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"We all want our businesses to move quickly and in the right direction, and human resources plays a key role in that. Unfortunately, too many companies still depend on outdated processes to make that happen. That's like asking a car to win a race when it doesn\u2019t have gas.\n\nSEE ALSO: The True Cost of a Bad Hire [INFOGRAPHIC]\nYou need to walk before you can run, which means you should first focus on small, but effective, changes in your HR department. Here are four tactical shifts you can implement immediately to help do that.\n1. Ditch Your Vacation and PTO Tracking Process\nNo matter what your policy is, it\u2019s the process that slows you down. Most businesses use some variation of email requests, manual verification, and spreadsheet documentation to track paid time off, vacation accruals, and usage. The process drags like an anchor on their organizations, wasting an average of seven minutes per person. Multiply that by three people \u2014 employee, manager and HR admin \u2014 and you're looking at twenty one wasted minutes per request.  \nWhen you consider that the average employee submits 14.5 time-off requests each year, an organization with thirty employees wastes more than 150 hours \u2014 or four weeks \u2014 every year, simply by tracking vacations.\nGo faster by ditching manual processes and implementing a system that automates vacation accruals, tracking, and administration. You\u2019ll quickly reclaim wasted time and reduce the average turnaround for each employee request. \n2. Don\u2019t Depend on Job Boards and Recruiters\nUsing social media as a recruiting tool can be faster, cheaper, and more effective than traditional hiring methods like job boards, recruiters, and paper-based ads. \nRecruiters charge between 5% and 15% of an annual salary for filling a junior role, and up to 30% for placing more senior executives. If you already know what you need, social media can serve as a completely accessible and free tool that allows you to instantly reach a huge pool of candidates. \nWhile it\u2019s wise to use multiple channels to source candidates, we analyzed our own job postings and found social media to be the most effective. In the first seven days of a new job posting, 95% of applications were generated through social media channels, and candidates who arrived through social referrals were three times more likely to apply than other candidates. \nWhereas slower, paper-based processes can take up to 90 days to replace a hire, you can shave weeks \u2014 or even months \u2014 off of that time by recruiting through social channels.\n3. Give Continuous Feedback\nIf you don\u2019t already have a mechanism to provide employees with real-time feedback on a continuous basis, then stop reading now and get to work.\nEmployees appreciate frequent positive feedback and respond well to it, but corrective feedback is equally important. Businesses that wait for monthly, quarterly, or even yearly one-on-one meetings to correct issues are often too late to be effective. They end up asking for changes to work that has already been completed.\nFrequent communication reduces wasted resources and frustration, and is vital for long-term employee success.\n4. Measure Culture in Real Time\nIt\u2019s generally accepted that a strong culture and engaged workforce are leading indicators of business success. Now, imagine learning that one manager quietly wreaked havoc in your organization for ten months. How many employees did you lose as a result, and how many hours of productivity slipped through the cracks because of under-engaged employees? \nNow imagine that you could have learned about your problem manager after only ten weeks, instead of ten months. How much money could you have saved? How much talent could you have retained?\nEvery company needs a feedback mechanism in place to monitor and manage the good, bad, and ugly happenings in their organization. Measures of culture are powerful indicators that will help you stay on target. Here are some ways to do this:\n\nLow-tech mechanisms, like suggestion boxes and town-hall meetings, will get you started.\nOnline tools are now available to measure employee engagement, employee satisfaction, and the alignment of organizational values, all in real-time. \nDefine the values and culture that you want to build, and use every tool at your disposal to stay on-target.\nIdentify the champions of your company culture, even the ones you don\u2019t interact with directly (quiet supporters).\nIdentify gaps where you fail to deliver on corporate commitments.\n\nImage courtesy of iStockphoto, onurdongel"^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://mashable.com/2012/07/10/human-resources-tips-online/>