随着我们进入全新的十年，始终值得一提和to take the time to identify strategic improvements that you want (or need) to implement soon.
在整个年底结束以结束必要的必要条件之后年终工资，合规性和其他任务，坐下来深入研究战略改进，听起来很累。但是，新的一年始终是审查业务策略并将任何慢性疼痛点放在显微镜下的绝佳机会。
This is especially true for your internal processes, like payroll, recruitment, and human resources. Four strategies that can help any organization, including both nonprofit and small for-profit businesses, strengthen their internal processes for 2020 include:
- Make use of specialized platforms and outsourced services.
- Put more strategic thought into your HR processes.
- Prioritize flexibility in your compensation strategies.
- 采取更积极的方法来合规。
借此机会回顾您对这些领域的内部方法是新年的明智之举，因为它为您提供了您可能期望的任何障碍的路线图。采取措施开始解决这些障碍现在is ideal, whether it’s through individual process updates or comprehensive strategy upgrades. These tips can help you lay out the groundwork for a stronger small business in 2020. Let’s get started!
1. Make use of specialized platforms and outsourced services
Tech and outsourced support can free up a ton of time and resources for your organization, and there are options available to handle practically any element of your internal operations. Many small businesses are already leveraging this strategy to some extent, but it’s worth checking to see if there are any ways to refine or expand your approach.
这些工具和服务的市场正在不断发展和增长，因此您企业的理想新选择可能是等待您发现它。这是一个相当广泛的类别，因此我们将其分解为这两个关键组：
- 基于Web的管理工具或SaaS平台以满足您的需求
- Outsourced services to completely handle an element of your internal operations
Both of these approaches offer long-term support around whatever gap your business needs filled (or wants taken off its plate). Depending on your exact needs, one type of solution might be the smarter choice, but the main idea is that today there’s no reason to feel compelled to handle everything manually or in-house. Small businesses, in particular, have a lot to gain from freeing up their teams to focus on more outward-facing or strategic projects.
Here are a few of the most common types of solutions that any type of organization can benefit from adopting:
- Accounting and payroll management software.As classic pain points for smaller organizations, online platforms (e.g.,payroll software) and outsourced services can drastically alleviate the time and effort needed to complete these essential financial tasks.
- Human resources.人力资源本身是一个广泛的运营领域，这也是许多较小的企业忽略建立的东西，而资源则集中在其他地方。具有专业平台人才管理软件, you can streamline a wide range of HR tasks that eat up a ton of time (or that you might otherwise ignore). Strong human resources frameworks are a secret weapon for businesses to grow sustainably, so it’s definitely worth exploring your options.
- 其他内部和管理任务。Smaller internal tasks are likely your first targets when it comes to freeing up your team’s time. Recruiting is a good example of a strategically crucial area of operations that’s filled with time-consuming manual tasks. Working with a recruiting service or streamlining specific elements, like running小型企业背景调查，可以释放您的时间专注于领导团队，而不是不断寻找新成员。
Of course, the right time to adopt any new tools or services will depend on your business’s particular context and needs. The main idea, though, is to think of them as long-term investments. Reducing your organization’s internal workload现在while you’re still small can give your team a real cutting edge in your space.
2.在您的人力资源流程中投入更多的战略思想
In the previous point, we touched on the idea that developed human resources processes can help to support more sustainable growth for small businesses. This is for a few key reasons. A strong HR framework gives your business:
- A strengthened sense of internal culture and purpose
- 一个更具吸引力的雇主品牌，它支持您的招聘目标
- 改善了员工的保留和参与度，有可能拯救您吨从长远来看的时间和金钱
Building out concrete HR processes is an important investment for small businesses, but it can definitely be a daunting undertaking. “Human resources” is a very broad category of internal tasks and responsibilities.
Hiring a human resources consultant or firmis one option for full-service strategy development. For growing businesses, talent management software is an excellent way to simplify the process of building human resources and lay the groundwork for more strategic HR decision-making. That’s because it gives you a centralized record of your HR data and ways to automate or streamline HR tasks going forward. For example:
- Comprehensive HR data gives you detailed insights into your engagement with employees.What’s your retention rate? How does your turnover compare to similar businesses? How long does it typically take to fill particular roles? What’s your average per-employee cost for training? These insights and metrics can help to improve your recruiting strategies and create more accurate projections going forward.
- 全面的人才管理软件可让您访问流线型招聘，入职和绩效管理工具。这些任务通常非常time- and resource-intensive, so taking them digital and creating more self-service processes can be a much more efficient move over the long run.
- The rise of the “employer brand” as a major selling point for potential candidatesmeans you need to be more aware than ever of employee engagement and the quality of your internal culture. Strengthened, centralized HR processes backed up by data help you make more strategic decisions all around to shape your culture in beneficial ways.
由于许多企业希望缩小或外包他们的人力资源运营，因此请务必牢记更大的情况。人力资源可以为较小的企业释放增长和稳定性，但是通过正确的方法，它也可以实现更直接的战略目的。
3. Prioritize flexibility in your compensation strategies
Taking a more open and flexible approach to compensation can be a game-changer for businesses, especially growing businesses that implement this strategy early on in their development.
Specifically, we typically advise our own clients to adopt a Total Rewards style of compensation rather than focusing solely on salary and bonuses. Of course, direct compensation makes up a large and important portion of an employee’s total pay package, but expanding your view of compensation can be extremely helpful. It allows you to make more strategic decisions and better understand how a wide variety of elements fit together in order to make employees feel compensated and engaged.
In addition to direct compensation, this concept takes into account:
- 间接薪酬，例如福利，PTO，储蓄计划等。
- 您的绩效管理风格
- 认可成就和贡献
- The quality of your internal culture and the work-life balance you promote
- Additional training and development opportunities you provide
像许多小型企业一样nonprofits often struggleto represent themselves as attractive employers for candidates. The Total Rewards approach is extremely effective at combating this perception for organizations despite their inability to offer extremely competitive salaries.
The main idea is that by thinking of these more indirect and intangible elements as themselves forms of compensation, you can create more adaptive, flexible packages for employees.当然，这并不意味着仅仅因为您决定自己的文化是一种奖励，就不意味着要付钱。它doesmean understanding the deeper reasons that employees stay engaged with your business, and these often have less to do with direct compensation than you might imagine.
For example, implementing a learning management system with additional training and certification opportunities for employees is a very direct way to offer scalable, high-value benefits that go much further to keep employees engaged than one-time bonuses. Associations often rely heavily on these systems to boost member retention.
此外,很重要remember changing generational preferences. Younger millennials and Gen Z employees generally prefer more连续，直接和随意的反馈超过密集的季度或双年度评论。随着美国劳动力的面貌不断变化，调整您的绩效管理结构以适应这类偏好绝对值得考虑。
4.采取更积极的方法来合规
When it comes to compliance, taking a more proactive approach to staying on top of things is absolutely essential. Letting something slip can be majorly detrimental to a small business, where the ramifications might be felt harder and more immediately.
A constantly changing legislative landscape has made it important to anticipate changes as they come and to be prepared. Specifically in terms of payroll and compensation compliance, you’ll need tocover all your bases然后考虑：
- State-specific (and city-/local-specific) regulations.Take the time to brush up on your state’s labor guidelines. They may have changed, or one that you hadn’t needed to consider yet may become relevant for your business in the coming year. For instance, if your very young business loses its first employee, you’ll need to consider your state’sPTO payout laws.
- Changes at the federal level.Don’t let any new developments catch you off guard! One example is the upcoming changes to theFLSA salary threshold加班费。这项新政策始于2020年1月，因此您需要确定（理想情况下）是否有任何雇员的豁免状态。
- 可用的新选项。权衡您的选择，因为新准则推出可以帮助您简化业务，并最适合您的特定背景。例如，2020年1月的另一项更改涉及保险福利。个人覆盖范围健康报销安排（ICHRA）为雇主提供新的选择，以考虑他们如何确切地为员工提供健康保险。
除了这些类型的薪酬，工资和福利指南之外，还要确保进一步扩大范围。
重要的是要记住，即使无意的歧视也是非法的，并将您的业务置于危险之中。您可以通过了解薪酬歧视并根据需要进行结构和文化变化来创建更合规的补偿基础设施，并保护您的成长。
Running a business of any size is never easy work. The challenges come from all sides and never seem to quit, but that doesn’t mean your business needs to lock itself into the systems and strategies that worked in the past! At the top of the year, review your internal processes to identify areas for improvement. Especially when it comes to HR, even small changes can have profound ripple effects, saving you time, money, and worry as you grow. Good luck!
These views are made solely by the author.
