Don't leave HR out in the cold: Why close collaboration matters

The success of any organisation depends on the ambition and motivation of its employees, so why is people management data so rarely aligned with other parts of the business, such as financial performance?

In a competitive market, where firms have to fight hard to attract and hold onto the most talented individuals, Damian Oldham, HR industry expert at Access Group, makes the case for cross-departmental collaboration.

It’s a familiar scenario for many HR managers: you’re asked to compile the latest staff turnover figures or results from the quarterly staff satisfaction survey for the next board meeting, often with a tight deadline. Manually retrieving information is, of course, time-consuming – but it also begs the question, how valuable is data that lacks context, especially if it is already out-of-date before you’ve even submitted it?

The frustration many HR teams feel when asked to juggle administrative tasks with long-term employee engagement strategies is reflected in a piece of research we carried out this summer. Asked what their biggest challenge for the next 12 months is, over a third of HR professionals pointed to ‘inefficiency, excess administration and poor collaboration between departments’.