HR manager Teresa Stevens found that her day consisted of a series of interruptions to answer employees’ questions about HR-related matters. Then, she hit on an idea to end the interruptions and keep employees happy. If I had a dollar for every repeat HR-related question that got asked here, I probably wouldn’t need a 401(k) to fund my retirement.
It’s not that we minded answering, and most of them were pretty good questions. The problem was the amount of time it took to, for example, answer the same question we’d heard twice the day before.
We had considered setting up an intranet with an HR frequently-asked-questions (FAQ) section, but we knew we’d never cover all the inquiries we heard, no matter how comprehensive we tried to be.
Still, the intranet idea seemed to be a solution. Maybe it just needed a little twist.
Electronic ‘forum’
Instead of setting up FAQs, we established a “forum”-style Web page. On that page, employees can ask questions (anonymously, if they wish), which get answered by someone in HR, at our convenience. So everyone in our organization can see the questions and answers — and we’re not interrupted.
Since setting up the forum, it’s amazing how many times we hear, “That’s exactly the question I was thinking of asking.”
And of course, every time that happens, we realize it’s a case of one less question we’d have to re-answer if we didn’t have the forum.
(Teresa Stevens, HR assistant, City of Springfield, MO)
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