Every business wants to do right by its employees, but with growing technology and a more diverse workforce, striking a balance between employer and employee interests can be difficult.
Twenty years ago, Human Resources was viewed as an organization’s policing department. Outsourcing the role of HR was considered a “low-cost play” that would save an organization money (and the hassle of completing time-consuming paperwork that slowed you down and made it harder for you to do your job).
Meanwhile, workplace demands increased. So did employee dissatisfaction, as relentless cost-cutting got in the way of advocating for worker wellness.
Then, in just a few years, the attitude toward HR shifted in Fortune 50 companies, as leaders learned more about the high costs of employee turnovers and struggled to fill vacant positions. Reallocating resources to eliminate waste, enhance the employee experience, and generate revenue became the way to achieve operational excellence. Outsourcing HR became a “value play” while increasingly strategic HR professionals became valuable members of the C-suite executive team.
Achieving Operational Excellence
Today, despite HR’s exciting evolution, there are still companies who haven’t made the transition.
In 2013, Bill and Katie Tansey opened HR Resolved, a robust platform-based company taking this big business approach and making it available to small, mid-size, and emerging businesses across the country who haven’t yet made the switch.
Providing a value never realized before, a Human Resources Professional like Katie works as hard for her clients as she does for herself. She combines her more than 22 years of human resources experience with her passion for wellness – both in and out of the office. A nutrition coach and an exceptional athlete, she has completed more than two dozen marathons, ultra marathons, and ironman competitions. Featured in the 2011 book, “Run Like a Girl: How strong women make happy lives” by Mina Samuels, Katie shows how small changes can help you overcome obstacles in all the arenas of your life.
Competency Beyond Compliance
Once a company has onboarded with HR Resolved, during the first quarter of the year, they execute a series of activities that go well beyond the simple hiring, administration, and training of personnel.
Their first step is designing practical strategies that align realistic employee expectations with an organization’s mission and goals. Then, data is delivered in usable, compatible formats that address challenges while informing hiring decisions, employee training, and retention down the road.
During the second quarter, hiring typically picks up within an organization. Often, the recruitment process includes creating and posting job descriptions, accepting and tracking applications, shortlisting candidates, organizing interviews, hiring, and onboarding new hires. Handling payroll and benefits, such as travel and expenses, paid vacation, sick leave, retirement, health insurance and others, are an important part of HR’s responsibilities at this time as well.
Coaching and Ensuring Equitable Compensation
By creating an onboarding process that incorporates competence-building techniques and extended training plans for new hires, companies create a more confident, resilient, productive, and loyal workforce – right from the start.
As mid-year approaches, coaching is put in place so that by the third quarter, any required changes can be made.
Built-in accountability ensures compensation is adjusted accordingly in preparation for end-of-the-year assessments during the fourth quarter.
Proven Processes, Less Paperwork
Providing a holistic approach to business that puts the resourcefulness back into Human Resources, HR Resolved’s process made such a substantial difference to one client (a regional distributor of a national brand), that they were awarded for it at a national sales conference.
Even though Saratoga is a retail-heavy tourist town, HR Resolved does not service retail. Instead, since the pandemic, they’ve concentrated on servicing three markets within the region, from New York City to Lake Placid: manufacturing (or resellers of value-added goods), professional organizations (like lawyers and marketing firms), and private medical offices (including physicians, dental, and veterinarian practices).
Protecting small businesses from the challenges that often drive them to merge with conglomerates, HR Resolved analytical resources and technical assistance helped one physician get back to what she enjoyed most – being a doctor – while giving her the time and flexibility to spend the weekend skiing - instead of buried under mounds of paperwork.
For more information, go to HRresolved.com.