HR pros balance human needs, pushing paper

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by Jill Henry|ret||ret||tab|

SBJ Reporter|ret||ret||tab|

jhenry@sbj.net|ret||ret||tab|

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As vice president and director of human resources for Great Southern Bank, Matt Snyder takes care of the needs of about 625 employees. As president of Springfield Area Human Resources Association, he helps guide 160 chapter members representing about 105 area organizations of all sizes. While he works with a large employee base each day, Snyder, like other HR professionals, said many aspects of HR are universal.|ret||ret||tab|

"The challenge of having more employees is that the problems are more magnified because you have more folks to contend with those issues," Snyder said. Such issues, he said, include establishing quality health care plans, retirement plans, compliance with Family Medical Leave Act, filling job vacancies and employee retention.|ret||ret||tab|

One challenge noted by Lynne Haggerman, president of Haggerman & Associates, is for HR professionals to avoid becoming "paper pushers" and keep the human element in human resources.|ret||ret||tab|

"There's so much paperwork, documentation, statistics and facts to keep that they spend an awful lot of time doing that," she said. "Although everyone in human resources has to (do paperwork), what you love to do in human resources is help the managers and help the people, but you run out of time to do that because you're so busy pushing paperwork." |ret||ret||tab|

Federal regulations and the documentation required can represent a major portion of an HR professional's day when dealing with several hundred employees.|ret||ret||tab|

Greg Williamson, vice president of administration for Willow Brook Foods, a turkey processing plant with 1,049 full-time workers, said Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act compliance has taken a lot of ongoing research, study and planning. |ret||ret||tab|

"It's not that I disagree with that law," he said. "I think the confidentiality of that information is very important. I've been concerned for years that too many employees knew too much personal information about people's health. This law protects that, but it also creates some burden."|ret||ret||tab|

That burden resulted in the addition of a full-time compliance position to Willow Brook's HR department. |ret||ret||tab|

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Walk a mile|ret||ret||tab|

Haggerman said it's important for a company to treat its head of human resources as an equal to other department heads. |ret||ret||tab|

"That way, they have a seat at the table, and then they get to know operations more, and they can contribute more that will help with the sales and profit of the business," she said.|ret||ret||tab|

O'Reilly Auto Parts Human Resources Director Jim Maynard said the philosophy of the HR department at O'Reilly is to partner with the operations of the business. "We're aligned with the same goals that they're aligned with. Basically, our agenda is dictated by the operation's agenda."|ret||ret||tab|

O'Reilly HR staff, as well as other staff members, are required to make regular store and distribution center visits. "We get out in the field and communicate with all the people that we're really, in essence, servicing with our HR work," Maynard said. |ret||ret||tab|

Benefits of the store-visit program are two fold.|ret||ret||tab|

"It's a lot different, seen first-hand and experienced first-hand, the life of the team member or employee as opposed to anticipating what that is," Maynard said, adding that it's important to develop a relationship with management and team members while receiving feedback. |ret||ret||tab|

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Growing pains|ret||ret||tab|

When corporate growth creeps across state lines, HR professionals are often faced with new challenges. |ret||ret||tab|

"The federal (laws) stay the same, but there are different laws in every state and they have to capture that," Haggerman said. |ret||ret||tab|

Laws aren't the only things that can be affected by corporate expansion. "Having folks out of our typical area does cause us some problems with, say, the group health plan," Snyder said. "I have to make sure the health plan that we have available provides adequate coverage for someone that's in Kansas City."|ret||ret||tab|

Planned growth can be positive, Haggerman said, but the changes involved can sometimes be detrimental.|ret||ret||tab|

"What happens is you start having tremendous turnover because people are overworked, totally stressed out, boundaries aren't defined, job descriptions keep changing, there's no security or stability. There's constant change," Haggerman said. |ret||ret||tab|

The top two reasons for high employee turnover, according to Haggerman, are workers not feeling appreciated and not feeling in on things, "which is a lack of communication from upper management about what's going on. Frankly, if organizations at a minimum provide those two things, they'd be surprised how low their turnover would be."|ret||ret||tab|

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