If You Need Better Leaders, Who You Gonna Call? HR. (Source-entrepreneur)

Good leaders are hard to come by. Almost half of the companies that participated in the Workplace Trends’ Global Workforce Leadership Survey in February and March 2015 chose leadership as the hardest skill to find in employees. What’s more, among the 1,000 employee participants, only 36 percent called leadership a strength in their organizations.

One of the problems here is that when they analyze their leadership-development issues, most organizations put the responsibility on employees to improve, or on current leaders to train their teams. Employers expect their employees to attend leadership training events, take a development course or find a mentor to advance their skills and careers.

Alternately, the pressure is on managers to identify leaders in their teams and train them to follow in their footsteps in addition to their regular responsibilities.

But in this way, employers miss a big piece of the puzzle: human resources. HR needs to get involved in leadership development; otherwise organizations will be stuck in the same pattern. 

Here’s how HR can help boost leadership development:

1. Define leadership.

What does great leadership look like? And what traits are the most important for a leader to have?

The answers of course vary from person to person and company to company. For some, a great leader may be someone who focuses on communication and transparency, while others may see a "leader" as someone who helps pick up the slack when the team is in need.

Everyone has an individual dea of what great leadership means, and each company needs something different depending on its culture and goals.

That’s where HR comes in. It’s HR’s job to get everyone onto the same page and define what leadership means within that particular company. HR has the power to define what the individual organizational brand of leadership is.

2. Identify potential.

Once the organization has a clear idea of what leadership looks like, HR can help identify which employees possess the right qualities for the job.

After all, a study conducted by Gallup found that just 18 percent of current managers had the talent required for the role. But HR is uniquely positioned to pick out employees with the leadership skills employers need. HR professionals have a larger view of talent, performance and skills. Where managers and coworkers likely have a limited view of employees, HR gets the whole picture.

From its vantage point, HR can review and compare feedback from managers, peers and clients. It can see skills and strengths, and identify those who exude the leadership qualities the organization needs. HR has a deep understanding of the skills needed and the best view of where those skills lie among employees across the organization.

3. Develop skills.

Having the right skills isn't enough to be a great leader -- professionals need training and development. And many employers fall short in this area. In fact, 39 percent of companies surveyed by Workplace Trends said they offered leadership development programs, but just 15 percent of their employees felt these programs effectively prepared them for their next role.

It’s not just new leaders who are missing out. Veterans feel that they aren't growing in their positions, either. Among those surveyed by Gallup, only 40 percent strongly agreed that they had opportunities to learn and grow at work in the past year.

So, the training and development programs already available may be ineffective because HR isn't involved and that needs to change. The reason is that HR can "see it all" the gaps in skills, the ways in which leadership development programs can be created to fit their organizations' definition of leadership and the preferences of those already in leadership positions for what's needed to foster growth.

4. Offer support.

Better training isn't the only way HR can contribute to leadership development. HR can build support for leaders into the processes and policies of the company. In other words, HR can set up recruitment and promotion processes, plus performance reviews to support and reinforce positive leadership.

For example, HR can make sure the organization recruits for the leadership skills needed. These skills can be requirements for positions that involve leading others right now or developing talent for future leadership roles.

In addition, HR can add leadership considerations into the promotion and performance-review process. That way, those who deserve a promotion but may not be suited for leadership can still get the recognition they deserve without being placed in a role they’re not right for. And that benefits everyone.

Performance reviews and management can not only screen for leadership qualities, but also reinforce what good leadership looks like in a organization.

That way, leaders will be recognized for their hard work as they continue to improve and develop. With HR’s support, leadership development can be built into every level of the company.

3 Reasons Why HR is Critical to Your Company's Success (Source- entrepreneur)

HR usually isn’t lumped into this "right-hand" category, and that's a shame because HR leaders are critical to the success of every organization. They do much more behind the scenes than many people realize. Without them, businesses wouldn’t have dedicated teams of talented people, and without people, there is no business.

Here are just a few of the ways HR staff are critical to the success of every organization -- and to every CEO:

They work to hire the best:

It sounds simple, but hiring is a deeply complex process. In fact, 48 percent of CEOs surveyed by CareerBuilder in 2015 said their companies had lost money due to inefficient recruiting. And that process isn’t getting any easier.

Among recruiters surveyed by Jobvite this year, 95 percent expected recruiting to be as or more challenging in 2017. But that’s where HR departments come in. They’re not trying to hire people as fast and cheaply as possible -- they’re looking for the best people for the job, and that saves money in the long run.

An HR department is more concerned with post-hire metrics like performance and retention of new hires than metrics that measure the hiring process, like cost and time-to-hire. This focus on the success of new employees is critical to the overall health of the organization as a whole.

Related: How This Company Is Helping Businesses Find Zen in Human Resource Paperwork

According to a report published by Gallup in May, turnover involving millennials alone costs the U.S. economy $30.5 billion annually. But when HR takes the time to find the best talent for the job, and then finds ways to keep these individuals satisfied, talent sticks around. Retention keeps companies moving forward while saving both time and money.

They’re focused on employee engagement:

Employee engagement is seen as one of the biggest workplace problems. Gallup’s 2013 State of the American Workplace survey of more than 350,000 respondents nationwide estimated that disengaged employees cost U.S. businesses between $450 billion and $550 billion each year in lost productivity.

But HR is on the case, leading the charge to make sure employees are engaged. Engagement, in fact, can be boiled down to just a few factors, including employee recognition, feedback, learning and development, plus compensation, benefits and work-life balance.

So, whether an HR department is finding new learning and development opportunities, collecting employee feedback with regular engagement surveys or developing recognition programs and incentives, the HR staff is always looking for the best engagement strategies to fit their employees and company culture.

And motivating, recognizing and engaging employees has a huge impact. Among employees surveyed by Globoforce in 2016, 82 percent said that when they feel appreciated and recognized, they feel more engaged, and 78 percent feel more productive.

Their insights improve the business:

HR has a unique view of the company and the people behind it, putting them in the perfect position to help make important business decisions. While the HR department isn’t traditionally thought of as a part of the strategy team, 65 percent of CEOs in the CareerBuilder survey said that, post-recession, HR opinions carry greater weight with senior management. What’s more, 73 percent said their HR leader had provided data that they had incorporated into their business strategy.

If things are working as they should, a company's HR department has a deep understanding of talent and how employees work, and tracks the data to back up their suggestions. More than half (57 percent) of CEOs in the CareerBuilder survey said HR executives can show ways to increase efficiencies and cut costs by better using the company’s human capital.

When the HR department and C-suite work together, the results are powerful. A 2014 survey by EY found that when companies boasted strong collaboration between HR and finance, they also reported higher earnings and stronger improvement across a range of HR metrics, such as employee engagement.

Related: Why You Need to Embrace the Big Data Trend in HR

Effective HR departments, then, help organizations get the most from their people, while also keeping those people happy. With HR's insights, employers can make smarter decisions on where and how to invest in their talent to benefit everyone.

Dealing with one incident isn't sufficient to solve hostile workplace (Source- hrmorning)

A recent court ruling makes it clear: If you’re trying to rid yourself of the disease of workplace harassment, you can’t just treat the symptoms. You need to find the cure.

That’s the lesson from a recent federal lawsuit in New York state, in which a jury awarded $275,000 to a woman who’d been victimized by a hostile work environment.

The case involved Lisa Fisher, a health aide at the Mermaid Manor Home for Adults. She is black.

There was hostility between black employees from the United States and black workers whose origins were Caribbean or West Indian. The Caribbean employees were referred to as “the coconuts” by some employees.

Two of the so-called “coconuts” — Yvonne Kelly, whose origins were Jamaican and Lisi Laurent, from Haiti — allegedly posted a photo on Instagram portraying Fisher as a fictional chimpanzee from the movie “Planet of the Apes.” Fisher complained to management, which took disciplinary action against Kelly and Laurent.

‘Continuous and unrelenting’-

But the problem did not go away. The harassment continued, according to court records: Kelly proceeded “to ridicule [Fisher] continuously and unrelentingly.”

Among other acts of harassment, the court said, Kelly ripped up Fisher’s patient book, destroyed the beds of Fisher’s patients, swung her arms in an attempt to strike Fisher in a hallway and once, seeing Fisher in a room, said loudly, “Do you smell that?”

Although Fisher continued to complain about the conduct, Mermaid Manor “took no meaningful action to protect [her] and to rectify the hostile work environment that resulted from Ms. Kelly’s unceasing harassment,” the court found.

Fisher filed a complaint with the EEOC and later sued in federal court. Following a trial, a jury awarded Fisher $25,000 in actual damages and $250,000 in punitive damages. “(Mermaid Manor), despite having actual knowledge of these numerous incidents, took no meaningful action to protect (Fisher) and to rectify the hostile work environment that resulted from Ms. Kelly’s unceasing harassment,” the judge wrote.

The one bright spot for Mermaid Manor (dim though it may be) is that the court lowered the punitive damages to $50,000. “While (Mermaid) acted reprehensibly, the disparity between the compensatory damages and punitive damages is inappropriate,” the judge wrote.

The take-away from this case is pretty clear: Acting on a single incident of harassment just does not cut it if the pattern of harassment is allowed to continue. Employers have to remain vigilant that a hostile work environment won’t be tolerated — and take action to make sure the unacceptable conduct stops.