Three Top Priorities for HR Leaders Right Now

HR leaders have faced an unprecedented number of challenges in recent years. We’ve seen an exodus of employees, unprecedented inflation, a shift to hybrid and remote workers and an increased reliance on modern technologies. And as we enter the last half of 2022, the grand finale seems to be an economic downturn that will present a new set of challenges for HR teams across the spectrum.

Rather than dwelling on such struggles, pragmatic HR leaders are looking ahead to the next set of priorities to ensure customer and employee continue to be met. The Society for Human Resource Management’s (SHRM) recently-released State of the Workforce report details the ways in which organizations seek to juggle both employee needs and challenges.

In this blog, we’ll review the top priorities for HR professionals and how modern tools can help meet their goals.

1. Recruiting the right talent

Finding and recruiting the right talent is high on the list of things HR teams hope to accomplish this year, the SHRM study revealed. Matching the right candidate to the right job might seem like a simple enough task but in a hypercompetitive workforce, making the connection can be a huge challenge. Candidates could be presented with multiple job offers at once, and deciding which one to choose goes beyond salary and a company’s work model.

Once they’ve identified the right candidate, HR teams must act fast to extend an offer and onboard them into their new role. If not, they risk missing out on top talent. A recent Cella survey also found 25 percent of candidates abandoned a job prospect because the process was too lengthy. You can significantly reduce the time from offer to acceptance by sending a digital offer letter to eliminate printing, signing, scanning and back-and-forth mailing of paper documents.

The recruiting stage serves as the first impression for candidates. With today’s workforce accustomed to digital and mobile experiences, it’s important to use this opportunity to show candidates that your company’s processes align with their expectations.

2. Retaining top talent

The Great Resignation has underscored the importance of nourishing relationships with existing employees to prevent top talent from moving onto other companies. In fact, 78 percent of organizations participating in the SHRM survey counted retaining top talent as among their top HR priorities.

Employee turnover has become increasingly difficult to combat as dynamics shift and modern workers seek a greater work-life balance, less stress and a positive workplace culture. Part of the battle for HR professionals is helping employees avoid burnout by properly managing their workloads and ensuring their needs are being met.  You can improve your retention rates by:

• Providing career development opportunities. Studies show that employees who are given opportunities to grow are more likely to be engaged and remain with their employer.

• Offering mental health support. A recently-released ComPsych Stress Pulse survey indicates that at least half of North American workers miss at least a day of work per year because of stress. 

• Encouraging a work-life balance. HR teams can eliminate the need for overtime work by ensuring they’re adequately staffed and that resources are in place to support productivity. 

3. Keeping employees happy and engaged

HR teams are facing a new challenge in the form of “quiet quitters,” a new phenomenon that refers to employees who are turning up for work disengaged and unproductive. Organizations are working to combat this trend, with 80 percent of those polled in SHRM’s report listing maintaining employee morale and engagement as their top priority for the year.

One easy way to eliminate discord among employees is to eliminate manual tasks that everyone hates, such as sorting through paperwork and chasing down signatures. By automating manual processes, employees have more time to focus on more fulfilling, strategic projects.

Organizations can help reduce workplace burnout by implementing technologies such as Docusign eSignature that make signing documents stress-free while reducing the number of steps to completion.

eSignature improves efficiency as employees share documents and finalize signatures. If you often send the same form, eSignature lets you save the repeatable information as a template for later reuse. In fact, Docusign offers prebuilt templates for the most common forms and contracts, like W-4s, I-9s, NDAs, SOWs, offer letters, lease agreements and more.

With eSignature, you can monitor who has signed and who still needs to sign, so you know the exact status of your contract–and who you need to nudge to move the process forward. Customizing notification settings lets you remind signers when they need to take action. 

eSignature also connects to the systems where employees already work, including over 400 pre-built integrations with Salesforce, Microsoft, Workday, Google, Slack and more. This means less time retyping information from contracts and forms into different systems, or chasing down missing information. eSignature eliminates these frustrating manual tasks, giving employees back time to focus on more meaningful work.

Prior to Docusign, onboarding new customers or writing a new policy would have been a cumbersome process for Downeast Insurance. The process included a lot of phone calls, paper, postage, office visits—and in some cases, even driving to customers’ homes to capture signatures. 

The situation improved when the Maine-based agency began implementing its cloud-based management system, Applied Epic, with eSignature.

“Within ten minutes we had access,” recalled President Stacy Johansen. “It was super easy.” Now, new policy applications are sent directly to customers from within Applied Epic—with relevant documentation like disclosures automatically attached—keeping Downeast compliant.

Learn more about how Docusign can help your HR team address this year’s top priorities.