|
So, What’s Your “Surge Point”?
Best practice indicates
that effective companies hire employees just to the point of maintaining a stable operational level - the surge point - that
effectively accomplishes the organization's fundamental mission. Then, employees can be called in for temporary assignments
to “top off” resources during those times when additional resources are needed to meet peak demand or when specialized or
advanced skills are required. The organization's staff employees maintain the institutional knowledge needed to keep the operations
running and the augmented talent addresses interim and sporadic or cyclical needs resulting from both unexpected events and
planned situations throughout the year.
Surge Point HR Talent employees can augment your base HR staffing level to
take you beyond status quo: to provide a strategic thinking process, to enhance the impact of your team, or to keep from falling
behind in designing and implementing programs for the organization. And we will be there with qualified candidates if you
have a need for direct hire services so that you will never feel a gap in the HR services that your team provides.
Do
any of these sound familiar?
Large Corporation …
HR operations run along smoothly most of
the time. Our HR teams are aligned with corporate strategy – most of the time – and we have some very talented people on staff.
On occasion, we find ourselves struggling to keep up with the surge in demand for HR services. This could be due to:
- a
shift in business strategy,
- response to a change in market or new product introduction,
- implementing a new enterprise
software package or changing an existing one,
- increased safety concerns,
- major change in benefits plans,
- going
too long with too little employee or leadership development,
- unusually high turnover (voluntary or involuntary),
- change
in regulations,
- a merger, acquisition or divestiture,
- you get the idea …
We need some additional resources
to augment our existing staff and to get us through the next 6 to 12 months, but the time, cost and hassle of searching for
new employees is daunting. Besides, what do we do with the new hires once things slow down again? We’re already at our budgeted
headcount.
Mid-sized company …
We have been managing to some pretty tight budgets for the past
2 or 3 years. Our HR staff is a little lean and has been focusing on what absolutely has to get done each month. Some work
has been placed on the back burner for a long time now and we are getting concerned that we might see some consequences of
not doing certain work when it should have been done. We are also seeing signs of staff burnout.
Business seems to
be picking up lately, and we are hoping that hiring additional HR staff may be an option sometime down the road, but what
do we do until then? And will that day ever really come? If business continues to increase, we will be stretched even more
by hiring in other parts of the company.
What we really need is some short term assistance to get us out from under
this pile of work before everything comes crashing down. We could also use some fresh ideas and an injection of energy to
keep our morale up. Our staff has had very little time to spend on personal development – we would value a solid, experienced
employee who could teach us something new and provide some development for our team in place while working on some assignments.
Small,
startup, emerging business …
We have done fine so far with limited expenditures for HR activities. Well, actually,
we don’t really have an HR function to speak of – it’s almost completely clerical. We have an incredible group of employees
in our company who are committed to our company’s future and who work very hard for our success. We are poised for growth
and are hoping to expand our revenues significantly over the next several years.
Lately, we have been wondering about
what we may be missing on the people side. Are we really compliant with all the regulations or are we exposed to some risk
we don’t know about? Are we doing enough to develop our people to continue our long term success? Can we do more to reward
our loyal employees for being the superstars that they are for us? How do we develop our capability beyond the current skill
level? How do we know what kinds of policies and procedures we need, and how do we get them written? What kind of performance
reviews should we be doing with our employees?
We need an experienced HR professional who can spend some time with
us to get things in shape and reassure us that we are on the right track. We need action plans for our HR coordinator to implement
and then someone to touch base periodically to make sure things are going well. But we don’t have a lot of money to spend
on consultants and hiring a new employee is out of the question money-wise. This whole HR thing has not really been a priority
for us to this point, so we could use some basic services to upgrade our whole approach to HR.
Nonprofit
organization…
We have more volunteers than employees, and while our employees all have their hearts in the right
places, some are more effective than others. We are committed to our mission and make every effort to spend the money we raise
wisely to make the greatest impact for our community. We simply have not spent much on HR activities. We barely even have
an HR function.
We try to take advantage of resources in the community to help us out where we can, and our board has
been a big help. But we really need a bit more attention to be paid to HR. We can barely afford to buy the basic supplies
we need to fulfill our mission, so hiring someone full-time for HR is not in the cards.
We need someone who can come
in and spend a little time with us to get things in order, and then maybe pop in from time to time to keep us going in the
right direction. We owe that to our employees and it might help us keep our employee turnover down. But we are extremely tight
on finances, so it must fit within our shoestring budget.
Time to Call Surge Point HR Talent!
HR
Talent ... When You Need It
|
