The 6 Newest Trends in Managing People
The top HR professionals these days are focused on a
lot more than payroll and the administration of benefits.
The trend in the 21st century will be to provide development
opportunities to people on a custom basis, depending on the
needs of individual employees.
The customization goes from choosing between a list of
available benefits to taking advantage of personalized
coaching or skill-building training. HR professionals are
finding they must continue to streamline methods for
compliance and recordkeeping so they can get on to more
vital work.
Here is what savvy HR managers at large companies are
working on today that will work for you in your small
business:
1. Making the most of human capital û keeping
up-to-date skills inventories of all employees, finding
freelance and consulting resources
2. Making the most of a critical time in assessing fit
with culture and potential to leadership with pre-employment
testing, orientation and tracking of 1st 6 months of employment.
3. Surveying employees for morale and issue indicators û
on-line, done twice a year, or more often on timely issues
4. Making coaching available û employees as free agents
within the company looking for plum assignments, and getting
coached by outside consultants who are objective about their
strengths and weaknesses
5. Training employees to understand, accept, and benefit from
feedback- testing, 360 degree programs, customized development
plans
6. Providing a focal resource for problem resolution û group
resources for solving common problems, grievance and ethics
hot line for individual problems
Jan B. King is the former President & CEO of Merritt
Publishing, a top 50 woman-owned and run business in Los
Angeles and the author of Business Plans to Game Plans: A
Practical System for Turning Strategies into Action (John
Wiley & Sons, 2004). She has helped hundreds of businesses
with her book and her ebooks, The Do-It-Yourself Business
Plan Workbook, and The Do-It-Yourself Game Plan Workbook.
See www.janbking.com for more information.
