What’s an organization without engaged employees? 23% less profitable. And can employees function at their best in the absence of a dedicated human resources team? Most likely, no. 

If there is one function that has a ripple effect on all the others in the company, it is human resources (HR). From hiring candidates and disbursing their salaries every month to the challenges of planning the perfect Christmas get-together and ensuring cohesion, team-spirit, and motivation at the workplace, an HR manager does it all.

Fighting on these multiple fronts every day can quickly drain and test the resilience of HR managers. There’s a way, however, to ease the lives of those who ease the lives of everyone at work.

Here are nine shortcuts for every HR manager to find, train, harness, and retain the top talent for their companies without losing their ‘human’ touch. 

1. Simplify recruitment using o/ats

Attracting and retaining the right candidates is a top priority for hiring managers. And one fraught with innumerable logistical challenges. 

Glassdoor says the average job opening may attract 250 résumés. Managing each of these applicants through the various rounds of the hiring process can be difficult and time-consuming, especially when coordinating with multiple people - the hiring manager, the team leader, the head of the department, and of course, reps from the C-Suite.  

Employing one of the many recruitment CRM or applicant tracking system (ATS) softwares such as Zoho Recruit, Freshteam, Recruit CRM etc. can be the first step toward simplifying the ordeal. 

Making them more intuitive and quick to get to can be the next. It’s super easy to do that by creating the shortcut o/ats.

This small step unlocks the big benefits of providing shared context and a single source of truth for collaborative hiring. Reduce time-to-hire, increase productivity by eliminating repeat tasks/email exchanges, track candidate information on the go, and build better relationships through speedier flow of information.

2. List all open positions at o/careers
   

Listing open positions together in one place makes it smoother for candidates to discover and apply for jobs. With this, one part of the hiring process becomes smoother for you.

Another point to remember is that the best candidate referrals often come from existing employees and their networks. To tap into their connections and encourage them to spread the word about job openings, create a shortcut such as o/careers or o/jobs to the website page or LinkedIn listings of all jobs in the company. Finding information at one’s fingertips (instead of running to HR over and over again) can be a prerequisite to sharing it ahead with the right people with gusto.

Quick tip: Have a clear and detailed referral policy o/referral-policy in place to motivate employees to do their bit in bringing talent over. At OSlash, we find it easy to list down all the terms and conditions constituting our referral policy in a Google Doc.

3. Streamline the interview process with the collection o/interview

Conducting good interviews is not just the responsibility of the hiring manager. It is one area where everyone can (and does) pitch in. The collection o/interview can have shortcuts for interview questions, assignments, and scheduled meetings to keep everyone on the same page, even when priorities differ.

It is equally important to gauge a candidate’s cultural fit and their technical competence. It takes a collaborative effort to come up with questions suited to judge both aspects and define who an ideal candidate is, and what they bring to the table. 

An inventory of questions can help streamline this process and avoid wastage of time. It can be helpful to keep a Google Sheet of standard interview questions at o/interview/questions for everyone to chime in with inputs based on their requirements.

Quick tip: At OSlash, we have also created a collection o/assign with assignments that contain tasks designed to test the skills and qualifications of potential candidates. A template for assignments complete with the problem statement, objective, due date, the submission guidelines, and evaluation criteria laid down clearly, has become a lifesaving resource for both the interviewers and the interviewees. 

Further, navigating multiple interviews becomes a breeze with the shortcut o/meetings that directs to the overview of the hiring calendar and enables everyone to be on time for the interview meetings scheduled.

4. Keep track of the humans who make up human resources with o/directory

You have an organizational chart in place, but does everyone know where to find it? Especially the new hires? Do they understand who’s who? Are the workflows clearly defined? Do people feel like they know their colleagues beyond their job roles?

Maintaining a comprehensive o/directory with all employee information can help put faces and stories to what’s otherwise just an overwhelming list of names for a new hire. Having an idea of someone’s background makes them more familiar, and consequently easier to talk to when meeting for the first time. 

Even for existing employees, it can serve as a quick resource to refresh a colleague’s email id or phone number they may have forgotten. It spares them the unnecessary back and forth of pinging other team members for information that is readily available centrally. 

Employee birthdays needn’t be forgotten. Work anniversaries can be celebrated by instituting reminders and allowing everyone to easily send congratulatory messages to others. And reaching emergency contacts can be infinitely simpler with their details stored conveniently in a single database. One shortcut takes care of it all.

5. Integrate new hires seamlessly with the collection o/onboarding

We know it’s the biggest nightmare for HR managers across the world to onboard a new employee. Especially in fast-growing startups where teams move quickly and get new hires on board every so often. 

Sharing dozens of documents about the business, tasks, responsibilities, login credentials, security policies, app links and what not can understandably be a hot mess - for both the new joinee and the hiring managers/team leaders. 

New employees are often thrown into an ocean of links and the repeated reminders to bookmark the important ones. 

Why not transform onboarding into a seamless, fast-tracked process with just one link to share with the new joinees! That’s right. 

o/onboarding can be a collection of multiple information - o/security-policy on Notion, o/access in your SSO dashboard, o/directory or o/org for the employee directory or organizational chart, and o/standup for the daily standup zoom link and joining timings - to name a few. Everything they need to start contributing right from day one, in one place.

6. Increase motivation with readily accessible o/benefits

A survey by Gallup shows motivated teams have upto 81% lower absenteeism rates and 43% lower employee turnover. 

It therefore makes sense to keep updating employee benefits year on year at o/benefits, a central deck which lists all perks and their qualifying terms in a simple, clear, and precise manner. Regular updates and additions that employees can review any time makes for a wonderful motivator to stay on the job and keep contributing at work. 

Quick tip: Simplify complex benefits/benefit programmes like health insurance, life insurance, ESOPs etc. by creating explainer slides or guides that can be referred to easily at o/insurance, o/esop-policy etc. o/leave-policy. These can save you the headache of repeatedly explaining how many and what kind of leaves can be availed by different levels of employees during the year. 

7. Foster financial transparency with o/payslip

Help employees stay up to date with financial information by creating a shortcut to the payroll software where employees can access their payslips, track tax calculations, and understand benefits and allowances, including pending and completed requests for reimbursements etc. (privately, of course). It can free up time spent on repeat enquiries around financial discrepancies or misunderstandings. 

At OSlash, the shortcut o/payslip leads to a private login to Razorpay for each employee.

8. Measure engagement and make employees happier with o/happiness-survey

As per McKinsey, 33% of workers in 2017 said they wanted to look for a new job because they were bored. 

As an HR manager, one of the biggest challenges you may encounter is employee turnover and low motivation. Periodic employee satisfaction surveys help the organization act in time to prevent attrition and the high costs associated with it. They can also prove useful to invite feedback and suggestions for improvements in work climate and policies. 

A simple Typeform or Google Form can do the trick. Reduce friction and inhibition against participation by making the survey anonymous and keeping it one click away at an easy-to-recall or easy-to-guess shortcut like o/happiness-survey.

9. Train, develop, and retain talent with o/trainings

Career growth and advancement is a priority for the newer generations entering the workforce. 

Companies need to evolve and keep pace with changing trends to retain and nurture good performers. Attractive packages are not enough; employees seek professional development as well. 

With a plethora of Learning Management Systems available for imparting skill training in various domains and at various levels, these needs can easily be met. Make training programmes simpler to locate and access at o/trainings so that your employees can upskill without hassle, no matter whether you choose O’Reilly, Udemy, Coursera, PluralSight, EdX or some other platform.