That being said, it’s not uncommon for senior decision-makers to hesitate when it comes to investing in HR technology, viewing it as more of a bonus than a necessity. You may wonder how much time and money it takes to do administrative tasks manually and how much you’d actually save by introducing an HRIS.

When you actually do the math, you’ll probably find that the numbers concretely demonstrate that an HR platform is totally worth it. This HRIS ROI calculator will show you how to determine the real dollar impact of an HRIS on your organization’s bottom line.

How to create an HRIS ROI calculator

ROI is a simple formula: net gain divided by total cost multiplied by 100. To make this calculation, you’ll have to find a few figures:

• How much your desired HRIS will cost
• How much money your HRIS will save you

The first figure is relatively simple to find. It involves the following:

• Annual cost of the HRIS, including subscription fees, customer support, and data storage
• Set-up costs, including the time it will take you to configure the HRIS, import data, and train your team on it
• Ongoing expenses, such as any maintenance time

The exact numbers will vary depending on the HCM or HRIS you choose. But, take the following example: A 2022 Software Path survey determined that the average HRIS budget is $210 per month per user. Users are people with full access to the HR platform such as HR administrators, payroll specialists, talent management specialists, and recruiters.

HRIS net gain

Calculating how much money your HRIS will save you is a bit trickier than figuring out how much it costs. As part of this calculation, you’ll have to consider all of the areas where your HRIS will make a financial impact. These can include:

The tasks an HRIS will help you save time doing

• Any money saved by replacing ineffective processes with more functional ones
• Increased productivity, such as people being able to be productive sooner due to smoother employee onboarding processes
• Reduced employee turnover

Improved time-off management, saving on the cost of unreported PTO days

How an HRIS saves HR teams time

One of the most important areas to look at is the different ways in which your HRIS saves you time. This will probably be where most of your net gain comes from. There are a number of tasks that an HRIS can automate or speed up for your company. Among these are recruiting, compensation management, KPI tracking, time tracking, data entry, payroll, and so on.

To help you figure out how many hours you’ll save doing each task, you’ll need to track approximately how much time your team currently dedicates to them. Then, you can estimate the time it will take to do the same tasks with an HRIS.

Overall, HR teams see 30 to 60 percent time savings on administrative tasks when implementing an HRIS platform.

How to use HiBob’s HRIS ROI calculator 

To fully demonstrate how you can calculate the ROI of your HRIS, let’s look at a simple example using HiBob’s ROI calculator.

Let’s say your company has 12 HR team members whose average annual salary is $60,000. They each spend five hours of their 40-hour work week on manual admin tasks like employee data management, onboarding, workforce planning, and performance reviews. 

When we calculate the amount of time your team spends on admin per year, we see it comes out to $90,000. 

$60,000 (avg salary) x 12 (employees) x 5hrs/40hrs = $90,000

But with an HRIS or HCM like Bob, your HR team is able to automate tasks and cut admin time down to just 30 minutes a week each.

$60,000 (avg salary) x 12 (employees) x 0.5hrs/40hrs = $9,000

$90,000 – $9,000 = $81,000

Incredible, right? Your HR platform saves your business  $81,000 per year. It frees up 90 percent of the time your teams used to spend on admin tasks and leaves time to focus on what really matters: your people.

The real ROI of HR tech

Your HR platform saves time and provides the analytics your HR team needs to make data-driven decisions. Plus, with all the money you’ve saved, you now have more budget to allocate to exceptional people programs that drive engagement, satisfaction, and the innovation you need to boost your bottom line. 

<<Discover the ROI of your HRIS with HiBob’s HRIS ROI calculator.>>

The post HRIS ROI calculator: Is an HRIS worth it? appeared first on HiBob.

According to the report, 44 percent of respondents said they experienced negative emotions the previous day. 

In the European Union, the European Agency for Safety and Health at Work (EU-OSHA) carried out a survey in 2022 in which 26.8 percent of the 27,000 respondents reported feeling “stress, depression, or anxiety caused or made worse by work.”

Similarly, a report by the American Psychological Association (APA) found that a whopping 79 percent of American professionals “experienced work-related stress in the month before the survey.” 

And it doesn’t stop at wellbeing. Workplace stress costs the United Kingdom’s economy £28 billion annually. It costs the United States more than $300 billion. 

But there is a silver lining for businesses: Investing in mental health and wellbeing is financially beneficial. Research by the World Health Organization (WHO) indicates that for every $1 businesses invest in mental health, they see a $4 return in improved health and productivity. 

In fact, proactively addressing stress can significantly reduce absenteeism, improve retention rates, and nurture a happier, healthier work environment. 

In this post, we’ll delve into the signs of stress in the workplace, its most common causes, and some effective strategies for tackling it.

How to identify signs of stress

Recognizing the early warning signs of stress can make all the difference when it comes to addressing it. 

Stress can manifest in different forms, both obvious and subtle. Signs can include:

• Increased arguments between teammates
• More frequent sick days
• Moodiness or visible fatigue
• Declines in motivation and confidence
• Longer working hours with decreased productivity
• A sudden drop in work quality
• Changes in appearance, such as looking unkempt or experiencing sudden weight changes
• Rising levels of turnover and attrition
• Increased cynicism or negativity
• More complaints and reports of being stressed

Communication also plays an important role in identifying when team members are stressed. Line managers can set up regular discussions around stress and its effects with their teams—either as a group or during one-on-ones. 

These conversations can reveal the nature of the stressors. Sometimes, very specific external issues—such as illness, family or financial problems, or a newborn at home—may cause a team member to feel stressed.

It’s important for managers to be aware of these external stressors, since they can impact the work performance and behavior of their team members significantly.

The most common causes of workplace stress

But why has work stress been on the rise?

Understanding the root causes of stress at work makes it easier to take steps toward solving and preventing the issue. Common causes include:

• Heavy workloads. Overwhelming amounts of work can lead to significant stress and burnout.
• Insufficient workloads. Surprisingly, having too little work can also cause stress. It can make professionals feel like their employers aren’t using their skills. This can cause people to worry about job security.
• Job security concerns. Doubts about job stability can breed anxiety, although just 16 percent of professionals report it as one of the causes of their workplace stress.
• Colleagues and bullying. Difficult workplace relationships, conflicts with co-workers, and bullying have a strong impact on mental health.
• Skills gaps and lack of training. Inadequate training and support can leave people feeling unprepared, overwhelmed by work demands, and stressed as a result.
• Bad management. Micro-management can inhibit team members from performing at their best. It can also make them feel like they always have to look over their shoulders. Weak leadership and multiple reporting lines can erode team members’ confidence in their organization’s ability to support them with any challenges they’re facing. 
• Lack of communication. Poor communication leads to misunderstandings and can also mean team members don’t express their needs when they feel overwhelmed.
• Blame culture. A culture that blames individuals for mistakes—making them feel like they’re walking on eggshells—creates a stressful workplace culture founded on fear. 
• Lack of control. Professionals manage stress better when they know what they can control. When people are unable to influence decisions, processes, and ways of working, they’re more likely to experience higher stress levels. 
• Lengthy commutes. Long and arduous commutes can add to daily stress.
• Working from home. Equally, the shift to remote work has its own stressors. Remote work may isolate people and lead to feelings of loneliness. It can also blur boundaries between work and personal life, disrupting work-life balance. 
• Adapting to change. Constant changes in the workplace can create uncertainty and make people feel like they don’t have the stability they need to handle the demands of their work.

Developing workplace stress management strategies

Effective stress management in the workplace does more than reduce stress—it also increases satisfaction and retention rates. The most effective way to manage stress is to put strategies in place to prevent it and address it when it arises. 

Below are some key strategies:

Speak openly about mental health

Creating a culture that encourages open discussions about mental health is vital, especially between managers and team members. That way, team members can feel safe to speak to their managers about their mental health and access the support they need.

You can create a culture that speaks openly about mental health by:

• Discussing signs of stress at company meetings
• Sharing articles on mental health with colleagues
• Including mental health awareness in onboarding programs and performance reviews

Implement a zero-tolerance policy for toxic behavior

Toxic behavior can create a stressful work environment. A staggering 71 percent of professionals have experienced toxic management at some point in their careers. 

To maintain a healthy workplace culture, it’s essential to prevent toxic behaviors and management practices by implementing a zero-tolerance policy for toxic behavior by anyone. Establish clear consequences for that behavior, should it arise. 

Encourage daily welfare practices

Promote daily welfare practices to help your people manage stress at work. This can include:

• Encouraging taking breaks throughout the day
• Encouraging wellness walks during the day
• Offering yoga and meditation classes in the office
• Providing discounts on gym memberships

These practices can help team members take care of their physical and mental health, reduce stress, and increase overall wellbeing. It’s important to encourage these stress management techniques at work and ensure managers lead by example since there can be a lot of stigma around leaving the office during the workday.

What can HR do to reduce, prevent, and manage stress at work?

HR plays an integral role in reducing, preventing, and managing stress at work. Some effective stress management strategies in the workplace include:

Building a culture of support networks

Creating support networks within your organization can provide team members with the emotional and professional support they need. This can include mentorship programs, peer support groups, ERGs, and regular check-ins with managers.

Providing mental health resources

Offering mental health resources, such as access to counseling services and online mental health tools, provides your people with the professional support they need to look after their wellbeing.

Holding workshops

Workshops on stress management, yoga, and meditation can teach professionals how to deal with stress at work and raise awareness around the issue and its causes.

Promoting healthy behaviors

Encouraging your people to adopt the healthy behaviors listed below can lay the foundations for a healthier work environment:

• Track stressors
• Meditate
• Develop healthy responses to stress
• Establish boundaries
• Take paid time off to recharge
• Ask for and accept help 

Establishing resilience circles

Resilience circles, where team members share their experiences and coping strategies, can provide a sense of community, connection, and support.

Leading by example

Managers and high-level leaders can lead by example by taking advantage of benefits such as counseling services, participating in meditation and yoga classes, and accepting help when they need it. This encourages team members to prioritize their own mental health and adopt these healthy behaviors themselves.  

Less stress means better business

By recognizing the signs of stress, understanding its common causes, and implementing effective stress reduction programs in the workplace, businesses can significantly improve wellbeing and retention among their people. 

Investing in mental health isn’t just good for your people—it’s also a smart business move. It leads to improved health and productivity and creates a work environment that ensures organizations and their people can flourish. 

The post How to avoid workplace stress and boost your people’s wellbeing appeared first on HiBob.

This is especially true lately with the QuitTok trend of viral firing and layoff videos breaking the internet. 

Today’s tumultuous business climate is forcing many companies to tighten their belts. And unfortunately, with tightened belts come hard cuts, and that includes layoffs. 

Job and financial security are on shaky ground for many people, and anxiety is starting to creep in for everyone, from individual contributors to C-suite executives and board members. 

But for HR professionals tasked with determining who stays and who goes—and who have to carry the heavy burden of delivering the news to people—the topic of letting people go is bound to bring up some uncomfortable feelings.

While letting people go is never easy, there is an etiquette. Infusing etiquette into the layoff strategy you implement at your organization and letting it guide you can help ease the technical complexities and emotional weight. 

The gist of it? No matter why you’re saying goodbye to a team member, the goal is to always let them go with dignity and champion an exceptional employee journey that goes from recruitment to offboarding.

This article takes an honest look at what happens when organizations make cuts, how to let team members go with dignity, and how to safeguard your own mental health as an HR professional during and after the layoff process.

Facing the hard decisions

The hiring boom of the COVID pandemic years gave way to a sudden slowdown, including loss of funding, rising operating costs, shrinking business opportunities, canceled contracts, and bank collapses. 

It was the perfect storm, and it left many businesses around the world unable to secure the capital they needed to operate at their current capacity. With plummeting revenues, businesses had no choice but to cut costs and lay people off to stay afloat.

Unfortunately, the latter lies at the feet of HR. 

There isn’t a one-size-fits-all method for how to let someone go, but there are several different ways to approach it, and every good strategy starts with a plan. 

<<Download, print, and use these exit interview templates for a proper farewell.>>

Make a plan that still puts people first

Once you’ve made the hard decision, it’s important to make a plan. And it’s equally important for that plan to prioritize people, whether they’re on “The List” or not. 

How you treat your people is a hallmark of your company culture, and it’s not something you leave at the door. Don’t forget: These people are a part of your team and deserve to be treated with respect, dignity, and humility. 

HR professionals often have the responsibility of building the layoff strategy. Despite this painful reality, consider using these four tenets as your guideposts for continuing to put people first:

1. Preserve as many positions as possible. Despite needing to make cuts, it’s important to save as many people’s jobs as possible. This not only demonstrates your commitment to your people but keeps the institutional knowledge you still need (and will need in the future) in-house.

2. Help people network. Connect your departing people to others who can help them expand their professional networks and increase their chances of landing a new position as soon as possible.

3. Prepare for the worst and hope for the best. Research as much as possible to fully understand the situation. This will allow you to explore every avenue and determine the best approach.

Be ready to pivot. Things can change quickly. In today’s business climate, being flexible and ready for change is crucial.  Until the first layoff meeting actually happens, it’s best to continue with business as usual. This approach can also help bolster your own mental health.

Be transparent and cautious as a company

One of the worst experiences that people can go through professionally is when a layoff seemingly comes out of the blue. As HR and business leaders, it’s our responsibility to ensure that doesn’t happen. 

In order to accomplish this, transparency is key. 

Be transparent with your people about the state of the business and that you may need to make certain changes to adjust to the market. Make it clear that some of these changes may affect individuals across the workforce. Discuss this at all-hands meetings and encourage managers to discuss it in team and one-on-one meetings. 

If the company has no choice but to carry out layoffs, stay transparent throughout that process, too. 

Provide managers with notes to help them explain the company’s decision to their teams. Include how the company will continue to support affected team members, whether that’s through severance packages and networking opportunities or training and education and strong references.

Go all-in on supporting your leaders

While transparency is essential, there are times when caution is the best avenue. Sometimes, it’s best to limit who knows the full story to protect people’s wellbeing. 

For example, if you’re connected to the people directly impacted, layoffs can be a heavy burden. Knowing about future layoffs within the company can also be difficult, especially for managers.  

To lighten the cognitive load, consider only telling managers the names of those impacted within their specific departments. That way, they can focus on the people they work with every day, rather than having to bear the knowledge of everyone impacted. 

You can also encourage leaders to utilize company resources, like Employee Assistance Programs (EAPs) and health concierge services (if you have them). Finally, you can consider organizing more support meetings with the HR and people professionals team to check in on their wellbeing.

Treat people with dignity and respect

Even though letting people go can be a tough decision, it can be done with dignity. 

To ensure you’re still doing as much as you can for your people, make sure you’re:

• Upfront and honest. If you can provide a generous severance package but not cover benefits, let them know.
• Tactful. Avoid announcing the names of people who’ve been laid off. People will know and talk to each other about it outside of work.
• Empathetic. Layoffs can significantly impact people’s confidence. Make it clear that everyone knows that there was nothing wrong with their performance. It wasn’t them who was cut, it was their position.
• Respectful. Deliver the news in individual conversations and make sure not to mention anyone else’s name. Customize the conversation for each person.
• Personable. Focus this meeting on the person, not the company. Provide a safe space and open forum. Allow them to express any emotions they have, including anger and frustration.

It’s also important to understand the gravity of the situation for the people you’re letting go. That means not rushing layoffs and giving people the time they deserve to process the company’s decision and its impact.

These conversations are hard. Notifying someone doesn’t take much time, but schedule at least 30 minutes per meeting to give yourself and the people you’re speaking to time to process. This time can also help you find ways to move forward together.

The job doesn’t end immediately after you’ve delivered the news. Aftercare is just as important. 

Often, it’s the smaller things that make a difference at this stage, such as asking people how they would like their personal belongings delivered to them if they can’t return to their desks for security reasons. 

Give them the option to have items sent via mail or delivered personally. 

You can also ask people if they’d like you to ask someone to meet them outside to say goodbye instead of having them text from the parking lot.

If possible, work with your EAP to provide an on-site counselor for anyone who needs it. While people don’t typically take advantage of the service, they’ll most likely really appreciate that it’s there for them.

As for your remaining team members, make it clear in a follow-up meeting that the company has notified everyone impacted by the layoffs—this will allay any fears people might have of being next.

Follow through on the promises you make

Once the more emotional part of letting someone go is over, it’s important to ensure that you keep any promises you make to your people. 

For example, if you said you’d network them with others in the industry, make sure to make those introductions. You can also review resumes, connect people with recruiters, write letters of recommendation, and even send jobs that fit people’s specific skill sets. 

If someone you’ve let go needs employment verification for an interview process, prioritize responding. They’ll likely be concentrating on—and perhaps stressed about—finding their next job. 

Taking these steps is not only the right thing to do but also reinforces the fact that you’re a company that genuinely cares about its people—both past and present. This helps improve your reputation as a company and opens up the possibility of valued ex-team members returning to you later down the line when circumstances allow. 

<<Download, print, and use these exit interview templates for a proper farewell.>>

Take care of your own mental health

The first few weeks after layoffs are the hardest and most emotional. 

This is a critical time, especially for your remaining team members, who may feel betrayed by the layoffs while grateful they still have jobs. But layoffs can be especially hard on the HR professionals tasked with planning the cuts and delivering the news to people they know and care about.

That’s why it’s absolutely imperative to prioritize your own mental health. 

Remember that you’re part of the company, too! Lean on the resources you provide to your team. Contact your EAP and take advantage of the counseling services available.

But most importantly, remind and reassure yourself that you’ve treated everyone with the utmost respect and dignity throughout the process. Layoffs are never easy, but they’re also an unavoidable part of the professional world—so be kind to yourself, and rest easy knowing you treated everyone with the same respect you’d want for yourself. 

Navigating layoffs with integrity and compassion

For HR professionals, managing layoffs is an unfortunate necessity and an emotional challenge. 

But by treating people with respect, compassion, and dignity, you can navigate the complexity of layoffs with grace. Conducting layoffs with compassion and dignity gives the people who have worked hard for your company the send-off they deserve. 

In doing so, you can support your team and reinforce the strength and resilience of your organization as a whole.

The post The etiquette of letting people go appeared first on HiBob.

On top of this, HR professionals have a whole new generation (hello, Gen Z!) to cater to with wholly different expectations of employers, approaches to work, and workplace values. 

But the biggest shift of all is how HR teams have transformed from backstage admins to fundamental business decision-makers with a seat at the table in just a few years. 

As Stacey Harris, chief research officer and managing partner at Sapient Insights put it, “HR is the only function that can help companies build unique, lasting differentiators. We do not get innovation, continual growth, or deep customer relationships through HR cost-cutting. Instead, we get frustrated employees and more attrition … [W]hen HR is viewed as a strategic partner, talent, HR, and business outcomes all dramatically increase.”

And the numbers agree with Stacey, with a survey showing that 46 percent of respondents view HR as contributing strategic value in 2022, a noticeable rise from 38 percent in 2014. 

This International HR Day, we’re introducing Influential HR as the way to up your HR game by championing a people-first approach.

Because being an Influential HR leader isn’t just about having a seat at the table and weighing in on action items anymore. Advancing your HR career now relies on mixing people data with the ability to strategically influence the action items that get put on your organization’s agenda. 

It’s about picking the table up and moving it in a people-first direction that ensures your business thrives in the modern world of work—all while cementing respect for HR professionals as critical business leaders.

So let’s dive into how you can leverage Influential HR strategy this International HR Day and how it can set you up for people-centric business success.

What is Influential HR?

People matter more than ever in today’s working world—and so does HR. 

This presents a key moment for HR to reinvent itself, and that’s where Influential HR comes into play. 

At its core, Influential HR sets the tone on how to put your team first. It’s next-level HR strategy that acts as a key strategic part of the business, enriching a people-first approach with data-driven insights. 

Influential HR professionals transcend traditional HR functions. They actively contribute to the strategic direction of the organization, driving initiatives that enhance the employee experience, support organizational goals, and contribute to overall business success.

How Influential HR leaders do it

Influential HR leaders are at the forefront of transforming business dynamics. They do this by harnessing a mix of cutting-edge technology, valuable people data and analytics, and building resilience throughout organizations. 

• Leveraging class-A people tech. Influential HR leaders can impact business metrics, growth engines, and productivity, and enrich the experience of every team member when they use high-level HCMs or HRISs. 
• Utilizing people data and analytics. Garnering insights from people data and analytics can be key to impacting the C-suite and getting their buy-in for people-first business strategy and programming.
• Building resilience. Influential HR leaders can build and develop resilience by promoting a culture of continuous learning and adaptive change across all levels of the business, from high-level decision-makers and managers to individual team members and other contributors. 
• Embracing emerging tech. They view emerging tech as an opportunity and not a threat or something that replaces people. Influential HR leaders integrate new tech into daily workflows to help people reach their goals. 

How to become an Influential HR leader

Embracing Influential HR as your leadership strategy requires creative, agile, and tactical thinking. It’s about leveraging HR tech and data to build people-first business plans, get broad buy-in from stakeholders across the organization, and see your plans through to the end. 

Let’s take a look at some of these principles in more detail. 

Adopt a strategic mindset

Influential HR leaders understand the importance of formulating their people strategies around the usage of a unified and connected system that their people engage with every day. 

This unified system can become the backbone of your people strategies, coupling engagement with people analytics. It can also give you actionable data that HR, people managers, the C-suite, and other team members can leverage.

Get buy-in for a unified people system

When you adopt a data-driven mindset and leverage tech alongside the information you gain from it, you’re in the perfect position to influence the decisions and actions your organization takes. 

The use of this hard data gives you the authentic, data-backed evidence you need to showcase your HR initiatives’ effectiveness and alignment with your overall business strategies. 

This helps convince other high-level stakeholders of the importance and cost-effectiveness of implementing a full-suite HCM solution. 

Achieve widespread usage of people tech

When quizzed about the adoption of HR tech, industry expert Josh Bersin said: “[I]f we can make this stuff easy to use, the consumption is going to go crazy, and it’s going to add huge amounts of value to organizations.” 

The ultimate goal of Influential HR is to achieve this widespread use of people tech across your organization and effectively benefit from the value it brings. 

Because when you champion a people-centric HR strategy and marry it with an easy-to-use HR platform with broad functionality that everyone across your organization can benefit from, it leads to widespread usage that influences each and every part of the business. 

Celebrating HR leadership on International HR Day—and beyond

This International HR Day—and every day after—let’s celebrate all of the HR leaders out there who tirelessly champion people-first strategies and strategically shape the future of their organizations.  

Let’s recognize ourselves as strategic partners and architects of real change in the business who influence all levels of the organization and who can push companies forward—creating a more harmonious, streamlined, successful, and culturally diverse modern workforce.

The post Up your HR game with Influential HR appeared first on HiBob.

It also brings a thicket of compliance laws and regulations to navigate through—and finding a way forward is about to become more difficult for many companies in 2024. 

Upcoming Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) laws in Europe and the United Kingdom will require organizations to have thorough reporting measures in place to prove compliance. It’s essential for multi-national companies to stay on top of these laws to avoid risking fines ranging in the millions.

While the thought of that might be enough to set your team on edge, there’s help on the way. Bob comes with a host of solutions that can clear the thicket and help make compliance a little easier. 

Keep up with ESG laws

There’s a reason why these new laws are coming into play: Sustainability has become a top priority in the last few years. 

Besides the visible effects of climate change, consumers are showing a preference for sustainable products and services, putting pressure on companies to meet this demand. Young professionals are also putting pressure on their employers to prioritize the values behind these laws. 

The United Kingdom’s new Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) compliance legislation and Europe’s Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive (CSRD) are coming into force in 2024, requiring companies to make regular reports on diversity, equity, and their social and environmental impact—increasing transparency. 

Even with these laws coming into effect so soon, 88 percent of companies surveyed in Europe aren’t ready to meet these new CSRD requirements. And 32 percent of all businesses surveyed in the United Kingdom are completely unprepared to comply with the new legislation.

But Bob can help you prepare with a range of solutions that make it easier for you to report on social sustainability with robust people analytics.

The latest laws come with a long list of KPIs, from the number and type of professionals you employ (e.g., temp workers, full-time, part-time, etc.) to workforce gender ratios. Bob’s people analytics and reporting capabilities help you accurately report on these various KPIs. 

For example, Bob’s DE&I dashboard helps you discover diversity gaps across your organization and lets you create cohorts to visualize your workforce representation and create overviews of all your findings.

Generate customized reports on diversity gap data to dig deeper into how well your organization is doing at meeting its DE&I goals. Bob’s easy-to-read dashboards give you the information you need to uncover why you have gaps and where, develop an effective strategy, make equitable decisions—and then export the data into handy reports. 

Pay transparency and compensation

Pay transparency and equity reporting are already standard in many parts of the globe, but they are even more important with the new ESG laws coming into effect. 

Bob makes it easy to ensure complete and accurate compensation data. Sync your pay details in Bob through Payroll Hub and integrated payroll solutions, including Paylocity and ADP. 

Bob lets you see the big picture when it comes to compensation—you can take a look at your total headcount budget, what you’ve spent, and what you have left. You can also plan ahead with up-to-date and accurate data around pay bands. 

Bob gives you clarity on where your organization stands and can break down information into the finest details. You can see the pay bands for different roles, use range positioning, and automatically link bands to relevant team members to calculate the compa-ratio.  

Get greater clarity on pay equity within your organization with Bob’s compensation bands by comparing compensation data between a group of team members in your company who are in the same job and at the same level. 

You can use compensation data across different features in Bob, including the employee profile, compensation events, workforce planning, and more. Bob also provides transparency for your people, allowing them to see their pay details in their profiles.

Time and attendance tracking

Regional laws around time and attendance can get complicated. 

That’s where an HCM with solid time and attendance features can come in handy, allowing you to set custom policies for your teams—no matter where in the world they’re located. 

Define attendance policies with Bob to meet geo-specific regulations at each site, and use Bob’s best-practice policy templates tailored to each region to make setting policies at each site even easier. While these templates are completely customizable, it’s important to note that they don’t guarantee compliance with any region-specific laws out of the box. The beauty of Bob’s time and attendance features lies in giving customers the ability to edit policies according to the unique needs of their organization at each site.

Bob can help you reduce the administrative burden on your HR team with its self-service features, which include easy logging, tracking, and approval of time and attendance entries. Managers and individual team members can also use Bob to take care of their own attendance and time off without involving HR, saving everyone time. 

Bob’s Quick Fix feature also helps people flag and quickly correct any missing or incorrect timesheet entries before it’s time to submit, sparing your team from headaches on payday. 

For easy compliance reporting, you can access and keep track of annual leave allowances and overtime in one place, on one screen. Filter it by team member, department, or site, and use it to gain deeper insights into work patterns. Use that data to create customizable reports that help you prove and maintain geo-compliance for every site you have around the world.

Ensure people’s information stays secure

With the ever-present risk of cyberattacks, it’s essential to have structures in place that keep your team members’, products’, and customers’ data secure.

HR platforms store vast amounts of personal information. That’s why it’s even more critical to have an HCM with built-in security that’s compliant with the most robust privacy and security laws in the world, like GDPR.

This is why Bob complies with the highest security and privacy standards and is ISO 27001, ISO 27018, SOC2 Type 2, and SOC1 Type 2 certified. 

HiBob’s security team, headed by the chief information security officer, includes a full-time data privacy officer who’s an expert in privacy and protection laws like GDPR and HR systems. The security team ensures all the features and processes in Bob that include data are protected and meet GDPR compliance. 

Bob has safeguards in place to keep your data secure:

• Roles and permissions. Set permissions for the data people can see and the actions they can perform. 
• Data encryption. Bob’s database has several layers of end-to-end encryption to protect sensitive data and comply with data security requirements. 
• Consent. The HiBob team needs permission from a customer before accessing their account for maintenance or bug-fixing. 

Breathe easy with Bob

You no longer have to hold your breath as the new European and British ESG laws come into play when it comes to reporting on social sustainability and people analytics.

Bob’s range of features makes it easier for you to stay compliant, giving you the tools to analyze and report on diversity, equity, compensation, and time and attendance, as well as helping you ensure people’s information stays secure. 

With Bob, you can breathe easy knowing you’re staying compliant and that you’re helping make the world of work—and the world at large—a better place.

The post How Bob makes multi-national compliance simple appeared first on HiBob.

While this means more business opportunities and more revenue, it also brings more regulations to comply with in every jurisdiction.

But herein lies the issue: Multi-national compliance is complex and constantly changing. New laws crop up continuously. HR professionals and legal teams must be forever proactive to stay ahead and take action.

This is one of the biggest reasons why compliance readiness is currently top-of-mind for HR and legal teams. It’s especially true as many companies prepare for brand new laws, such as the European Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive (CSRD) set to take effect in early 2025, and the UK CSR law set to take effect in July 2024.

According to research from Baker Tilly International, these laws “will have a major impact on any company” with people and operations in the EU and UK. The CSRD for the EU alone will impact around 50,000 companies globally, but only 12 percent of those surveyed said they feel ready. 

However, there is a way to ensure companies can be ready for any new legislation and maintain their compliance with each new introduction—the key is HR tech.

HR teams can leverage quality modern HR tech with built-in people analytics to: 

• Simplify compliance challenges—from privacy laws like GDPR to new CSR laws and fair compensation, time tracking, and data security
• Set custom KPIs per region to identify gaps in metrics such as DE&I reporting, time-to-hire, and training and development
• Track progress toward your custom KPIs
• Automatically generate reports to keep you on track—and prove compliance—at global sites every step of the way

Keep up with corporate sustainability laws

Both the UK CSR law and EU CSRD law are on strict timelines, coming into effect in July 2024 and January 2025, respectively. 

With the looming deadlines rapidly approaching, there is an urgent need to prepare now to be in compliance on time.

As well as environmental and emissions reporting, the UK CSR law dictates that companies listed in the London Stock Exchange must report on progress towards DE&I targets for financial years starting April 1, 2022. This includes everything from racial equality assessments to reports on how companies combat harassment and discrimination in the workplace. 

In comparison, the EU CSRD law will transform European ESG sustainability reporting. It will impact any large companies with over 250 people and over €50M in turnover. The law requires companies to publish information on environmental protection, as well as social responsibility, respect for human rights, anti-corruption and bribery, and DE&I of company boards.

Between them, organizations with people working in either the UK or EU must report on a long list of KPIs including DE&I reporting, the number of people by type (such as temp workers, contractors, full-time or part-time), workforce gender ratios, number of union members, and how much sick leave people are taking.

All of this reporting requires an enormous amount of people data. Luckily, the best-in-class, modern HR tech helps HR teams: 

• Discover gaps in their organization
• Aggregate people data based on representation in their workforce across multiple sites
• Set goals based on regional laws to get an overview of current performance
• Gain insights from data and use it to build a strategy that bridges the gaps

Pay transparency and compensation

Another major factor that determines how organizations must abide by these laws—and a hot topic in global businesses today—is pay transparency. 

Traditionally, many organizations shied away from sharing any information about compensation. Today, many strive towards it on the way to establish pay equity. Again, this requires a lot of data, this time on salaries and hourly wages, which could potentially swamp HR and finance teams.

Instead, HR tech can help teams ensure that they remain compliant with pay transparency legislation thanks to features like pay bands for current team members and open positions.

“But won’t those pay transparency and compensation laws be different around the world?” you might ask. 

The answer is yes. But top-tier HR tech can ensure compliance with local compensation laws at each global site. HR teams can use this HR tech to set policies based on the requirements at each site, update them as needed, and generate custom reports to demonstrate compliance with each law.

Time and attendance tracking

From vacation time and time off in lieu to clocking in and clocking out, an incredible number of figures go into tracking people’s time and attendance.

The larger and more widespread the organization is around the globe, the more HR teams can benefit from implementing multiple policies to ensure compliance with regional laws around attendance. 

Keeping track of everyone, their work patterns, and maintaining compliance with local laws at every site can be a huge day-to-day undertaking—but modern HR tech can do the heavy lifting.

HR teams that leverage HR tech dodge these complications by enabling flexibility around attendance for any kind of work structure across different regions. This gives people the ability to stay in full control of their own time while providing HR teams with visibility.

In addition, HR teams can use HR tech to keep track of and report on regional PTO and overtime requirements.

Keep people’s personal information secure

Two of the biggest safety concerns in modern business are personally identifiable information (PII) security and product security. It’s vital to keep people’s personal information secure, whether it’s benefits packages, salary or hourly wages, or benefits reductions. Organizations can boost their reputations and build trust with their customers by safeguarding these areas. 

However, it’s also important to ensure that PII and product information are easily accessible by the right people when they need it. 

HR professionals can strike the right balance between security and accessibility with robust HR tech that includes security features built to safeguard PII and ensure compliance with regional privacy laws like GDPR. 

Secure HCMs follow clear and robust security guidelines that protect access to data throughout the platform—and any third-party integrations as part of a company’s tech stack—by assigning proper roles and permissions. This means only authorized people have access to specific and sensitive data. 

These HCMs also use data encryption and require consent to access sensitive data like PII.

This not only gives people confidence that their data is secure and protected—it also means they have the flexibility to access their own details whenever they need it (or others if they are granted the right permissions), without wading through multiple checks or controls.

Getting ready for change

Class-A HR tech provides you with robust people analytics and reporting features that help you track and generate custom reports on all your people data, identify where you’re smashing KPIs, and pinpoint areas where you need to improve so you’re ready for any audits.

Evolving regulations bring an ever-growing complexity to compliance for multi-national companies, especially within HR and legal teams. 

Today, organizations can streamline their compliance efforts with modern HR tech. You can use it to help comply with existing laws around pay transparency, time and attendance tracking, and privacy legislation like GDPR. And you can rest easy when you use it to prepare for upcoming laws like the UK’s CSR and EU’s CSRD with confidence. 

The post HR tech: Your key to multi-national compliance appeared first on HiBob.

Pay and benefits differ drastically across regions, so multi-national companies often rely on a number of different payroll solutions to navigate the complexities of local taxes and comply with local compensation laws at each site. 

Dealing with payroll at just one site is headache enough. But at multiple sites and counting? 

That’s just downright stressful. 

While payroll solutions that are specifically tailored to each site have their advantages, having so many point solutions adds up. 

Every payroll solution you add to your tech stack complicates your processes, leaves more room for error, and adds another expense—which is exactly what you want to avoid when the goal is to tighten budgets and keep expenses lean.

That’s where HR leaders like you can take advantage of top-tier, all-in-one HR platforms with a comprehensive payroll offering. A solution that takes care of your global payroll and people processes all at once.

Let’s take a look at the significant advantages of utilizing an all-inclusive HCM that integrates payroll management seamlessly.

Merge your payroll strategy with your people strategy

HR leaders and payroll professionals can make complex HR processes like payroll feel simple, transforming them into straightforward, local processes that are fast and effective—and massively cut costs—with an all-in-one HCM 

The added bonus? You can overhaul your entire HR workflow with exceptional modern HR tech, from onboarding and workforce planning to performance management, employee engagement, and DE&I progress tracking—including being able to merge your payroll strategy with your people strategy. 

When these two worlds collide and synergize, it can help build your global business strategy and encourage alignment between HR, payroll, and finance teams. 

By working together as one, your organization can benefit from more transparency and support for a people-first culture. This helps enhance the employee experience across various work structures—whether that’s work-from-home, work-from-office, or hybrid models—for any full-time, part-time, salaried, or hourly team members as well as contractors and freelancers. 

Build stronger interdepartmental partnerships

When you have an all-inclusive HCM that includes a robust, multi-national payroll feature, you can better standardize your approach to HR and payroll—allowing HR, finance, and other stakeholders to sing from the same hymn sheet. 

This synergy helps you enhance collaboration across these departments, allowing teams to share and integrate data more efficiently. It can also help you minimize errors and support team members in making informed strategic decisions based on accurate and relevant data-driven insights. 

You can forge better working relationships that produce more effective business strategies when you’re able to easily share key information like quarterly updates, stats, and relevant people data across teams. 

Provide your organization with a single source of payroll truth

When you combine your payroll with your HCM, you can get a number of advantages, including:

Enhanced accuracy and team member self-service

A unified HCM platform gives you a comprehensive overview of your payroll operations, which makes it far easier for you to manage and rectify any discrepancies—while also allowing your team members to manage their own data.

That means they can change key personal information such as legal names, marital status, and bank information through secure self-service portals. 

For HR professionals, this means you can cut down on errors like team member misclassification, incorrect overtime calculations, and time and attendance tracking errors, while also being able to update tax rules on time. 

Data-driven decisions and reporting

Organizations are built on data. And with a unified HR system, you can build payroll KPIs and track them through your HCM. 

This allows you to generate accurate reports full of key payroll and people data that you can easily share with stakeholders across the business. 

Add more sites as you scale, not more payroll solutions

It’s every HR and payroll professional’s dream to have an error-free, tech-supported, every-site payroll solution that makes the payroll process quick, easy, and—perhaps most importantly—accurate. 

Unfortunately, this type of solution doesn’t exist…yet. 

The good news is that modern HCMs are working toward building out solutions that can fill this gap and answer this unique problem with products that unify complex multi-national and multi-site payroll into one simple process. 

Flexible, customizable payroll features

Built-in payroll offerings are flexible and customizable, allowing you to customize your payroll and compensation reporting. This adaptability allows you to more easily adhere to regional compensation laws, which is crucial for globally expanding businesses. It also makes it easier for you to manage compliance effectively, without having to add so many more payroll systems to your tech stack. 

A streamlined user experience

No matter how many locations or sites you have, an integrated system will provide all your team members with the same efficient payroll process and user experience.

Having this level of consistency and uniformity is an essential part of making sure you have straightforward, error-free operations across various sites, all while simplifying HR and payroll teams’ tasks. 

Boost your payroll productivity, manage global payroll compliance, and lower costs

Adopting an all-in-one HCM with an integrated payroll solution helps take your organization to the next level. Consolidating payroll and HR processes (as much as possible) reduces costs, minimizes errors, and strengthens compliance across your sites.

But it also helps with far more than just simplifying your processes. Making payroll an integral part of a holistic HR strategy gives your team more control over their information, improves employee satisfaction, synchronizes interdepartmental dynamics, and streamlines your path to global expansion. 

The post The big bonus of global payroll in an all-inclusive HCM appeared first on HiBob.

Your email or Slack goes down, the project management system won’t load, or the HCM that everyone uses to clock in and out has a timeout. 

The entire business feels the effects if anything breaks—or even if it just slows down a little. 

But behind the scenes, HR Ops comes to the rescue. 

As the backbone of organizations’ tech-reliant functionality, HR Ops’s collaboration with the IT and cybersecurity teams ensures uninterrupted service from the tech everyone relies on in today’s globally dispersed businesses. 

Employee experience depends on people tech for smooth communication and workflows between colleagues, partners, and customers. It also depends on people’s ability to access and execute tasks to keep things business as usual. 

This blog will take a deep dive into the hand HR Ops and HRIS directors have in enhancing and measuring the digital employee experience—and, by association, business performance. 

We’ll talk about practical approaches you can take to integrating technology into the workday and driving a successful digital transformation.

Best practices for HR’s coordination with IT and CIS teams

First and foremost, it’s crucial for HR and our IT and CIS counterparts to keep sight of the fact that we all have the same goal: 

Providing the most optimal employee experience possible through best-in-class tech tools to achieve business goals. 

Fully embracing this shared vision means that we need to maintain a global perspective and recognize the intricacies and nuances of the modern multi-national working world: the realities of remote, asynchronous, and globally dispersed teams. 

This means that any conversation about bringing in new tools and technologies has to start with asking people-focused questions that aim to improve the digital employee experience. Questions such as:

• Why do your people need it?
• How will your people use it?
• What solutions can provide your people with the best user experience across your business?

Making these inquiries will help make sure that any tech adoption isn’t just about the tools themselves, but about fostering a more connected, efficient, and satisfying work environment for your whole team. 

Optimize organizational resources

The key to optimizing your organizational resources lies in strategically building a tech stack and infrastructure that resonates with your people’s needs and your company goals. 

But this process goes beyond just amassing a collection of the latest technologies. It’s about conducting a thorough, thoughtful analysis of how each tool can balance between boosting your digital employee experience and meeting your business objectives. 

Once your tech is in place, you can further optimize your resources by engaging in a dialogue with your team about the effectiveness of your tech stack. This way, you can gain valuable insights into the day-to-day operational needs and pain points of your people. 

This feedback loop is crucial for pinpointing what tools truly add value, streamline processes, and foster a culture of efficiency and innovation. 

Ensure continuous service across global sites

Thanks to hybrid, remote, and multi-site or multi-national work, teams today are globally dispersed. 

But while your people may be spread out across the world, they still need to be able to speak to each other in real time, work asynchronously on projects, and access your company platforms without disruption. 

So what happens if disaster strikes and your communication channels crash? 

Communication is vital for all teams, especially when they’re spread around the world. That’s why it’s important to have a plan in place to ensure continuous services across global sites. 

For example, should a primary communication tool like Slack crash or become unavailable, having an alternative such as WhatsApp or Signal ready to go means that your teams can remain connected without missing a beat. 

Similarly, putting a comprehensive cloud services recovery strategy in place means that you can swiftly restore data and services—minimizing downtime and preserving continuity throughout your organization.

Identify the right analytics and reporting tools

When it comes to choosing analytics and reporting tools that work for you, it’s important to take a pragmatic, streamlined approach:

• Define your specific needs. Identify what you need your tools to do. Do you need them for customer scheduling? Project management? Employee performance tracking? All of them combined? Having clarity on what you need helps guide your search for the right tech. 
• Initiate a request for information (RFI). Use an RFI to gather detailed information from tech vendors. This helps you assess which solution lines up with your requirements and stays within your budget. 
• Evaluate your user experience (UX). Picking tools that offer an intuitive user experience is key. For example, a customer meeting platform should be easy to use and facilitate collaboration. 
• Consider third-party automation. Look into automation technologies that can integrate with your systems. This way, you can boost your efficiency without compromising on security. 
• Address security and usage visibility. Ensure that the tools you’re selecting allow for secure login and provide clear visibility into your user activity. This helps you manage access and protect sensitive information. 
• Collaborate across departments. Have HR Ops, IT, and CIS work together to evaluate solutions, focusing on the employee (and customer) user experience and overall security. 

Provide centralized access to apps

Having centralized access to apps with the right permissions and security protocols is a delicate balance. Your people need to have access to their platforms to carry out their jobs efficiently, but it’s also vital to maintain the integrity and security of company data. 

The key to this approach is utilizing blockers and self-service programs. 

These tools allow your people to access the necessary apps autonomously, all while ensuring that the access is within the bounds of their role and your security protocols. 

For example, while your HCM system might be accessible to everyone within your organization, the specifics of what each person can see or do should vary.

HR professionals play a crucial role in this balance. It’s HR’s responsibility to communicate to IT and CIS who in the organization requires certain access according to their roles and responsibilities. 

This clear delineation makes sure that access rights are correctly assigned and managed, keeping your organization’s operations smooth and secure.

Shaping the future workplace with HR technology

The strategic integration of HR technology in the modern workplace plays a key role in the digital employee experience. 

Whether it’s ensuring continuous service across global sites to optimizing organizational resources, the collaboration between HR, IT, and CIS is fundamental. 

As HR professionals, we can foster a more connected, efficient, and satisfying work environment for our people when we prioritize a people-first approach, ask the right questions, and choose the right tools.

The post How to use people tech to improve the digital employee experience appeared first on HiBob.

A performance review is an in-depth process of assessing the people in an organization on a regular basis to help them grow and be more productive.

Performance reviews are critical to helping meet individual and company-wide goals and giving people the information they need to thrive in their roles.

Finally, performance reviews can be a lot of work. As one of the most important tasks on HR’s plate, performance review time is often busy and stressful. But the good news is that modern HR tech can lighten the load. Today, we have access to tools specifically designed to automate and optimize the process, like employee performance review software, an employee performance review checklist, and employee performance review email templates.

<<Boost your performance reviews with our free performance review survey template.>>

How can you use the templates?

It is crucial to provide support and reassurance to your employees as they prepare for their upcoming performance reviews.

To make communications about performance reviews easier for you and your people, we’ve included several different email templates for performance reviews that you can use for various parts of the process. Adjust them as necessary to make them relevant to your organization and its procedures. What’s important here is that you maintain a constant flow of clear communication so that all parties involved are in the know throughout the entire performance review process.

Employee performance review email templates

Email template #1: Notify people about their performance review

Who it’s for: Team members with performance reviews coming up soon.

Why it’s essential: An effective performance review requires managers and team members to prepare. This annual review email template gives everybody the notice they need to get ready and feel prepared.

When to use it: Send this out at least two to four weeks ahead of time to give people adequate preparation time.

Subject: Performance reviews are coming up!

Body: 

Hi all,

It’s that exciting time of year again: performance reviews! This is your yearly opportunity to have important conversations with your managers, review how things have been going, and set goals for the future.

Performance reviews this year will take place during the week of [date]. Please take the initiative to schedule the exact date and time of your meeting with your manager.

Ahead of your meeting, please fill out the attached self-evaluation form. During the performance review, you’ll have an opportunity to review the form and ask your managers any questions. 

If you have any questions, please feel free to speak to your manager or to reach out to HR.

Best,

[Name]

Email template #2: Performance review notification to managers

Who it’s for: Managers who are preparing for an upcoming performance review process.

Why it’s essential: Managers need key information to conduct successful performance reviews.

When to use it: Send this performance review email template out to managers two to four weeks before you make the company-wide announcement informing people about their upcoming performance reviews.

Subject: Managers: How to prep for performance reviews

Body: 

Hi team,

Performance reviews are coming up during the week of [date], and you’re a key part of making them effective and successful. 

Reach out to your direct reports to you to schedule their performance review meeting. If they haven’t confirmed they’ll attend the meeting with you by [date], please speak to them to make sure they do. 

Before your meetings, please ensure each team member fills out the attached employee evaluation sheet. 

During the performance review, allow each direct report to lead the conversation by discussing their self-evaluation. From there, you’re invited to add your feedback and answer their questions.

If you need any guidance or have any questions, feel free to reach out to HR.

Thank you for your help!

[Name]

<<Boost your performance reviews with our free performance review survey template.>>

Email template #3: Tips for performance reviews

Who it’s for: People with performance reviews coming up.

Why it’s essential: Performance reviews can be stressful. This email helps ease people’s anxiety by giving them tips for succeeding in their performance reviews.

When to use it: Send this out one to two weeks before performance reviews.

Subject: Tips for acing your performance review

Body: 

Hi there,

With performance reviews coming up during the week of [date], we wanted to share some tips to help you get the most out of this process.

• Think back on the previous year and note any accomplishments or achievements you’re proud of.
• When you can, try to be as specific as possible. Use numbers and figures to back up your statements.
• Think of your personal career development goals and how they may align with [Company Name]’s goals and values.
• Prepare any questions you might have for your manager.
• Be ready to lead the conversation. This is your performance review, after all!

We’ve attached the self-evaluation form for you to complete and bring to your performance review. 

If you haven’t received an invitation to your performance review from your manager, please reach out to them as soon as possible to schedule a meeting.

If you have any questions, you’re invited to reach out directly to HR or your manager.

Good luck!

[Name]

Email template #4: Performance review reminder

Who it’s for: Everyone involved in performance reviews.

Why it’s essential: This email serves as a reminder for managers and team members to prepare for their performance reviews.

When to use it: Send this out at least one week before performance reviews.

Subject: Don’t forget: Performance reviews next week!

Body: 

Hello,

This is your friendly reminder that performance review week is coming up next week! By now, you should have a meeting scheduled with your manager for your performance review. If you don’t, please reach out immediately to your manager to schedule your performance review meeting.

I’ve reattached the self-evaluation form to this email: Please remember to fill it out and bring it to your performance review meeting. 

Don’t hesitate to reach out with any questions or concerns.

Best regards,

[Name]

<<Boost your performance reviews with our free performance review survey template.>>

Email template #5: Self-evaluation email sample

Who it’s for: Team members with upcoming performance reviews.

Why it’s essential: A self-evaluation form can help people prepare for a constructive and positive discussion with their managers.

When to use it: At least two weeks before performance reviews.

Subject: Performance review: Here’s your self-evaluation form

Body:

Hi [First name], 

With your performance review coming up, it’s time to reflect on your achievements, challenges, and areas of growth over the past year.

Your self-evaluation is an important part of the performance review process, and your insights are incredibly valuable. Your self-evaluation helps your manager better guide you toward your goals. Feel free to be honest and open in your self-assessment.

Fill out the form and bring it along to your performance review meeting.

Don’t hesitate to reach out to your manager if you have any questions.

Best, 

[Name]

Email template #6: Performance review process changes

Who it’s for: Everyone involved in performance reviews.

Why it’s essential: Sharing changes in the performance review process prepares team members for the upcoming transition.

When to use it: When you’re about to implement changes to the performance review process.

Subject: Important update: Changes to our performance review process

Body:

Hi [First name],

I wanted to let you know about some upcoming changes to our performance review process. 

We’ve been working on enhancing the current system to improve the overall performance evaluation experience and ensure feedback is more constructive and actionable. 

I believe these adjustments will help us further excel in our roles and contribute more effectively to the company’s success. Some of the changes include:

• [Detail 1]
• [Detail 2]
• [Detail 3]

Please feel free to reach out if you have questions about any aspect of the upcoming changes.

Best regards, 

[Name]

Email template #7: Follow-up after the performance review

Who it’s for: Managers and/or HR to send to team members after their performance review.

Why it’s essential: It reinforces feedback, provides clarity on expectations, and shows support for people’s growth and development.

When to use it: Send this email within a week after the performance review meeting.

Subject: Your recent performance review

Body:

Hi [First Name],

I hope you’re doing well.

I just wanted to touch base after our recent performance review discussion—thank you again for taking the time to do it. 

I was particularly impressed with [Achievement 1] and [Achievement 2].

We talked about how you could improve [Feedback]. I just wanted to let you know I’m here to support you with that and help you grow in your role. 

Let’s continue working together toward your professional goals.

I appreciate all your hard work, dedication, and progress. Keep it up!

Best regards, 

[Name]

Best practices for communicating performance reviews to team members

When it comes to sharing performance feedback with your team, the way you phrase your messages can make a significant impact. 

Here are some useful tips to keep in mind:

1. Clarity and specificity. Ensure your feedback is precise and provide concrete examples to help team members better understand your points. It’s also helpful to give people the opportunity to ask questions so they’re clear on feedback. 
2. A focus on growth opportunities. The performance review is a chance to highlight areas where team members excel and offer constructive suggestions for improvement. Keeping the focus on long-term growth rather than criticism will provide greater motivation for people in their roles.
3. Two-way communication. Encourage open dialogue to help team members feel comfortable sharing their thoughts and concerns. Acknowledge their perspectives and address any questions they may have to foster a culture of trust and transparency.
4. Follow up with support. After delivering a performance review, offer guidance on how team members can work on their goals and provide resources or training opportunities to help them succeed. Showing your commitment to their development can boost morale and productivity.

By following these best practices, you can enhance the effectiveness of your performance review process and contribute to a positive and supportive work environment for your team.

Fill in the blanks

Use the above performance review email samples and your employee performance review software to boost your organization’s smooth and productive performance review process. Happy emailing!

The post 7 nifty employee performance review email templates appeared first on HiBob.

For people professionals, artificial intelligence in human resources is a gargantuan disruptor in the world of work. In the short time since its debut, it’s already touched nearly every aspect of the HR profession, from workforce planning and company culture to L&D and performance metrics tracking. Not only must HR pros adjust to the new tech and its implications they must also calm panic from talent worried about becoming obsolete.

What’s important for all to bear in mind is that customers and business partners value genuine connections with human beings. Despite AI’s appeal to shrinking budgets and justifying downsizing—especially in rocky economic times—the role of AI in HR is to boost efficiency, lower stress, and reduce burnout rates for everyone (including you and your HR colleagues), and put the focus back on strategy and creative thinking—the pillars of differentiating your business from the competition. 

Table of contents

• The initial impact of generative AI on the world of work
• 13 HR functions you can enhance with AI
• Using AI in HR is key for reskilling and upskilling
• The times they are a’changing in the HR space

The initial impact of generative AI on the world of work

Within just months of ChatGPT-3’s release, nearly 50 percent of companies in the United States started replacing people. 

But just because some companies are replacing humans with AI doesn’t mean all will or should. After all, as HBR puts it, “AI should augment human intelligence, not replace it.” 

Fortunately, it looks like organizations around the world are already getting on board with AI as a tool as opposed to a replacement for humans. According to the World Economic Forum (WEF), using AI in the workplace is a top training priority for businesses, and 44 percent of professionals’ skills could “become disrupted.” 

While it’s advantageous to incorporate AI and automation tools to stay competitive, it’s worth being wary of “cost-cutting strategies… where machines are introduced as the new super employee that may leave humans ultimately in an inferior role to serve machine.” Instead, the key to “a truly intelligent type of future work” is human and AI collaboration.

To remain relevant and thrive in the future, HR can help their organizations leverage automation tools, incorporate them into the normal flow of work, and use them to boost efficiency and optimize processes to make people’s lives easier and workloads lighter. Not only that, automation can help people boost their creativity and strategic thinking. This applies to all departments across the business—including HR.

13 HR functions you can enhance with AI

Artificial intelligence in HR isn’t new. In fact, some incredible HR automation tech has been making waves in boosting HR efficiency for several years already.

HR professionals already benefit from AI-infused HR automation tech for things like:

1. Writing job descriptions
2. Gathering and parsing benchmarking information such as salaries and benefits
3. Automating tasks (e.g., onboarding)
4. Improving employee self-service
5. Workforce planning and recruiting
6. Improving communication and workflow
7. Performance and productivity 
8. Budgeting
9. Reducing workloads
10. Achieving DEI&B goals
11. Tracking burnout levels
12. Preventing attrition
13. Training and L&D

1. Writing job descriptions

With the assistance of automation tools in human resources functions like recruitment, you can easily create keyword-optimized and compelling job descriptions that attract the right talent and resonate with them. 

2. Gathering and parsing benchmarking information such as salaries and benefits

AI can analyze industry compensation trends, ensuring your company remains competitive in attracting and retaining top talent. HR automation tools can sift through vast amounts of data to provide insights on how your organization’s pay and benefits stack up against industry standards.

3. Automating tasks

By automating repetitive tasks like paperwork processing, data entry, and onboarding, HR professionals can focus on more strategic people-focused initiatives. 

When it comes to onboarding, for example, AI tools intelligently handle candidate sourcing, screening, and initial communication to save valuable time and resources. Automated onboarding processes can also ensure a smooth and consistent experience for new hires, ultimately boosting satisfaction and retention rates.

4. Improving employee self-service

Whether team members need help with benefits enrollment, time-off requests, or access to company policies, they can quickly find answers to their HR-related questions through an AI chatbot. 

This enhances efficiency and empowers your people to take more control over their HR needs. With AI, you can provide your people with 24/7 support, leading to an improved employee experience.

5. Workforce planning and recruiting

AI-powered tools can analyze your people’s skills and the latest industry trends to predict which roles you might need to fill. AI can even help you match resumes to job descriptions more quickly and sort through vast amounts of candidate information to predict future job performance within your organization. 

This enhanced predictive capability saves time and supports more informed hiring decisions. With AI, workforce planning becomes more strategic and proactive, helping you find the right people at the right time. 

6. Improving communication and workflow

AI can make it easier for teams to communicate and collaborate effectively by taking notes during meetings, collecting feedback, and troubleshooting communications issues. 

Workflow automation powered by AI can eliminate bottlenecks, reduce errors, and ensure tasks are completed efficiently. AI’s ability to analyze data and provide insights helps you enhance workflows.

7. Performance and productivity 

AI can analyze key performance indicators (KPIs), such as engagement levels and project completion rates, to help you make data-driven decisions that boost overall productivity. 

And by quickly analyzing data, AI provides personalized recommendations for improving individual and team performance. 

It can even assist with forecasting future performance trends based on historical data. This enables HR departments to proactively address potential challenges and capitalize on opportunities for improvement.

8. Budgeting

AI can simplify budgeting processes, enhance accuracy in financial forecasting, and identify cost-saving opportunities more effectively—allowing your HR and finance teams to allocate financial resources appropriately.

9. Reducing workloads

AI can automate administrative tasks such as scheduling, payroll management, and data entry, freeing up HR professionals to focus on more strategic tasks.

This increases efficiency and allows HR professionals to provide people with more personalized support, ultimately leading to a more engaged and productive workforce.

10. Achieving DEI&B goals

AI-powered tools can play a key role in promoting diversity within your organization by analyzing candidate data objectively. This helps eliminate biases and promotes a more equitable and diverse recruitment process.

AI technology can also aid in creating an inclusive work environment by identifying patterns in people’s feedback that might indicate where you could improve inclusivity. With this information, you can create a culture where every person feels valued and included.

11. Tracking burnout levels

HR departments can use tools to track factors contributing to burnout, such as workload distribution, overtime hours, and stress levels. With this kind of data, HR professionals can identify potential burnout risks and put targeted initiatives in place to support people’s wellbeing and productivity.

12. Preventing attrition

AI can help you recognize potential turnover risks early on by analyzing data points such as job satisfaction surveys, performance reviews, and employee sentiment. 

This insight allows you to implement targeted retention strategies such as personalized development plans, wellbeing programs, or flexible work arrangements, to address people’s needs.

13. Training and L&D

AI can significantly improve L&D within an organization. Learning experience platforms already use AI algorithms that analyze training data to identify trends and personalize individual learning paths. 

This boosts engagement and provides people with opportunities for career progression by giving them the necessary skills to reach their goals.

If this list of examples of AI in HR seems exhaustive, that’s because it is. Nearly every HR task will become faster, easier, and more effective as a result of automation and AI technology—something for HR pros to rejoice about. The bigger challenges, then, are to understand how to mitigate people’s fears of being replaced and use AI to strengthen, not displace, the workforce.

Using AI in HR is key for reskilling and upskilling

Despite their fears of the challenges associated with artificial intelligence and employment, humans will always be essential to business operations. After all, the customers will remain human, and they are the ones businesses will communicate with and sell to. 

That being the case, learning to work with artificial intelligence in HR can only benefit your people as they progress through their careers. The key is ensuring your workforce knows how to integrate and apply AI tools to optimize efficiency, improve outcomes, and keep up with the demands of today’s (and tomorrow’s) working world.

Here are some important things to keep in mind when devising how to incorporate AI into human resources:

• Beware of AI inaccuracies. ChatGPT and other generative AIs currently do not promise (or necessarily deliver) factually accurate information. Note that many of AI’s inaccuracies are not only wrong but also harmful, and could easily lead to defamation and privacy lawsuits.
• Don’t lose the human touch. It’s important to keep up your interpersonal skills and empathy, which are absolutely essential when it comes to creating, growing, and maintaining customer and partner relationships.
• Prepare for anti-AI laws, which are already emerging in the United States, like in New York, Illinois, and Maryland, which have all passed legislation regulating the use of AI in hiring—and Washington State may soon follow. Federal lawmakers in the US are also proposing a variety of possible regulations for the use of AI in business and the European Parliament has passed its first AI law. 
• Prepare for new career paths. Chief AI officer, anyone? As fears surround the issue of AI and employment, new roles revolving around the ability to understand, wrangle, and implement AI arise, such as digital transformation, data labeling, and prompt engineering.

The times they are a’changing in the HR space

There is no debate: AI is unequivocally changing the fabric of the work world forever, and organizations can adapt by figuring out how AI and human resources professionals can work together to make life easier for themselves and their people. 

Generative AI in HR can offload much of the administrative burden, cutting down on time and pressure to allow HR professionals to focus on more strategic tasks, relieving stress and burnout. 

In the grander scheme of things, AI is a tool professionals can now learn to incorporate into their daily workflow—and while it can never replace the innovation people bring to their brands, one of the main benefits of AI in HR is that it can offload the burden of repetitive administrative tasks. HR can help organizations adjust, placing a heavier emphasis on upskilling and reskilling to keep talented professionals skilled, relevant, and creative—the essential components of business agility, no matter what comes next.

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