The High-Efficiency HR Department
Strategies for increasing HR staff productivity and capacity for strategic, cross-campus support
Higher education is a people-intensive enterprise, so HR has a clear role to play in achieving institutional goals. As the primary “people function,” HR is best positioned to drive high-level workforce effectiveness through sourcing, developing, engaging, and retaining talent. In this capacity, high-performing HR departments can significantly benefit the broader institution. Luckily, both HR leaders and business executives want HR to be more strategic and provide higher-level support to the academy and other administrative units. This, along with the widespread financial challenges facing the industry, continue to drive the evolution of HR’s organizational role.
Despite this desired shift, HR staff often lack the capacity to focus on more strategic priorities because they are consumed by transactional tasks foundational to HR department operations. As shown below, staff at all levels dedicate significant amounts of time and attention to HR processing and administrative responsibilities. This work precludes senior-level and high-skilled staff from assuming a greater focus on higher-level strategic activities.
Perhaps counterintuitively, leaders must first perfect core HR operations before pursuing a more strategic focus. There are three primary reasons for this sequence:
- First, HR departments are typically resource-constrained, making it difficult to reallocate staff time away from pressing but inefficient operational duties.
- Second, many HR professionals hold the view that automation is a cure-all, but technology often serves only to automate already inefficient processes.
- Lastly, HR departments must reduce the time and effort spent on transactional HR tasks by streamlining existing processes and staff workflows, and effectively leveraging efficiency gains.
This study outlines 12 best practices to increase staff productivity and capacity by optimizing department operations and refocusing staff on higher-level work.
Practice 1: HR staff workflow assessments
One method for scoping the number of potential processes for redesign is to target those that consume the greatest percentage of staff time. Documenting how much time individual processes require for completion helps administrators identify the most burdensome processes for HR staff and focus process mapping and redesign efforts.
Practice 2: Customer-driven department evaluations
HR units that attempt to map every process will exhaust staff and reduce the likelihood of redesign success. Those that do narrow the number of processes for redesign often use less effective methods, missing the greatest opportunities for improvement.
A focus group of HR clients advises HR leaders on common processing pitfalls, which informs the creation of a campus-wide survey to further evaluate identified processes. The survey allows HR leaders to isolate processes most dissatisfying to HR customers.
Practice 3: Process redesign prioritization tool
HR leaders assess inefficient processes identified by HR staff and/or customers against a number of key redesign variables. Using meaningful evaluation criteria, HR leaders are able to establish an “order of implementation” strategy and prioritize process mapping and improvement efforts on the highest ranking processes.
Although HR departments can utilize HR staff (Practice 1) or customers (Practice 2) to help identify inefficient HR processes, many institutions will need to employ a methodology to further cull down the list of problematic processes to an actionable few that will receive redesign priority. Attempting to tackle all identified processes at once makes successful implementation of improvement plans less likely. This practice provides a tool by which to segment and stagger redesign initiatives.
Institutions review inefficient processes against impactful redesign variables:
- Value added to campus
- Feasibility of success
- Strategic alignment
- Campus control
- Resources required
- Organizational readiness
- Impact of change
- Level of effort required
- Compliance risk
Reduce Inefficiencies and Costs on Campus
Practice 4: Process redesign playbook
Redesign efforts stall because HR staff often lack the time or expertise to analyze complex process maps, or identify and correct processing bottlenecks. To aid overwhelmed HR staff already inundated with daily responsibilities, this resource helps make sense of confusing process maps by focusing staff on four primary sources of process inefficiency.
The goal is to provide HR staff with a proscriptive framework for manageably identifying and fixing the most likely causes of inefficiencies, increasing the likelihood of successful improvement efforts.
Practice 5: Stakeholder-HR service contract
Many HR processes involve unit-based support staff, upon whom central HR relies to complete certain steps within any given process. However, these staff are often unaware of which steps they are responsible for, how soon they need to complete them, and how their work fits into the larger process. When decentralized staff are less proficient or unclear about how to execute their responsibilities, it can take them longer to complete tasks, delaying the overall process.
A formal service contract offers a method to clearly document and detail each process, delineate unit and HR responsibilities, and set overall expectations for process completion.
Practice 6: Unit-based HR super users
Although many HR units provide training for unit-based staff, the sessions are often too broad and infrequent to successfully set up unit-based staff to accurately and independently complete tasks. Typically, training sessions are large and do not specifically target processes that cause the most confusion and error among unit-based staff.
As a result, central HR staff must regularly guide unit-based staff through the completion of various process tasks, correct reoccurring mistakes, and hunt down missing information. This consumes central staff time and prevents them from focusing on more strategic, higher-level work.
Developing unit-based experts helps HR provide on-demand support and targeted training to address the most prevalent unit-based staff problems without over-relying on already over-extended central HR staff.
Practice 7: On-demand unit-based staff toolkits
Even when central HR staff create resources to help unit-based staff effectively complete a process, the resources are rarely all-inclusive or easily accessible. As a result, unit-based staff are more likely to inundate central HR with questions or make mistakes that require later correction. Comprehensive toolkits consolidate all relevant process information in one, easy-to-access location and contain all pertinent information unit-based staff need to independently perform process tasks.
The goal is to provide in-the-moment resources, enabling unit-based staff to independently and effectively complete HR process tasks.
Practice 8: Tiered request service desk
When faced with an HR question or concern, staff and faculty from across the institution typically reach out to any email, phone number, or HR employee they happen to know to get the issue resolved. With no dedicated service point, all staff within the department—regardless of functional area, position, or title—can and will receive incoming HR requests.
This results in specialized and more senior-level staff being inundated with calls that (1) may have no relevance to their expertise, responsibility, or functional area, and (2) could have easily been addressed by HR staff at a lower, more appropriate level. Having a single triage point and structured system for elevating requests to appropriate HR representatives keeps tasks with the appropriate staff level and promotes top-of-license work.
Practice 9: Internal HR processing unit
Staff, regardless of specialty, seniority, or department model, are often responsible for performing some level of manual processing or transactional activity in their day-to-day roles. This work takes valuable time away from more senior staff and prevents them from engaging fully in strategic, more customer-focused work. Rearranging staff structures to ensure more entry-level staff are performing transactional processes allows specialists and business partners to address higher-order, campus-wide concerns.
As a secondary benefit, changes to staff structures can also create downstream process efficiencies. Employees dedicated to particular types of transactional processing naturally become more proficient at these activities than someone trying to balance policy work and processing work simultaneously.
Practice 10: HR critical responsibilities lists
Even after process improvement efforts shorten laborious processes or reduce the amount of manual and transactional work, HR staff roles do not always evolve to reflect these operational changes. Staff responsibilities reflect outdated workflows and often incorporate low-value process steps. Additionally, HR staff members may find it difficult to prioritize new and competing projects and responsibilities. Clearly defined and prioritized lists of responsibilities provide role clarity and enable staff to prioritize tasks.
The goal is to redirect staff time toward the newly defined, high-priority responsibilities within their role, not just on the activities they have always performed.
Implementation considerations for HR critical responsibility lists:
- When crafting HR Critical Responsibility Lists, ensure responsibilities accurately reflect department needs and are not overly modified to accommodate current staff roles.
- On an annual basis, solicit staff input on industry, regulatory changes, or internal process improvements (e.g., software upgrades) that impact positions and alter HR Critical Responsibility Lists accordingly.
- Consider incorporating HR Critical Responsibility Lists into staff performance evaluation and linking to merit pay.
Practice 11: Customer-focused unit rotations
Although many HR staff members work with customers across campus processing transactions, resolving grievances, or initiating personnel changes, few in the department have opportunities to meaningfully interact with customers to fully understand their needs or gather performance feedback.
Facilitating more frequent, high-value exchanges between HR staff and customers enhances HR service delivery and emphasizes frontline staff’s key role in meeting the department’s strategic objectives.
HR staff round on departments and academic units across the institution to interact directly with internal customers and clients, collecting feedback, providing staff education, and identifying improvement opportunities. The goal is to refocus staff capacity on higher level, customer-focused activities that create added value for the department.
Practice 12: New position applications
After a process redesign, HR departments often maintain status quo with respect to staffing—existing staff roles remain unchanged even after processes have been improved and time needed to perform certain activities has decreased. When HR staff positions do not evolve with new unit-critical needs, it can leave staff underutilized, higher-priority activities under-resourced, and service delivery outdated.
This tactic offers a formal mechanism through which staff can move into new roles that better reflect shifting department priorities.
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