HR and L&D challenges in 2019 have evolved. Where HR and L&D professionals would once worry about rising attrition rates, workplace-related issues, and development problems, today modern challenges have added themselves to this list. The best solution to most of these issues is still training and development. However, having just any training and development mechanism in place will not help. Hence, in this article, we attempt to address these challenges one at a time using the right approach.
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Here are challenges faced by HR and L&D in 2019 and the solutions to overcome them:
Learning to use the HRMIS or the LMS
The surprising bit about the challenges faced by most HR and L&D professionals is that they fall prey to the problem of no training or lack of training themselves. Countless HR and L&D professionals have trouble using complicated enterprise-based systems, learning management systems, or simple authoring tools on a daily basis. There is little to no training provided on using these platforms and getting things done is more about ‘figuring things’ out.
One of the biggest obstacles for HR and L&D teams to overcome is to understand that training is important, even if that means starting with yourselves. If you as an L&D or HR professional are not training and learning yourselves, it is really difficult to believe that you are in charge of another’s development.
If your facing issues with an HRMIS, LMS, or authoring tools, start by putting in place a system that trains you and supports the people who may eventually replace you. And if your LMS is really difficult to operate, switch to a simple, hassle-free learning management system like ABARA LMS.
Addressing the challenges faced by millennials
Ok, so you’re dealing with a millennial-dominated workforce and getting them to do anything is difficult—what do you do? That is relatively simple. You take into consideration their preferences and try to adapt!
There is no point trying to convert the present masses and the future generations to come. Instead, adapt to their needs and they will respond to your efforts.
Technology plays a key role here, millennials love technology and anything related to technology instantly wins a place with them. Try this activity—If you know about a set of problems or challenges plaguing your millennial workforce, list all of those that can be solved through the aid of technology. The ones that can’t, will need a personal approach or another way around.
The thing is, most millennials face a limited set of problems at the workplace—from no work-related knowledge to minor workplace harassment issues. If you study these problems carefully, it’s easy to understand that training is the real solution here. Now that you know the answer, serve the answer on a plate of technology and your millennial workforce will accept it happily.
Using technologies that solve HR and L&D challenges
We have already ascertained that many HR and L&D teams shy away from technology. Difficulty in understanding and staying up-to-date with new trends are some of the reasons. However, the solution to these challenges is not avoiding technology.
The solution to the challenge is straightforward training.
Once you get the hang of using the system in question, you will realise that it solves most of your problems. From training and developing the skills of your workforce to getting the message of compliance across, technology will make your job easier. So do not shy away anymore. Embrace technology and it will save you time, efforts, and money.
Creating an employee-friendly working environment
A good working environment for employees is a result of great HR and L&D initiatives. Great initiatives need to be communicated or they lose their impact. Great initiatives can be divided into two distinct buckets—extra/non-work related and work-related.
Non-work related activities involve everything from team games, annual sports days, dinners, and so on. The success of which depends on your planning capabilities and the likes and wants of the majority of your workforce.
On the other hand, work-related activities add to the development of your employees and your organization in some form or manner albeit in an unofficial way. Some organizations host regular team and individual competitions where people are asked to present business related ideas and innovations and the best ones are awarded. This is a great example of work-related activities.
The idea is to keep your employees engaged officially, but in an offline manner, allowing them complete freedom and control over their work-related contributions. It is a chance to express themselves in a way that is meaningful and get them recognized.
Finding modern ways to onboard new employees successfully
This is inherently more important for HR and L&D professionals that face the challenge of high attrition rates. The advantages of having a strong employee onboarding system is that:
- 1. Training a large inflow of new employees becomes manageable.
- 2. Good onboarding experiences contribute towards reducing attrition rates.
A survey by The Society for Human Resource Management stated that employees are 69% more likely to stay with an organization if onboarded properly. There is a science behind this—if your organization’s expectations are set straight from the very first day of joining, employees are less likely to feel lost or directionless. Good onboarding helps employees focus on the job at hand and not be distracted by anything that is outside their field of expertise unless it is really important.
The best way around this challenge is having an LMS built for employee onboarding in place that helps with successful induction training on a regular basis. Not only does it take out the repetitive nature of training new employees, but it also contributes towards reducing attrition rates.
Successfully addressing the compliance training problem
Prevention is better than cure, is it not? Think of it this way—when your employees are trained on what is considered acceptable at the workplace, they’d definitely avoid making a mistake unknowingly because they are informed.
Two major reasons behind untoward incidents at the workplace are:
- 1. Employees are not informed about what is acceptable and what is not.
- 2. Compliance training tracking metrics are unavailable.
In the first case, if employee expectations are not set straight, you are most likely to find a lot of minor and major offences taking place on a regular basis. This is majorly an HR and L&D issue where the focus on compliance training is lacking.
In the second case, training on compliance is being provided, but there is no formal training structure in place like an LMS which ensures that all employees have participated and successfully completed their training. In such cases, it is very difficult to ascertain if a certain offender was aware of the actions their offence warrants. In many cases, it is very difficult to even prove that the offender knew about the offensive nature of their actions in the first place.
Hence, if these major and minor offences and the unrequired troubles they bring are to be avoided, it is best to ensure that compliance training is taken seriously. To further avoid the difficulty of tracking and measuring compliance activities, it is recommended to use an LMS which maintains an electronic log.
Providing senior management with KPIs
In the era of technology, data is the output that holds true value for any top-level management. Data on how employees are performing, data on the success of L&D initiatives, and so on. For the sake of being able to track, record, and fine-tune your HR and L&D activities and provide meaningful reports to the management, an electronic data log system is very important. There is no point in creating manual reports when a system like the LMS can provide you with automated weekly and monthly reports directly to your inbox.
The aim is to use readily available technology to aid in the process of tracking the performance metrics, and there are plenty of LMS platforms that provide you with all the information you need and more. Here is a great article that should help you further understand the importance of tracking data and analytics.
Conclusion:
Technology is here and it has taken centre stage to solve HR and L&D challenges in 2019. It is really up to us to understand all the uses you can put these systems to. At Abara, our focus has always been on reducing the stress that L&D and HR professionals face due to inefficient practices. We are devotedly committed to bringing a change to the L&D and HR environment and Abara LMS is our solution to this. Try Abara LMS for 30-days and schedule a supporting demo call in order to make the most of your free LMS trial—it is the best way to test our system.
