Why don’t your people seem engaged? Why don’t they look happy? And even worse why are they leaving?
If you are faced with an unhappy and unmotivated workforce then perhaps you have a culture problem and maybe you need to think about Holistic HR.
Culture is an overused word in industry but it is an important one nonetheless. Getting your culture right can make the difference between a winning business and an also-ran.
In a challenging recruitment environment, many employers think that the best bet is to throw money at the problem, investing more and more into bigger and better advertising platforms.
But when you think about it, stopping people from leaving is as good as recruiting a brilliant new person.
So let’s dive in and examine the world of Holistic HR including;
- What is Holistic HR?
- Why Holistic HR?
- The benefits of Holistic HR
- The downsides of Holistic HR
What is Holistic HR?
Put simply, Holistic HR is about treating someone as a person rather than as a number.
It’s something that in general, tiny companies are great at and massive companies… well less so.
Holistic HR is all about understanding that people have so much more going for them than simply the attributes that got them the job in the first place.
Now in many cases, the HR function of a company is really only interested in the things that make people suitable for the job and what they do while they are at work.
That’s worked for hundreds of years so you can understand why that attitude has stayed in place in a large number of companies.
But today’s employees are looking for something more than just a place to clock in and a comfy chair.
A company that builds a culture that is centred around its employee, making full use of the talents that they have at their disposal is naturally going to do much better than its competitors.
Why Holistic HR?
The Holistic approach sees the business as a kind of organism, made up of many parts. If one of those parts is sick, then the whole organisation is sick.
The problem of course is that when you or I get ill, we may not know about it for a long time and the same goes for businesses.
So your business may decide that you can treat your office staff better than your warehouse people and twelve months later wonder why your staff turnover is so high and why it is so difficult to get warehouse staff.
The Holistic approach would look at employees as individuals and the organisation as simply the sum of the parts. If you are making the most of each part then you’ll have a much fitter business as a whole.
A Holistic company will also recruit staff that share in its corporate mission and values and will develop its Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) policies as a direct result of the views of its employees.
The benefits of Holistic HR
Sometimes it is easy to get sucked up into the latest fads with a catchy title and yet see little actual return from your efforts so the question is what are the real benefits of Holistic HR?
Well, the first one is that you’ll see your employee engagement go up as people feel valued and that their work is an important part of the company mission.
As engagement rises you will also see staff turnover reduce. Where people feel valued they also tend to remain loyal.
Researchers have found that in companies where employees and staff share the same values, especially around Corporate Social Responsibility, the business itself develops a very real competitive advantage.
An interesting benefit of treating people as the sum of their parts is that the business also gets access to a much wider skill set.
For example, you may employ someone as a credit controller who is actually an amazingly talented videographer in their spare time, or a delivery driver who loves making music.
Next time you need a corporate video shooting, who are you going to turn to? Not only is paying your employees to use their skills in your business likely to be cheaper than outsourcing, but you are also likely to get a staff member who loves the fact that you value their skills.
So a Holistic HR approach could give you a more engaged workforce with a higher retention rate and deliver a real competitive advantage for your business.
The downsides of Holistic HR
Are there downsides to Holistic HR?
In truth, there are bound to be.
The first thing is that you can’t do this once. It has to be something that you carry on doing in all aspects of the business. If you try to fake it then people will rumble you pretty quickly.
It takes a fair amount of effort to instil a Holistic approach into a business and you are likely to face resistance from the more traditional managers.
And it may cost you some money and some inconvenience. Being interested in people, listening to them and taking their views into account takes a decent amount of effort but it will be worth it in the end.
Holistic HR – the future of personnel relations
Most people have come around to the view that you can’t treat employees as mere numbers nowadays.
You have to prove that you value their contributions to your business, not merely in terms of paying them well but instead, being interested in them, understanding their needs and being open to taking their views into account.
But, if you develop a truly Holistic HR culture, then you will see your profits rise as you develop an amazing workplace culture and you find that you have a loyal and more engaged workforce.
Want to chat about a Holistic HR approach for your company? We’re experts in the field so why not call and let’s see how we can help?