Human Resource Management
HR Services
Human Resource Management Services
Kristine can guide you through the steps to set up an HR system from recruiting and hiring, to performance coaching and corrective action to finding a successor.
Step One: Complete an HR Self-Assessment to identify gaps in knowledge, skills and best practices. Together, you’ll create a plan to address the deficiencies in your operation. Contact Kristine today to get your HR Self-Assessment!
Step Two: Coaching to get clarity on your culture, brand, and identity. The goal is to create a culture where employees represent the brand and everyone acknowledges and appreciates that the two identities cannot exist independently of each other.
Step Three: Customization of resources and assistance in setting up better practices for hiring through firing – or successor – and everything in between.
Step Four: Monitor, measure, adjust and repeat. In process improvement for systems, that is commonly known as the PDSA or Plan Do Study Act cycle.
The HR Management System
The order of tasks within this management system is for the ideal labor market, but you cannot solve long term labor, management or employment issues by skipping or addressing a single step in the process. In the flowchart, the success of your HR system hinges on the interactions between the interdependent parts. Remember, a bad system beats a good person every time! See Systems 101 in FAQ’s to learn more.
If you skip steps in the process, the resulting system will lack integrity and only cover up the symptoms without addressing the underlying problems. These actions can lead to blaming and resentment, higher turnover and possibly even a bad reputation in the community.
If your hiring manager can’t communicate the company culture, then he or she also can’t identify a good fit for a job, role or function. When an employee isn’t a good fit with the company’s culture, he or she quickly becomes disengaged and eventually leaves, often taking a good employee with them. Can you afford that?
The leadership team in your operation must achieve alignment and clarity around core business principles first, then devise a recruitment strategy that attracts candidates who function well in that environment.
The resulting effect of these improvements is to achieve Employer of Choice in your community.
Frequently Asked Questions
Q: What does the term, “Employer of Choice” mean?
Being an Employer of Choice (EOC) means that in your community, people choose to work for you and will stay with you for their entire career. It means that you are the envy of your neighbors and competitors and they may even try to lure your employees away!
Q: What is the Key Ingredient to Becoming an EOC?
To attract the kind of people who will stay with you, who will brag about your management style, and who will help you recruit other great employees, you will need to understand how to manage human resources in a system. HR IS a support system. Businesses that are considered to be Employers of Choice recognize that it’s the relationships between the parts in the HR system that lead to improvement and becoming an EOC is the result of those efforts.
Q: How do I Know if I am an EOC?
Your reputation will speak volumes. Your past employees, your vendors, your business associates or partners, and even the waitress at the coffee shop will recommend your place to job seekers. The effect of this is your business receiving unsolicited job applications from qualified individuals.
Q: What Should I Do First to Become an EOC?
Clearly define your culture and the type of people you want supporting it. The entire leadership team, including the Owner, Operations Manager, HR or Hiring Manager, and all supervisors need to have clarity and agreement on this item. Once that happens, your team can more effectively screen who is waiting at the gate: a job seeker or a career achiever. The HR system flowchart can become a management tool.
Q: What Other Improvements Should We Make on Our Journey to Becoming an EOC?
- Drive out fear in your workplace. Create an environment where everyone can have joy in their work; pride in their work and meaning in their work. With each employee, discuss how their work contributes to the success of the business and how they can track their contributions. Is it somatic cell counts, litter sizes, mortality rates or crop yields? Individual success must be aligned with organizational success.
- Have open lines of communication and be transparent with everyone. Better yet, over communicate everything! The practices and policies of your HR system should support these objectives and leadership must understand, practice and model these behaviors.
- Offer developmental and self-improvement opportunities to everyone. Note the Talent Development step in the HR system flowchart.
- Instead of avoiding conflict, embrace it. Conflict can be used productively to solicit new ideas and get feedback on your business practices. Productive use of conflict is a critical skill of high performing teams and improvement must start at the top with the leadership team.
- Value your human resources at all levels — in every job, role or function.
- Remove barriers to learning, teamwork and relationships. Focus less on job titles or status and more on individual strengths. Use workplace assessments to understand natural behavioral tendencies and what intrinsically motivates each employee or team member. Contact me for Everything DiSC© Workplace profiles to identify strengths and teaming tendencies.
- Learn all you can about the characteristics of cohesive, high performing teams and how to develop and support them in your operation. Teamwork can be a competitive advantage for agriculture! When hiring, don’t overlook the soft skills and seek out those candidates who exhibit the traits of an ideal team player, including being hungry, humble and people smart.
Q: What is Management’s Role in Becoming an EOC?
Management must help people do better in the system you have created. They manage the system. It is the job of leadership to improve the system, but too often, as Dr Deming said, “a bad system beats a good person every time. Everyone can be enlisted to help shift work priorities to effectiveness over efficiency; efficiency is doing things right; effectiveness is doing the right thing!
See also | Organizational Development | Kristine’s Blog |
Contact Kristine Ranger at (517) 974-5697 or kristine@knowledgenavigators.com for more information on HR services!
Primary Communities Served
Midwest