At Spectrum HR Solutions, Brenda McChriston and other HR professionals are hard at work helping companies to embrace new philosophies that will enhance their operations.
“We're an advisory practice,” McChriston told HR Daily Wire recently.
One of the core goals, she said, is to really open up management styles and get companies to understand the big picture.
“It's not just paper and processes and systems,” McChriston said. “It’s strategies – how you get people to engage more, how you inspire them and motivate them.”
For example, she said, the company takes a higher-level approach to the issue of extending employee benefits to workers.
"We ask, not just about benefits and how they're given, but about why people pay the benefits,” McChriston said. “Benefits are a recruiting tool.”
In terms of recruiting and employee retention, McChriston said many of the ideas that her business promotes are inherently simple – they have to do with positive corporate cultures that drive better productivity and morale.
“It goes back to simple courtesy and treating someone with respect,” McChriston said. “It shouldn't take a lot of effort from leadership.”
As for concrete solutions, McChriston mentioned frequent check-ins with employees, a regular practice of recognition and encouragement, telling people to keep up the good work, and putting a positive spin on challenges where someone needs improvement.
McChriston also spoke about the importance of interactive teams and inter-departmental collaboration.
Describing the industry as it is today, she said Spectrum HR often encounters cases where companies need to move beyond old, outmoded hierarchies and into the 21st century with bold, new management practices.
“We encourage employers to think outside of their paradigm,” McChriston said. “We look at ways in which we tie the new experience and the old experience together.”
Why are companies sometimes slow to embrace these new ideas?
“Usually, it's because of what they've learned, and the way they've been treated,” McChriston said.
Changing these patterns, she added, requires dedication to better management and better business, as well as a good healthy dose of people skills.
“It's an art and a science,” McChriston said.