In enterprises, the HR department is often regarded as a cost center because the HR department cannot directly create quantifiable performance for the enterprise like other business departments. However, no one denies that the HR department is the management and integration department of human resources. Since it involves the management and integration of resources, it should not be a pure cost center, but a "resource management and value-added" department. It should be possible to use cost-benefit to measure the management performance of the HR department.

Since the HR department does not participate in direct business operations, its contribution to revenue is reflected in cost reduction, mainly focusing on two aspects: first, the reduction of the HR department’s own operating costs; Help organizations reduce operating costs.

The actual operating costs of the human resources department itself are relatively limited. Modern enterprises have done a good job in controlling administrative expenses. The real problem is that the HR department operates the most important and core resource required for the development of modern enterprises - human resources. How to reduce costs in the process of integrating and adding value to resources is the most important and important thing that the HR department needs to consider. The core question.

If reducing one's own operating costs is a way to save money, then improving the input-output efficiency of the human resources management department is a typical example of open source. Throttling can be achieved through "operating cost control", but open source requires more complex "operational system optimization". In other words, the HR department's contribution to cost-benefit lies in continuously improving the input-output efficiency in human resources management through optimization of operating systems.

The optimization of the HR operation system can start from five stages:

In the first stage, functional expenses should be controlled as much as possible by performing department functions and job responsibilities. In terms of management, we often ask for eight words: everyone takes responsibility and does his best. This is the basis of management. Doing things well to the best of your ability and responsibility in accordance with the requirements of the organization, not to mention creating performance miracles, will at least give the organization an appropriate return on the resources it has invested. The HR department has four basic functions: helping business departments recruit people, assisting employees in their own learning and development (educating people), assisting business departments in improving performance and providing incentives (employing), and managing employee loyalty (retaining people). Some functions are directly performed by the HR department, and some functions are performed with the assistance of the HR department. Regardless of whether it is directly performed or assisted, the HR department should do its due diligence and do a good job in management within the scope of its functions. This is to control operating costs. basis; directly responsible to the company's management department, and according to its requirements, make every effort to reduce costs to the lowest possible level.

In the second stage, functional expenses are reduced to the lowest level through "operating cost control". It is not enough to just complete your work with due diligence, you must also have a principled awareness to reduce all costs to the minimum. Specific to the four basic functions, the principles of operating cost control are:

1. Through human resource planning, job analysis, function definition and job description, etc., put the recruitment operation into a standardized and process-oriented track, and recruit People should know what they know before, be targeted when recruiting people, and assign positions and responsibilities after recruiting people. Only in this way can we change the disorder and randomness in recruiting people and reduce recruitment costs;

2 , through the establishment of training systems, internal knowledge management and sharing systems, employee career planning, etc., assist employees in learning and development, and continuously improve employees’ professional qualities and abilities, thereby enhancing their loyalty to the organization and continuously improving their ability to create profits. There are three key control points in this process:

There should be a qualified training manager.

He may not be a qualified training instructor, but he must be an excellent planner and procurement negotiator. He should clearly know how and where the company's limited training budget should be spent, how to choose training partners, how to cooperate with training instructors to control the quality of training, and what work should be done to fix the training results. Come down and become the company’s knowledge resource. Finally, he should be a person of high integrity and would not betray the company's interests for training kickbacks. From a development perspective, most of today's training managers become monks halfway, and very few of them truly meet the qualification requirements;

Within the company, there are systems such as textualization of knowledge and "teaching and mentoring" experience transfer among employees. Let the excellent experience of outstanding employees become replicable knowledge and pass it on to more employees to the greatest extent;

Establish a career development plan for employees, especially key employees, to help them develop their personal abilities and actually The above is to help the organization develop.

Some people may say, what should we do if we lose employees? Aren’t all the previous education costs wasted? When encountering this problem, we should examine it from two aspects: On the one hand, what are the reasons for employee turnover? Can we find our own reasons and reduce the employee turnover rate? On the other hand, in a two-way choice market, employee turnover is inevitable. You cannot expect every employee to devote their life to the organization loyally. You cannot obtain their future 100%. The only way you can All they have is their present—that is, the period of time they have been working at your company.

A good learning and development plan can add value to employees' "now" and enable them to contribute greater and more profits to the company during the period of time they work for your company. If there is no training and development plan, not only can you not expect the future of your employees, you will also lose their present;

3. With the previous foundation, the next consideration should be how to reduce employment costs. . The reduction of employment costs is a typical process management, which needs to be led by the employment department and completed with the full cooperation of the HR department. To this end, it is necessary to establish a process-oriented comprehensive performance management system. The characteristics of process-oriented comprehensive performance management are:

Goal decomposition, assigning responsibilities to people - process control, detail supervision - two-way communication, strengthening the team - clear rewards and punishments, immediate implementation - focusing on the heart , Focus on improvement

4. I am afraid that no company wants to have an excessively high employee turnover rate - especially the loss of key employees, which will cause the company to suffer heavy losses. Excessive employee turnover will inevitably increase recruitment, education and employment costs, and the loss of key employees is more likely to exacerbate the company's weakening of its core competitiveness. The question is, how to retain people is a reasonable way to meet cost-benefit requirements?

If the employee turnover rate is really too large or elite employees are continuously lost, you may have to hide in a corner, slap yourself in the face a few times, and then ask yourself: Why is this happening? Why not nip it in the bud? Why didn't we find out until they left the company? Employees will not lose a large number of employees for no reason, nor will they want to leave at the same time overnight. There must be a relatively obvious loophole in management that has lasted for a period of time, causing an uncontrollable situation. As mentioned, whether recruiting and educating people, employing or retaining people, the process-oriented management idea should be implemented from beginning to end, so that positive warning can be achieved instead of simply negative response.

Secondly, when retaining people, you should focus on non-monetary aspects as much as possible. Retaining people with affection and retaining people with things are relatively easier to play a positive guiding role. Of course, the premise for this is that the company's salary is competitive in the industry.

Finally, retaining people is a good thing, but sometimes it is not a bad thing to turn "retaining people" into a means of motivation. For example, some companies implement a "last elimination system" in terms of performance, but when it comes to specific implementation, using performance as a measurement indicator would be too one-size-fits-all. For those employees who have poor performance for a while but have a positive and hard-working attitude, you may wish to express "retention" at the appropriate time, which can often have a certain motivating effect.

The focus of retaining people is not to "keep people", but to "pay attention" in daily life. If you retain people, you will not be able to keep their attention, and your work performance will not improve. Instead, it will occupy the company's resources, which will only cause greater losses. Cost expenditure.

In the third stage, when the HR department performs business management, it should pay special attention to the balance of relationships with each line functional department. The HR department should work with direct business departments to reduce costs related to marketing, sales, engineering technical support, site service support, information technology expenses, administrative expenses, etc. In other words, in addition to doing your own job, you should also help other departments do their jobs. At least, you can do it without causing trouble to the work of other departments or excessively increasing the department’s hard expenses.

Here, one thing that needs special reminder is that if it is not necessary, or the company’s current scale and development status have not reached the point where it is necessary to introduce more advanced human resources management tools, then do not suggest it to you at will. The boss introduces some dazzling new systems such as KPIs and Balanced Scorecards (BSC) into the company - even if doing so can fully highlight the professionalism of the HR department and your importance. If these new systems cannot prove to have a significant effect on improving business performance in addition to increasing the workload of business units, they will only increase administrative costs and cause resistance from all other line functions.

In the fourth stage, customer service awareness is introduced, employees in the organization are regarded as customers, and the purpose of reducing costs and improving performance is achieved by improving service quality.

In the fifth stage, we strive to transform the HR department from a functional department in the traditional sense into a strategic partner department of the company. The most core issue is to give full play to the leading role of the HR department in the process of building a corporate culture system. Within the organization, only the HR department has sufficient resources and capabilities to lead the construction of the corporate culture system. Because corporate culture is based on "people", and the HR department is exactly the work of people, it should take the initiative to assume the important task of building a corporate culture system. This is also the basis for the HR department to become a strategic cooperation department. Through the efforts of the HR department, an enterprise can establish a strong culture so that it can fully exert its organizational influence and team cohesion, and make more people willing to invest in performance creation in a more recognized way. If the previous four stages only analyze the cost optimization of the HR department from a tactical perspective, then at this stage, the cost optimization of the HR department has risen to a strategic level, and only in this way can the HR department truly enter into investment. - A virtuous cycle of income and contribute more to building the company's core competitive advantages.