Why do you hire employees? For your workforce (duh!) Well, why do you need a workforce? Because a company has got to work.
Revenue doesn’t generate itself, right?
So, you tell me, what happens when your employees can’t thrive? Who’s to blame when all the extra hours, hard work, and persistence add close to nothing to the company’s bottom line?
The gap between company policies and employee expectation is one of the primary challenges faced by human resource managers in organizations. From bad managers and weak teams to conflict arising from diversity, many issues can hamper the productivity of your workforce.
I have five listed right here- take a look.
- Disengaged Employees
You know that feeling when you get up in the morning and look forward to work? When your job is engaging enough to be exciting?
Well, only about 31.7% US employees experienced it, as per Gallup. That leaves over 68% disinterested employees.
That’s downright dangerous for you.
With engaged employees, you have a chance at
- 2.3 times revenue hike in 3 years
- Increased profits of $2400 per employee in a year
- 18% higher customer retention
Otherwise, you suffer from lowering productivity, profitability, job growth, higher absenteeism, accidents, and errors. In the end, your shares will be in distress. As will your business.
In this particular workforce issue, managers are just as guilty. It’s their responsibility to create an environment that motivates employees. If managers fail at talent hunting, assessing, handling, and utilizing, you may need to reevaluate your managing team.
- Time Management
Rather, the absence of it!
If an employee can’t meet time expectations under reasonable terms, you’d be furious. You’d think people would have their clocks straightened out by the time they enter the workforce, right?
But, if the reason for their poor time skills are too much work, too few hours, and not enough reward, who do you think is the culprit here?
See where I’m headed?
13 hours on average are spent on emails per week. That’s 28% of the workweek turned to minimal productivity. And, your employees are distracted (mobile users touch their phone 2617 times a day.)
They are probably overworked and hence overstressed.
- Workforce Diversity
It’s a major one among Human Resource challenges in the workplace.
The workforce has changed. You now have temporary staff, consultants, and people on contracts. The teams include people of different ages, genders, ethnicities, etc. It’s an all-inclusive army.
You see, with workplace diversity, you may witness
- Prejudice
- Racism
- Lack of respect
- Discrimination
- Harassment
- Poor communication
- Conflict
And a lot depends on how you manage them.
- Millennials
Yes, they get a separate section.
Millennials don’t merely want a job, but an experience. Their concerns mostly revolve around-
- Is your organization good enough?
- Do they get a chance to grow on your team?
- How would you treat them economically? And otherwise?
- Is the duty engaging? Interesting? Challenging? Fulfilling?
Millennials offer excellent analytical skills for the most part. They are also almost always tech-savvy. Text-speak aside, they may come off as a bit narcissistic, but they are often instrumental to have.
If you fail to get them engaged, excite them about work, how would you ever be able to train them enough to suffice for experienced employees?
- Compensation
The benefits and the pay are essential. So much so that 57% candidates admit to considering the compensation before anything else before accepting a job.
Offering a little beyond the reasonable compensation can be useful for you as well. 84% employees very satisfied with their benefits report high job satisfaction.
Compensation becomes an issue when someone knows they’re working too much for too little. They lose motivation to excel. You wind up with a slacking staff.
But, give them enough reasons to excel, and they would work hard than risk being let go for inefficiency, especially when the job has nice perks.
Workforce Problems and Solutions Are Never-Ending
That’s right. Whether you hire a recruiting agency (e.g. Multi Recruit– just saying!) or do it yourself, no matter how trained, or naive your employees are, problems will rise.
Just keep optimizing the solutions. Keep the cogs running, and the wheel won’t stop either. Good luck!