How can HR help employees get focused on the bottom line?

The role of HR has evolved from handling employee disputes to administering benefits to affecting employee productivity and shareholder value. As a strategic partner of an organization's executive level, many HR departments are expected to contribute to the bottom line. When it comes to the bottom line, employees' contributions, or lack thereof, aren't the result of a lack of motivation because after all, employees need the company to do well so that they can stay employed. What employees need, and what HR can facilitate, is a definition of focus. Here are 10 ways HR can help get its employees focused on the organization's financials:

1. Streamline your processes. Look at the pointless and time-consuming processes you have in place, such as hindering employees with unnecessary paperwork, and eliminate them.

2. Implement dashboards that look across departments. Draw your employees out of their comfort zones by creating dashboards to allow all employees to see what is going on in other departments. These dashboards will also allow employees to get to know the impact they are having on their coworkers that, otherwise, they'd never get to see.

3. Focus on quick wins. Focus on quick wins and small employee accomplishments to keep them motivated long-term.

4. Make sure your decision-makers get the information they need on a daily basis. Managers need something that provides feedback on where the organization is now and where it is going in the future and they need the review to be in real-time so as to continue approving HR initiatives for driving performance.

5. Outline each employee's individual responsibilities and then measure his or her progress. You may assume that your employees know exactly what their jobs require them to focus on, but in their day-to-day work lives that focus may get a little fuzzy. Hold one-on-one meetings with each of your employees and discuss their normal work day. HR can help employees re-assess where their main focus should go and figure out a way to continually measure their own progress.

6. Let your employees evaluate you to see if what you are doing is really helping them.Employee evaluations can be a real eye-opener and may provide HR with additional ideas to help drive the bottom line.

7. Encourage them to sell more to existing customers. HR can encourage employees to take time to examine the current customer base and create ways to bring added value to them. Sometimes creating complicated objectives to reign in new customers results in the neglect of those that you already have.

8. Emphasize the importance of daily tasks and how they will shape the organization's success as a whole. Employees may be busy throughout the day, but unfortunately, their actions often fail to provide lasting benefit as they are often the result of issues that crop up during the day. Encourage employees to focus on the key actions that they can affect, performing the key tasks that drive them toward the company's objectives.

9. Give employees what they need to excel at their jobs. Updating your company's computers, programs or forms of alternative communication, such as offering use of BlackBerrys, will show employees that you care about them and their needs and that you want them to have the tools they need to do their jobs well.

10. Keep them on their toes. When companies are meeting and exceeding their goals, employees have a tendency to celebrate and even relax. HR can keep them on their toes by implementing a little friendly competition through best seller awards.

Source:The Performance Power Grid, written by David Gianneto and Anthony Zecca (Wiley, 2006).