How HR teams can juggle staff and management needs in FY24–25

Managing organisational complexity, competing demands and the need for simplicity at scale are all front of mind in this new financial year, writes Sonia Lynch.

Feel like the meat in the sandwich as you strive to balance flexibility and compliance, empathy and productivity, employee expectations and the cold hard reality of your organisation’s human capital budget?

That’s human resources management in a nutshell in 2024. For many hard-pressed Australian practitioners, it’s become an ongoing battle of seemingly opposing priorities.

Our place or yours?

In the wake of the COVID-19 crisis, millions of employees have had a taste of the flexibility and the freedom hybrid working can offer, and they’re understandably keen to retain those benefits. Leaders, meanwhile, can be less than enamoured by the idea of maintaining a highly distributed workforce – and concerned about the impact on productivity if it’s not well monitored and managed.

Finding an acceptable middle ground can be tricky, and the stakes are high, as the CBA leadership team learnt in 2023, when thousands of the bank’s staff revolted against an edict to return to the office at least 50 per cent of the time.

There is no doubt about it: the world of work is changing, and this change is likely to happen exponentially faster than we are ready for. We are all already aware of the transient nature of employees now compared to years ago, with the ABS reporting that 57 per cent of the employed population had been in their current role for less than five years and about 19 per cent for less than one year.

Work needs to be thought of differently, it can be done from anywhere, at any time, and technology will be fundamental in supporting this change. If you have the right processes in place, there is great opportunity to revolutionise how your organisation adapts.

Pay for perks or pull in the belt?

On the economic front, rising interest rates, persistent inflation and a cost-of-living crisis that’s pushed millions of Australians into hardship have created tougher trading conditions for scores of enterprises. Containing costs and boosting productivity are top of the priority list for leadership teams – ahead of diversity, equity and inclusion programs and other employee-centred wellness and wellbeing initiatives, in many instances.

Even Google, a famously generous provider of employee perks, announced its own set of austerity measures last year, including fewer fitness classes, cheaper devices and more responsible travel and entertainment spending.

The salary struggle

And then, of course, there’s remuneration – the perennial tug-of-war between employees who want to ensure they’re paid what they’re worth and employers who want to retain their services and keep them engaged but without paying over the odds to do so. However, with most countries experiencing a declining working population, this battle is not set to ease; in fact, the need to retain employees with high skills capability and high learning agility needs to be a priority if organisations want to innovate and retain market share.

Fail to hold onto top talent and the attrition costs soon mount – time and resources to recruit replacements and the inevitable loss of productivity that accompanies staff churn. With the average cost of bringing someone new on board now in excess of $23,000, according to one study, keeping existing employees happy makes sound sense.

However, with wage and salary expectations and requirements already increasing in line with inflation – the minimum wage rose by 5.75 per cent in 2023 and 3.75 per cent in 2024 – staffing costs are already squeezing margins in many organisations. Hard times inevitably mean hard questions about headcount, and having to pay people more can result in fewer staff overall.

Turning to technology to ease the load

All up, it’s a lot to contend with, and trying to reconcile ill-aligned expectations and competing priorities can make for stressful days and sleepless nights for HR leaders and their teams.

While it won’t eliminate these thorny issues, putting the right protocols, processes and platforms in place can make it easier to navigate a way forward.

Using automation technology, for example, will strengthen payroll and compliance by eliminating errors, improving data security and ensuring your organisation is compliant with Australian Taxation Office legislation and Fair Work regulations.

Deploying systems that allow real-time access to insights into operations and productivity makes it possible to make data-driven decisions about staffing and rostering.

Offering employees greater control over the hours they work and introducing processes and platforms that allow them to swap shifts with suitably qualified co-workers and complete other self-service actions can make managing a flexible workforce less arduous.

Automation technology can also be used to catalogue employees’ existing capabilities and connect them with internal opportunities to utilise and augment their skills and experience – an essential element of any staff retention strategy.

Taking a skills-based approach to workforce planning is the next step in ensuring that if employees are displaced, you can identify opportunities to redeploy and retrain employees rather than bring in external hires, which is not only the right thing for organisations to do but can bring financial savings.

Striking the balance that builds a stronger team in FY24–25

Whatever the nature of your business, your workforce is your biggest asset. Engaged, high-performing employees will help your enterprise navigate the challenges that lie ahead in the next 12 months and beyond. AI-powered human resources management software can enable your HR department to build and nurture a formidable team of them. In today’s times, it’s foundation technology you can’t afford not to have in your stack.

Sonia Lynch is the director (HR business partner) at Dayforce.