When you go through the process of hiring top talent you’re always hoping to match a candidate’s professional purpose with the role they’re filling. While this is no small feat, it’s a convenient reminder that when we get bogged down in our day-to-day life, it’s easy for all of us to lose sight of our professional purpose. How often do you stop to think about why you got into HR and People Ops in the first place? Recognizing the disconnect between why you got into this profession and what you do on the daily is the first step for unleashing your best self in the workplace.
Your purpose was the internal energy that lit your fire every morning (which is why your purpose now is most likely, “consume mass quantities of coffee”), and yet over the years, lost in all the monotony of repetitive tasks and inefficient processes and boring Zoom calls, the purpose for most HR leaders today likely feels more like an administrative turnstile than it does an engine to support and elevate a workforce.
Identifying your HR pain points
In order to unleash your power of purpose and spend more time doing the work you love, it’s important to regularly take stock of what you’re doing today that feels like sandbags around your ankles. Once you’ve identified the administrative and process burdens that are the biggest drain on your time and energy, you can then explore opportunities to improve those areas of your workflow and improve your efficiency while reducing your headaches
While there are countless pain points likely causing you frustrations and hindering your own happiness and success at work, here are a few you might be able to relate to:
Outdated HR technology and systems: Using antiquated software systems in a modern workplace is like operating a factory with outdated machinery. You’re trying to produce high-quality work with clunky, rusty equipment that breaks down and ends up causing you more work in the end. Spending even a small amount of time to research the latest tech platforms and solutions can bring to light opportunities to go easy on your budget (you’d be surprised how many older tech solutions are not only less capable, but also more expensive than newer ones) and free up beaucoup bandwidth.
Employee data management and record keeping: When it comes to ensuring your employee data is accurate and secure, unwieldy spreadsheets and haphazard password storage is not your best friend. Maintaining accurate and up-to-date employee records, which can be anything from personal information to performance evaluations, can be a significant administrative burden on your day-to-day. Look for ways to consolidate data management systems where you can so you can ensure your employee data is being collected properly, you’re wasting less time running down said data and cross-referencing across systems to ensure accuracy, and you’re operating compliantly.
Payroll management: Properly managing payroll can take a herculean effort for the mightiest of People Ops teams. Making sure your organization is adhering to the various tax laws and regulations at the local, state, and federal levels is vital, and ensuring payroll data is accurate while dealing with overtime, bonuses, commissions, deductions, and leaves of absence can be time-consuming and challenging for HR leaders. Can you afford to use antiquated and disjointed processes for payroll? Start monitoring where your breakdowns are occurring most frequently and look to streamline and shore up processes that are holding you back.
Leave of absence management: One pain point tied to all three above is leave of absence management. Most HR teams are either manually managing their leaves in a web of spreadsheets and email threads, or are relying on insufficient support from insurance carriers to help alleviate some of the load (like state benefits) while manually managing the rest…and that includes fielding questions and supporting the employees themselves. This is one area where Frankensteining a solution is commonplace and makes the journey for everyone involved a horror film.
It’s time to have an earnest look at where your team’s pain points reside and start alleviating them to get back to your purpose as an HR Leader and People Ops professional. When done properly you’ll save time, money and reinvigorate yourself and your team to put more energy and effort into the programs that float your boat.
How to remove your HR Pain points and focus on purpose
Better processes and better systems won’t materialize out of thin air, and identifying which pain points to tackle first is often organization-specific. Doing a tech stack audit is a great way to start. To do so identify all the systems currently in your tech stack and list out the following:
- Does anyone on the team actually use the solution?
- Does the solution do what we need it to do?
- Are there cheaper alternatives that can do a better job?
- Does the solution scale?
- Is the solution considered innovative anymore?
- Does it align with business goals?
From there, take a look at your processes:
- Are we being compliant with laws and regulations?
- Are we efficiently and securely documenting and storing employee data?
- Are we manually doing labor-intensive work that can be handled with tech or automated now?
By identifying what pain points you have, you can then evaluate how leveraging modern tech solutions can remedy those pain points and free you up for more purpose-driven work. Let’s look at a very convenient and unbiased example where using an all-in-one platform for leave of absence management can remove countless pain points.
A modern leave management system houses and tracks all employee leaves, their personal information, and handles all administrative burdens at scale like guiding employees through applying for state benefits. It should integrate seamlessly with payroll by automatically updating pay calculations should there be changes to leave dates or pay sources or salary rates, and among many other things it should make supporting ADA leaves a breeze. On top of that, it should provide the employees answers and the empathetic support you and your team couldn’t possibly have the bandwidth or leave law knowledge to provide.
This is an example where one solution not only saves you and your team a (bad word)-ton of time, it saves you a (bad word)-ton of money by avoiding payroll overpayments, mismanagement lawsuits, missing out on state benefits and more.
With more time and money for your department, just think of what passion projects you could finally move to from the back burner to the spotlight.
About Tilt
Tilt is leading the charge in all things leave of absence management through easy-to-use tech and human touch. Since 2017, our proprietary platform and Empathy Warriors have been helping customers make leave not suck by eliminating administrative burdens, keeping companies compliant, and providing a truly positive and supportive leave of absence experience for their people.
