Every 26th of September, some companies go out of their way to pay tribute to those who work in human resources.
HR Professional Day celebrates the people—our coworkers—who steadfastly put on the mask of professional duty and obligation, to be at our service. With a smile, they make sure that we get the proper statutory benefits, up-to-date healthcare plans, and the correct tax forms.
These humans in human resources are unsung heroes for many good reasons. It’s the perfect time to thank the people behind the things we take for granted in the workplace.
What Is HR Professional Day, and Why Is It Important?
As someone who grew up with four siblings in a family of farmers, Sir Patrick Allen, governor-general of Jamaica, understood the plight of the working class. Before he made his way to society’s upper class, he also worked as a teacher and principal for more than a decade.
Sir Patrick Allen knew how crucial it was for people working in human resources to feel valued. So, in 2013, he began what would be known as “HR Professional Day”.
HR’s role in organizations is far-reaching, as it includes negotiating, training, policymaking, administrating, and so much more—it’s only fitting that at least once a year, a special day is earmarked to honor some of the most helpful, yet overlooked human beings in the world of work.
How is HR Professional Day being practiced in the Philippines?
In the Philippines, neither HR Professional Day nor International HR Day is widely celebrated. With a huge portion of the labor force working blue-collar jobs, it is instead Labor Day—done every 1st of May—that finds more favor among Filipinos. Despite this predisposition among Filipinos to laud the efforts of manual laborers, there’s a need to highlight the crucial work of overlooked white-collar workers, namely, HR professionals.
As visible as HR professionals are in bringing people together at work—especially in leading town halls, community events, and other team enrichment activities—their invisible contributions are exhaustive. The things they do behind the scenes become the glue that ‘holds a company of people together’ while maximizing the potential of each individual.
What are the things that HR professionals do behind the scenes, that we should be grateful for? To celebrate HR Professional Day, let’s name a few.
Why We Should Be Grateful for Your HR Professionals
Hunting out risks
Risks come in many forms, and there are countless risks that an organization must be aware of. In the digital era, for example, cyber risks have become more pervasive. In 2022, a staggering 83% of organizations experienced more than one data breach, reveals an IBM Data Breach Report. While your company can invest in third-party software and hire contractors to mitigate these external risks, sometimes, it’s the internal risks that are overlooked.
Your organization’s employees—while they are mainly viewed as assets—are also sources of risk. HR’s role in risk management is to oversee the work of all employees, interns, and in some cases, contractors.
Risks posed by people in the organization can be difficult to manage, and this is where HR comes in with their expertise in planning for and considering any worker-related risks. You can expect your HR team to always be informed of the latest laws and regulations, especially those concerning employees. They’re also responsible for managing risks in recruitment and employee retention. Without HR professionals to manage these internal risks, the organization can find itself blindsided and incur losses from within.
Managing through change in the organization
HR professionals also play a crucial role in change management. Before the pandemic, workers were more receptive to change, according to a survey by the consulting firm Gartner. By 2022, however, employees’ willingness to support enterprise change fell to 43%, compared to 74% in 2016.
While some organizations might appoint, or even hire Change Managers who are assigned specifically to work out the kinks, your HR team works behind the scenes to put your organization in a good position to implement the given plan.
Your HR team knows the people in the organization from top to bottom. They’re also expected to never lose touch of how managers and other employees are doing in their jobs. Hence, they’re likely to also have a decent idea of the “transformation deficit”, or the so-called gap between the required change effort and employee change willingness.
Having competent managers can help steer the company to any required enterprise changes, but this is always in partnership with HR.
Reshaping our work environment
Designing a work environment that best suits the organization’s needs can involve multiple teams, and HR is an essential part of the planning process. With investment in office space in a state of flux borne by economic conditions, an organization can fail to plan for increasing or decreasing numbers of employees, as well as discount workstyle preferences.
Office space, when viewed on a per-employee basis, tends to move up and down over time. In the U.S. for example, employees had as much as 225 square feet in the early 1990’s recession, dropping sharply to less than 180 square feet during the dot-com bubble in the early 2000’s, rising again to over 210 square feet during the Great Recession, before steadily declining to below 200 square feet of office space per employee. This value decreased as office spaces became more cramped with an increase in hiring, and increased sharply when mass layoffs became widespread.
This shows just how crucial HR professionals are to right-sizing the work environment. With hybrid workstyles being commonly adopted, your HR team has to take even more factors into consideration.
Sources ways to gain the upper hand
If you think that HR members are only good for sourcing talent, think again. You can also tap your HR professionals to gain a competitive advantage. You can leverage your HR team, for example, to analyze turnover rates and focus on specific groups within your organization where the issues may reside. And in talent acquisition, your HR team can help managers source the right talent to obtain the skills needed by the company to grow and become more competitive. Some companies even go so far as to monopolize talent, denying others from securing competent employees.
Another way to use your HR team to your advantage is by equipping them with the best tools in the market. In this way, they’re able to focus their time and effort on becoming a strategic and insightful business partner. By automating tasks and streamlining workloads to give time for more meaningful business priorities, you’re instantly getting a leg up against competitors, who spend their HR resources in performing manual tasks such as timekeeping and computing payroll.
In celebration of HR Professional Day, perhaps you can throw in the idea of leveling up your HR team by investing in the best available products and services.
This could be your HR Professional Day slogan!
If you could write a quick eight-line poem for HR Day using the four things just mentioned, it might go something like this:
Dear HRBPs,
Kudos in every way!
For Hunting out risks,
And Managing through change,
You’ve Reshaped our workplace,
And found Sources for gains.
Happy HR Professional Day!
What Tools Are Available for Your HR Team to Gain a Competitive Edge?
An HRMS tool like Payruler can give you the upper hand, whether you’re in a team of 10-20 people who consider themselves more as “collaborators” rather than colleagues or belong to a large organization of hundreds of employees, even thousands. And if you happen to work in a flexible setup, Payruler allows your HR team to do timekeeping and compute payroll remotely, which is great for hybrid teams.
Payruler’s Software as a Service (SaaS) model facilitates data storage and backup through the cloud, so you wouldn’t have to worry about any on-premise setup when thinking about all the employee data that you need to manage. Furthermore, Payruler’s cloud solutions undergo regular software updates that take away the burden of tedious tax and government regulation updates for payroll computations.
SSS changed their contribution amounts again? BIR created a new process? Congress repealed a tax law?
These are just a few of the questions that keep your HR team up at night. For companies that don’t automate, it can mean a painful headache. Thanks to Payruler, you can integrate changes seamlessly.
Being the most comprehensive HRMS and payroll system in the Philippines, Payruler collaborates with a company’s HR in great detail to tailor a bespoke suite for their workspace. Whether an existing HR technology is present or not, Payruler can easily integrate its innovative features into your company. Payruler’s local Support and Implementation team is there every step of the way to ensure a smooth transition to the future of your HR.
While your company has a specific solution or system in mind to handle HR tasks, you might find that Payruler has just the right answer. Book a demo here, and see if it works for you.
