Inside the Issues

Four HR professionals share their insights into the most common matters they’re tasked with addressing, and divulge the techniques they use

By Lisa Gibson

The human resources department at any given company has a broad spectrum of tasks and duties on its plate. HR staff might handle new hires, culture, engagement and behavioral or mediation matters, among others. Prairie Business asked four HR experts to share the most common challenges they face, and offer advice on how to handle them.

Here’s what they said.

Competitive Recruitment

With North Dakota’s economic downturn, caused by slumps in energy and agriculture, competitive recruitment has become difficult, says McKenna Larson, human resources director for AckermanEstvold in Minot. The state is no longer seen as the “land of opportunity,” shifting now to a volatile job market that sometimes deters people from planting roots. “Being an architecture and engineering firm, we’ve never worked directly with either industry, but, indirectly, all companies are affected by the downturn in one way or another,” she says.

“Our solution to this problem has been sustaining our current staff through strong client relationships and diversifying into new industries. We’ve been fortunate enough to add talented members to our team during this economic downturn through both efforts.”

Bethany Berkeley, performance consultant for Dale Carnegie of North Dakota and Minnesota, based in Fargo, says the organization wraps together recruitment, engagement and retention. “Rather than working to alleviate these issues separately, we believe each component is connected and can be solved by taking a strategic big-picture approach through succession planning,” she says. “Succession planning is a leadership endeavor that is complex, challenging and highly rewarding, and with the emerging post-boomer workforce, it is critical to act now.” The approach fills the talent pipeline and builds a company’s strength, she adds.

Retention and Expectations

Has the wrong person been hired, or the right person been lost?

“Hire slow, fire fast,” says John Krueger, vice president of Great Plains Benefits Group Advisers in Bismarck. If within the first 30 days an employer gets the feeling the new hire isn’t a good fit, the employer should consider letting that new hire go, he says.

GPBG Advisers helps its clients create a new hire kit, outlining specific expectations for benchmarks within a new hire’s first year. Once that year is completed, that hire is ready to train the next new hire, Krueger says.

Proper Interviewing Process

After collecting and reviewing resumés, a hiring team starts its interviewing process, which can vary by company and be as unique as the companies themselves. However it’s done, interviewing should be thorough and properly planned. At Vaaler Insurance in Grand Forks, the hiring team interviews each candidate and follows up with post-interview testing through a third party, says Trinity Lang, Vaaler’s human resources and office manager.

“When we receive the test results — four in all, testing the applicant from personality and temperament to intellectual capacities on various levels — we take a good look at the tests as another valuable interviewing tool,” he says. “One of the benefits of the test results is the fact that we can get a sense of personality, skills and abilities to compare to our takeaway feeling from the interview.”

It’s crucial to define the perfect fit for the position before the interview process even begins, Lang says. It’s the employer’s responsibility to know what education level, skills and abilities, experience and temperament are required for the job.

Policy Vs. Culture

“One of the biggest issues facing our HR department is balancing policies that protect employees and employers while maintaining a vibrant culture,” Larson says. “We’ve found that policy not only helps you keep consistency when handling matters, but it allows us to live within the boundaries we’ve set.”

When an employee violates policies, the correct response is not to rewrite policy with smaller boundaries, she says. “If you write a new policy for every negative an employee may bring to the table, you will never have a culture that draws people to your business, fosters creativity and allows people to express themselves... We all have kinks, but it’s finding the balance between trusting your employees to do the right thing without letting them take advantage of you.”

An example of this is employee punctuality, an issue Lang says many companies struggle with. “We all have lives, traffic doesn’t stop when we hit the road in the morning, and the folks in line at Starbucks count pennies sometimes. Employers get it,” Lang says. Empathy from the employer is useful, but a solution is needed when an employee consistently shows up to work late. A one-size-fits-all approach to punctuality issues isn’t ideal, as employees face unique circumstances in their lives outside of work, Lang says. “What many have found that works is addressing the issue individually as needed, but encouraging timeliness often on a larger scale, and to all employees through emails or the morning hello while looking at your watch,” Lang says. “Educate employees on the policy, as well as the deterrents in place so everyone is on the same page. If this angle is not resolving the issue for a certain employee, it may be time to see if there is another issue or guide the employee to your company employee assistance program, if available. Oftentimes these issues can go deeper than traffic, or counting pennies.”

Communication

Employees want to know what is expected of them, why it’s expected, how they’re doing in their roles and what the end goals are, Krueger says. Communication comes up on every employee survey GPBG Employer Advisers has conducted, without exception, he says. To avoid issues, Krueger advises regular newsletters and emails distributed across the company, or frequent “all hands on deck” meetings. PB