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What does one need to run a successful business? Of course, there should be a creative and effective business idea, sufficient investments, production facilities, real estate, offices etc. But there are some business owners that forget to add educated personnel to this list. Indeed, it is impossible to succeed in any business without having trained and efficient employees. Intellectual capital is something that cannot be purchased within a second. Well-known companies valued their personnel and sometimes they require dozens of years to find and employed the best professionals in a certain business area.
Human resources play an important role in any business. However, it is imperative to effectively manage personnel, otherwise even the best professionals will not reach top level of their potential performance. Human resource management is mostly about hiring, educating and retaining personnel. Of course, different business areas require different approaches to human resource management. HR strategies depend on company goals, organization structure, demands, requirements and responsibilities of employees etc.
Human resource management in financial services (like loans, insurance policies) pretty much depends on peculiarity is of this business area. The financial crisis and breakdowns of some major banks people do not trust financial institutions like they did several years ago. That’s why human resource department in financial area should focus on employing the best professionals and educating them to provide customers with high quality financial services.
As any business aspect, human resource management in finance should be properly measured to align HR strategy and approaches with company strategic vision and strategic goals. Use of balanced scorecard is highly recommended for HR managers in finance. The following indicators may be used in assessment of HR in financial organizations:
- Average interviewing costs. As already said above, financial institutions are interested in employment of the best professionals due to tough competition in this market and reduced trust level of the population towards financial institutions. It’s not very easy to find a talented finance specialist. That’s why interviewing costs may be too high due to large number of applicants. Also, a job interview a financial organization is a more complex process as compared to interview at, for instance, industrial enterprise. Paying too much for the interviews means wasting money, especially if applicants refuse to work for the company off to the interview.
- Percentage of employees that have been assessed. In order to maintain a high professional level of personnel HR department should make sure that performance of all employees is regularly and timely measured. Ideally, the entire personnel of a financial organization should undergo regular evaluation, begin from and ordinary front line manager and ending with head of department/business unit. This indicator represents professional level of the personnel and helps reveal strong and weak points. Evaluation of employees should be clear and transparent. In other words employees should know why they have been giving high and low grades and what needs to be improved.
- Employee loyalty. Employees at any financial institution have access to confidential information which should not be handed over to third parties. That’s why it is important so that finance experts are loyal to the company and have no evil intentions.