and the senior management has a huge impact on the employee’s self esteem and motivation. It makes him feel like a king. Therefore, how an employee is rewarded is as important as rewarding itself.
10. Give your employees some pleasant surprises

Occasionally reward your employees with a gift voucher or a ‘job well done’ certificate, just to keep their motivation going. Give small gifts to average performers too who are in need of that little extra motivation to make them top performers. By doing so, you show your employees that you really care about their performances and in their welfare.