HR Best Practices

Best Practices as a Whole

What ARE HR best practices? 

A best practice is defined as, "A method or technique that has consistently shown results superior to those achieved with other means."  

In order for a company to be successful, it needs to instill value to its workforce.  Companies today have learned to deploy HR best practices to give them the best possible competitive advantage.  

In a comprehensive study on best practices in the lodging industry (conducted by professors affiliated with Cornell University) they found the following to be the five categories of best practices:

1. Leader Development
2.  Training and knowledge building
3. Employee empowerment
4.   Employee recognition
5.  Cost management

Cornell’s article lists several HR champions that applied these best practices to their workforce, along with the measure of success they received from it. 

For example, Accor North America used a combination of numerous integrated HR initiatives, including workforce design, feedback, rewards, and group process.  In return they have very low employee turnover, higher employee-satisfaction scores, and significantly better performance results.  (Siquaw, 2000)

This is just one of the several companies listed as “HR Champions” due to applying these successful HR methods. (Siguaw, 2000)

Connecting HR to Overall Success

Another study I found from Cornell was an article that tried to find the correlation between Human Resource Practices, Turnover, and Sales Growth in a company.

The study showed that there was a positive correlation between high involvement practices and the effect they have on organizational performance.  The study was based on a nationally representative sample (so the study could be applied generically to service and sales operations in the telecommunications industry)

That being said, it’s obvious that a company is much stronger with high involvement from its HR team.  In order for success to be the outcome, HR needs to be able to effectively communicate with its employees. (Batt, 2002)

HR Losing Touch

In order for HR best practices to be successful, there needs to be good leadership behind the HR team.  HR sometimes starts to lose sight of its overall purpose.  Some companies look to far into analytics and less into the bigger spectrum of HR. (Forbes, 2012)

I did some further research and found 5 inter-related ideas to bring innovation and speed back to HR:

1. Don’t count everything- HR is about talking to people, not just analytics.  Sometimes HR gets too into the details (hours, days, degrees, recommendations) and begins to lose sight of their general purpose.  HR needs to be able to find out what matters to the employees of its company.  Lack of communication is commonly the inception for bigger problems to come. 
2. Listen- this seems pretty self-explanatory.  Pay attention to what matters to your employees.  We all have conversations with ourselves, 24 hours a day.  You need to be able to take a step back and pay attention. 
3.  Be silent- this is somewhat correlated with active listening.  List to what people have to say, and how often they repeat things.  This is a good way to find the potential leaders in a company. 
4. Observe non-verbal signs- people sometimes speak more clearly with gestures/expressions.  Body language tells a lot about someone.  You can detect the difference between a poor and successful performance group, based on how much interaction there is (who speaks first, who rolls there eyes, etc.)
5.  Don’t be a friend.  Be a leader- it is a common misconception that people believe they can be a great leader and still be friends with everyone on their team.  There are going to be employees that don’t like you, for whatever given reason.  You need to be a strong and helpful leader, regardless of your employees’ feelings towards you. (Forbes, 2012)

You can’t develop Best Practices for HR, without first having a strong HR team to back them up.  This is why it’s best to start from the root of the issue. 

Takeaways from this subject

What can we take away from this topic (HR Best Practices)?  It’s fairly simple.  In a broad sense, a company cannot function without good communication between the employee and the HR team that supports it.  In order to have effective communication, you must first have effective best practices.  In order to have effective best practices, you must have a strong basis from HR. 

How can students of ORG331 apply this information today?

I believe that it’s a good idea to research a company before applying to it.  You need to know its history before you jump right into their company.  This ties back to its best practices.  Look up the company’s mission statement.  Is it something you agree with? Do you feel you would be a good fit for that type of idea?  Try and find out if there have been any major complaints with this company.  You want to enjoy where you work.  A happy employee is a successful employee.  You will always have more motivation to work for a company you truly enjoy.  I think that is vital for ORG331 students to know, if they don’t already. 

Batt, R. (2002). Managing customer services: Human resource practices, quit rates, and sales growth. Academy of management Journal, 45(3), 587-597.
References            

Enz, C. A., & Siguaw, J. A. (2000). Best practices in human resources. Cornell Hotel and Restaurant Administration Quarterly, 41(1), 48-61.

Forbes (2012). 5 Ways to RockStar HR Leadership. [ONLINE] Available at: http://www.forbes.com/sites/meghanbiro/2012/10/07/5-ways-to-rock-star-hr-leadership/. [Last Accessed ].