5 Most Common Problems HR Departments Deal With

Human resource (HR) departments must deal with some of the most complex challenges within a business. These departments handle many things from employee disputes to payroll. Problems can arise from individual employees or from complex tax codes.

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HR departments must deal with five common problems on a regular basis:

Employee negativity and infighting

A major problem for most HR departments is employee infighting and negativity. Small arguments between two employees can turn into large issues that result in regular disciplinary actions and hard decisions about the workforce. Negativity can result in poor morale and low productivity from unmotivated employees.

Both of these problems can lead to firings and high turnover. Fixing these problems is difficult and responding to infighting can take up valuable time every day.

Dealing with changing tax laws

Dealing with changing tax laws can become a problem for any HR department. It can be difficult to track deductions and new tax regulations dealing with employees. This job becomes more difficult when there are workers with different employment statuses operating in different states.

It is also confusing to try to find the best business tax credits so that effective rates are reduced for the company. Many businesses are choosing to use third-party HR and payroll services to avoid these complexities.

Scheduling

Scheduling can be a challenge in any business size. HR staff must constantly strive to ensure employees have enough time scheduled to meet core job responsibilities. This needs to be balanced with finding time for trainings, meetings and reviews. Scheduling also becomes difficult when attempting to approve vacation requests without leaving the business understaffed.

Scheduling in some HR departments requires a significant amount of time every week although new software tools are making it slightly easier.

Legal compliance in workplace policies and practices

Another challenge HR departments must deal with is legal compliance when creating policies and performing existing practices. It can take time to determine exactly how something like the Family and Medical Leave Act could impact new policies.

HR staff must also carefully ensure legal compliance during hiring, firings and disciplinary actions. The constant need to ensure compliance with hundreds of laws can create issues in any HR department and the larger business.

Performance measurement and reporting

A final challenge is finding a way to accurately measure and report performance. This includes measuring the performance of the HR department as well as employees across the company. Establishing the right metrics and creating standards can cause problems with employees if the numbers are not calibrated well.

Generating accurate reports for the rest of the business can also become problematic.

For small business, I suggest looking into business tax credits.