Employees confide that delays in resolutions and poor employee relations are key reasons for their dissatisfaction with their organisation’s HR departments.
In what may come as a blow to the HR community, employees across industries have stated in a survey that they are not fully satisfied with the HR departments in their organisations. As per the latest TimesJobs report titled ‘HR in a spot’, employees confess that delays in resolutions and poor employee relations are the main causes for their unhappiness with their HR departments.
The study states that addressing people-related concerns is one of the key areas where HR lags behind and which needs immediate attention, along with improved time management in acting on employee concerns. The study, that covered 1769 professionals across various industries, observed that 45 per cent employees receive help from HR on their matters usually in a month. Also, 55 percent people blame the poor turn-around time of HR, on the insufficient skills of the concerned professionals.
What should worry the HR teams most is the fact that 60 per cent employees face problems in even identifying and reaching out to the right HR person to solve their issues. Even if they do, 65 per cent people feel that the HR department does not make sincere attempts to solve their problems. In addition to timeliness, another problem revealed is the poor handling of people-related matters by HR. 60 per cent employees feel their HR department fares poorly in acting on and managing people-related issues reported to them. On the other hand, 65 per cent employees rated their HR as ‘good’ to ‘excellent’ in handling process-related issues.
Commenting on how HR needs to cope up with the gap in employee expectations, Nilanjan Roy, head of strategy, Times Business Solutions, says, “To deal with this new generation of employees, HR leaders need to make concerted efforts to improve their employee engagements, HRM practices, policies and procedures in order to bridge the perceptual gap revealed in this study.”
The quality of HR services in their respective organisations is rated as poor by most employees, since 60 per cent are not promptly informed about important changes in HR rules or policies and 70 per cent are not satisfied with the rewards and recognition policy of their HR. Surprisingly, only 30 per cent say they get the training necessary to do their job effectively. 40 per cent would like to recommend their company to others based on the current HR policies while 60 per cent will not recommend it.
The report also reveals that nearly 30 per cent employees rate the interactions with their HR department as good, while 52 per cent rate it as satisfactory and only 18 per cent rate it as poor! Although there are concerns where employees feel the HR departments can fare better, not everything seems bad. HR is also highly rated in the area of recruitment and placement with 90 per cent being given a good or excellent rating in not only sourcing, screening and recruitment of candidates, but in induction of staff and payroll management.
There is nothing worse for an organisation than to have unhappy employees. While there are many factors that can trigger employee dissatisfaction, disconnect with HR is the most critical, and must be addressed urgently.
7 Comments
Most of the HR persons and systems are becoming bureaucratic, however the customer, employees in general, do not like to be handled with bureaucratic approach. We the HR people must feel and deal with heart to be receptive, effective and acknowledged.
Apart from points highlighted in article, HR must understand the business, its challenges and provide customized solutions in timely manner. Policies and procedures, structures are just guidelines for administrative ease and shouldn’t be hindrance for seamless integration. Every employee must be treated with respect and empathy.
A lot of people hold HR accountable for employees happiness; in part we are but a larger part is managements role in ensuring their employees are engaged. Focus should be put on training of management. With more and more HR services being outsourced or handled by multiple vendors, it leaves the HR Business Partner with conflicting priorities. Organizations need to be clear on the role they want HR to add. Most people still want to interact with a human about issues. The larger question is how effective is outsourcing your people services?
Like many media articles nowadays this also seems to be confusing.
According to me to be Happy Organisation every department should go hand in hand.Most of the HR people help their employees on immediate basis but in returns if HR needs any help from other department they delay in it.It can affect on performance of HR too.So every department should respect KRA of each and every dept.to be happy organisation.
These observations and statistics are not new. HR is considered to be “Human Resistance” versus “Human Resources”. It is appalling how individuals with the worst or complete lack of people skills choose HR as a profession. It’s the tedious processes they may excel at avoiding human contact with employees at all costs. Companies should eliminate their HR departments and outsource to a competent PEO – Professional Employer Organization as many U.S. companies have.
I read this article because I believe most HR professionals are genuinely interested in ensuring employee satisfaction; however, HR is not the only component responsible for this. Managers play a larger part especially in large organizations. Most HR services are being outsourced or handled by multiple vendors. I think a larger question is how effective is outsourcing a people oriented profession?