Naturally, each sector of your company (whether it is a large national – or even international, business – or a smaller, family-run enterprise) is as important as the next.
When it comes to human resources, however, no other department is so directly connected to and influential in making sure all the organization’s employees are treated equally and fairly.
So, whether you are currently working in the world of HR, or you are running a business and are interested in learning more, then continue reading to discover all the top HR issues facing London businesses today.
Data Protection
More and more time and money is being spent on training and additional qualifications for people who work within human resources and this is mainly due to the changes relating to GDPR and data protection in recent years.
Data protection has a wide-reaching impact on many different aspects of HR, including the entire process of a recruitment drive and every small hiring and firing detail in-between (as well as providing references and monitoring performance).
Keeping up to date with the latest developments, and new policies and procedures regarding data protection is now legally mandatory for human resource workers, and due to the highly technical nature of the law, it is crucial for business owners and managers to seek legal advice should they be unsure of anything related to peronsal details.
Stringent Employment Law Guidelines
Employment law, in the context of a company’s human resources department, refers to the core and crucial responsibility for the performance and general safety of every single employee to the business involving one or more elements of said law.
When being legally required to fulfill duties pertaining to employment law, employees are treated equally and fairly during a variety of common processes such as employee appraisals, dismissals, and recruitment and onboarding.
This is most certainly why more and more business owners are choosing to outsource one or more of their core HR functions to a reputable and renowned company such as the HR Dept in Clapham.
The risk of breaking employment law, in terms of an HR employee either deliberately failing to complete a process properly, or indeed accidentally, does not only place the company in jeopardy, but will more than likely make the situation ten times worse.
Economic Uncertainty
Uncertainty, both in the context of the longevity of larger businesses and retail chains on the high street that have been trading since your childhood and also individual people’s careers and job security, is certainly on the forefront of everyone’s minds.
This is why human resources employees are being encouraged to place a much more detailed focus upon employee morale and work to foster a strong company culture. Moreover, business managers should be leading from the front in terms of being a transparent and inclusive company which also ensures their employees are included in business decisions.
The Relationship Between Employees and Managers
One of the most important duties of a good manager is ensuring that the relationship between an employee and a manager is both strong and mutually beneficial.
Especially with the recent rise in hybrid and remote working options, brought about mainly due to the 2020 coronavirus pandemic of course, tools and policies should be altered and new ones created to ensure employees feel connected and valued.
This is why many people who successfully win the role of a manager in a company that they have previously had no professional connection to struggle to gain the trust and respect of their employees, due to their lack of specific training and knowledge in the area.
Employee Wellbeing
These days, with stress levels being higher than ever before (according to a wide variety of reports), organizations have a legal responsibility for a duty of care for their employees, rather than just a moral one. Therefore, HR professionsals should always keep employee wellbeing in mind.
There are, fortunately, a huge variety of ways in which HR employees and companies as a whole can work to take care of employee wellbeing in a more practical and proactive way, including offering mental health services and more tailormade benefits such as providing childcare discounts.
The Importance of DEIB Programs
Finally, another major issue facing London businesses of all shapes and sizes is related to DEIB (diversity, equity, inclusion and belonging), all of which relate to human resources.
It is an unequivocable truth that teams consisting of a mix of both men and women, for example, always outperform those with only men or only women employees (by as much as 20%).
When looking to broader planning in terms of strategy and long-term goals, therefore, HR departments in all sorts of different industries need to build achievable DEIB targets into their basic frameworks.
