In this article, I'm planning to share with you why Dynamics 365 Human Resources should be part of your solution box while facing a customer or prospect. Three of the main challenges that most of the companies face are listed here, as well as the solution we can provide by implementing D365 HR. Are you ready? Let's go for it!
We are going to divide our challenges by role. Starting with Leaders (I honestly hate the word boss) going through workers or employees, and ending with Human Resources staff.
🚀 Leaders
Goal: to support Leaders in the path of democratizing talent management.
Current situation: Leaders are used to managing people, of course, but they don't usually have the solutions or platforms to be successful. Let's review it with an example:
´Alex is a Marketing Executive leading a team of three persons. One of her reports, Drew, also leads a team of five workers. Alex's daily challenges are to support the Marketing strategy creating plans to impact social platforms, generate more sales, and position the brand in the market and also be a good leader. Whenever a teammate needs a day off, they sent Alex an email to review and approve it, the same happens when someone decides to use a benefit part of the plans provided by the company.´
By managing the team through email - or even through Microsoft Teams - Alex is adding to her daily backlog a lot of tasks that could be easily solved. This could lead to a delay in the tasks she is developing (core tasks from a Marketing Executive or Leader tasks), which will directly impact her performance and the team performance as well, unless she works after hours to compensate for this siloed way of working.
Solution: Luckily for Alex and other leaders, Dynamics 365 Human Resources as a platform is capable of providing support into a single solution to manage entire teams, not only direct but indirect reports. By implementing D365 HR, leaders will be able to work in a unified management solution part of the Microsoft ecosystem to own their people and the processes related to them all in Manager Self-Service. One of the main tasks of leaders is to lead, let's support them. A successful leader leads to a happy organization.
📐 Employees
Goal: to improve employee lifecycle and impact in employee wellbeing and engagement.
Current situation: At some point in our life we are employees, and you might remember how complex it was to ask for a day off, update your information or request a copy of your performance review. In case you've never been in this situation let me illustrate it for you:
´Pau is a Marketing Analyst, he's been working in the Power Company for more than 3 years. He's planning to request time off next week but his boss is not responding to emails. He reached out to Human Resources, but they said that is his boss's responsibility to approve the days off and there's nothing they can do to help him. Pau also moved to a different house two months ago, the company has sent some gifts and gadgets to work from home to the previous address. He's been trying to update the address with Human Resources but no one is replying back.
By not giving Pau an answer from both streams - leader and HR - he might feel left out and not important to the company. This could impact his engagement and motivation, and if the situation does not change he will finally apply for another role outside the company. I know I'm being exaggerated but this is a good exercise for you to think about the times you were in Pau's position. I've been there a few times.
Solution: Employees need to own their personal data and the benefits related to their employment. Dynamics 365 Human Resources provides an Employee Self-Service capable of supporting all employee's needs, from requesting time off to editing personal information. D365 HR brings closeness with leaders and Human Resources by offering transparency in the processes, as well as the opportunity to manage their own information.
⚡️ Human Resources
Goal: to support Human Resources to focus on strategy instead of operations.
Current situation: Most of the companies decide to invest in technology for the core business, and honestly, it makes sense because the ROI is way more tangible than investing in Human Resources. Most of the HR Departments that I worked with are used to work with a tiny budget, that is destined to some tech tool that they design - without IT support - or buy and implement in a handcrafted way. They also have analysts or assistants to build KPIs from local Excel spreadsheets. Let's read a day in the life of an assistant:
´Jules is an HR Assistant, he's been working in the Power Company for the last 11 months. Part of the activities she needs to perform on daily basis are reviewing an Excel spreadsheet where HR keeps record of all the incoming and outgoing employees and contractors, and crossing information with another Excel spreadsheet where they record the reasons of people entering and leaving the company (attrition and turnover). When she finally got this information, Jules creates a monthly report following strict guidelines to present to Board members to take action on people leaving the company. She's also responsible for the recruitment and onboarding of entry-level positions and interns. She asked for help but the budget for HR this year is already invested in an intranet. Jules spends at least 100 hours in KPIs and creating the report for Board members - due to edition and reviewing from his leader, and the rest goes for recruitment and onboarding of new employees, but there's never enough time. She is starting to feel burnout and some weeks works over 50 hours.´
By having so many responsibilities and lack of technology supporting them, Jules is feeling overwhelmed. The fact that she's working after hours is a risk indicator and she even might consider leaving the company. I've seen this scenario in different companies, I've been in Jules's shoes and I did leave the company.
Solution: Dynamics 365 Human Resources provides the technology Jules - and many other HR Assistants - needs to stop spending so much time in creating reports because they are part of the out-of-the-box capabilities. Instead of investing 100 hours a month, an HR assistant only needs to use D365 HR correctly to be able to extract such awesome workforce insights. D365 HR gathers all soft HR processes into a single platform in order to accomplish organizational goals. HR department can focus on strategy instead of operations. Help HR work smarter.
Which one do you think is the most difficult to solve?