A Look Into How Out-Of-The-Box HR Practices Helped In Increasing Work Efficiency

HR practices play an important role in increasing the efficiency of an organization. Various companies use different techniques in order to motivate their employees as well as to build a good working environment for everyone.

In this blog we will explore some out-of-the box practices implemented by top companies that helped increase efficiency in their organisations successfully.

BRITISH TOBACCO COMPANY’S ACTIVE360 HEALTH APPROACH:

The British American Tobacco (Singapore) launched an Active360 health and wellness programme to appeal to different generations and to motivate them to take charge of their well-being through various preventive initiatives, encouraging a healthy lifestyle among employees.

How does this programme help?

On analysing their inpatient and outpatient data, the company realised the trend was reflective of health concerns around hypertension, diabetes and cholesterol.

Based on the knowledge that people tend to spend 75% of their waking hours at work, BAT Singapore decided to create a preventive culture of health and wellness to ensure that their employees are able to work efficiently without neglecting their personal health due to work overload. This would not only be beneficial to the employees but also to the organisation as employees would begin taking less sick leaves. These activities would also help in building team spirit as all employees would be a part of the initiative.

What did the programme include?

The programme included activities such as Yoghurt Mondays, Fruity Tuesdays, Salad Wednesdays and De-Stress Thursdays which were intended to continuously engage the employees and raise awareness on healthy eating and mental wellbeing. In the middle of the year, BAT conducted a super healthy buffet day where employees were able to sample healthy and delicious dishes during lunch.

Is this programme beneficial?

To measure the ongoing success of the programme, BAT monitors the emerging trends across medical bills, absenteeism, health & safety, employee engagement

scores, and employee uptake ratios. Through this programme, the company has observed a 23% decrease in absenteeism, along with employees looking forward to these activities helping cultivate a sense of appreciation and loyalty within the organisation.

THE 7 HIRING RULES INVENTED BY NETFLIX:

Netflix Came up with 7 rules to help them hire, build and maintain an effective taskforce. The rules were as follows:

1. Values are what we value: Netflix looks for employees that live and breathe the company values in everything they do.
   
2. High-performance: Netflix looks for people that continuously function on their A-game. Anyone operating at an adequate level is offered a generous severance package to help them take up work that's more suitable for them.
   
3. Freedom and Responsibility: Netflix believes that when given the freedom, responsible people will get the work done, freeing up time for HR to look into other issues rather than continuously overlooking employees' work.
   
4. Context, not control: Rather than controlling the staff, provide context to them about why they're required to do a specific task in order to help them understand and appreciate the importance of their own work.
   
5. Highly aligned, loosely coupled: Setting a common goal and letting each team work towards it in their own way helps save time as it cuts down on useless comparison and endless meetings.
   
6. Pay top market: Netflix believes in hiring the best and paying top dollar for it. According to them one outstanding employee gets more done and costs less than two adequate ones.
   
7. Promotions and Development: Netflix asks managers and employees to have regular conversations about their performance in order to help its employees shape their own future in the company.
   

These rules have helped Netflix to appoint and build a strong team that works efficiently to help Netflix remain at the top of its game.

EXPERIAN MALAYSIA’S SWITCH TO PAPERLESS ACQUISITION:

The company undertook three initiatives: an employee application, digitisation and digitalisation of key HR processes, and predictive analytics.

The first was the digitisation and digitalisation of the entire recruitment and onboarding process by implementing and integrating a suite of tools enabling its talent acquisition professionals to manage their relationships with candidates and internal stakeholders.

This included the first interaction with a candidate, to an electronic offer acceptance, and automated tasks and content-sharing through a rich media online platform, the candidate and new hire experience is elevated. As a result, the company now saves the time of both recruiters and hiring managers, enabling them to focus on other

The second initiative was the introduction of its HR-based app across APAC called Your Choice app, which allows employees easy access to four components:

• A personalised digital rewards statement.
• A benefits allowance through the allocation of annual points for employees to spend on fitness, entertainment, food and beverage or daily essentials.
• A monetary employee relief fund for employees or their dependents experiencing hardships, and a support line for when life gets tough.
• A focus on their health and well-being by giving information and support in real-time on employee devices.

The third initiative was an in-house built predictive analytics solution for HR to give greater insight into the organisation’s workforce and help accelerate HR strategies.

This interactive online platform provides a truly unique view for HR and supports the core people management processes for leaders to develop the right strategies to reduce attrition, drive churn-related cost savings and improve overall business productivity.

This change has helped the company make its acquisition process way faster and efficient.

Therefore, as seen, these practices have helped the company make work easier for employees and have also helped decrease the amount of time spent on different processes.