Elevate your people strategy: 8 core HR processes for 2025

For HR and people professionals, helping workers stay happy, healthy, and motivated is part of the job — but it’s no easy feat.

According to a recent report by Mercer, 82% of employees are at risk of burnout this year due to financial strains and excessive workloads*. As a result, companies are struggling to keep top talent and maintain engaged workforces amid rising inflation and economic disruption, putting extra pressure on human resource teams.

The solution? Developing consistent, people-centric HR processes with data-driven insights that help managers improve decision-making and employee satisfaction.

Keep reading to learn why it’s so important to nail your HR processes, what an effective HR strategy should include, and how Leapsome’s people management software can help automate and streamline these functions within your business.

‍*Mercer Global Talent Trends Study, 2024
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How do HR processes impact organizations?

People are every business’ beating heart, making HR teams and processes essential to company survival.

HR processes pave the way for operational excellence, solidifying the strategic role of people management within an organization and ensuring employees have what they need to thrive. 

These processes lay the groundwork for personal and professional success across the board; they help improve company culture, guarantee compliance, and increase efficiency, resulting in higher profitability. But how?

Solid HR processes can have many positive impacts on your workers and your bottom line, as they focus on three key areas:

• Retention. Employee retention and engagement are cornerstones of commercial success, and high-performing HR departments play a pivotal role in managing and maintaining a productive, loyal workforce.

• Productivity. Streamlined HR processes will help save time and boost efficiency across your organization, automating routine people management tasks and supplying a framework for optimizing employee performance.

• Experience. Solid HR processes make the employee experience smoother for all team members within an organization. Individual contributors will find it simpler to accomplish routine HR tasks, while human resources team members will have easy access to all the data and insights they need to do their best work.

You need only listen to the top people ops and HR influencers to know that HR processes are crucial for running a profitable business that people enjoy working for. The question is, what does a successful HR management strategy entail? 
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The 8 core HR processes your business needs to succeed

Every business’ HR processes will look different depending on company objectives and workforce needs — especially if your employee management systems are scattered across different platforms. 

Still, every HR process strategy should cover essential topics to ensure teams have the tools and insights they need to manage employee performance.

Not sure where to start? Our people enablement experts have outlined the eight core processes to consider when planning a successful HR strategy in 2025…

1. Recruitment, onboarding & offboarding

Once you’ve recruited new talent to join your organization, onboarding provides employees with their first impression of your company’s culture, resources, and expectations. 

Unfortunately, this stage in the employee’s lifecycle is often neglected. A well-planned onboarding process can set up new joiners for success, equipping them with the tools and knowledge they need to get off to a positive start, whereas ineffective onboarding can result in up to 20% of employee turnover occurring within the first 45 days of employment.

The same goes for offboarding. Leaving a job can be stressful for the employee and their team, but having a checklist of departure and handover actions will minimize disruption and protect your reputation as an employer.

Every business’ onboarding and offboarding systems are unique. However, using purpose-built platforms like Leapsome Learning and Leapsome Surveys can help standardize and automate these processes, enabling HR to support new and existing team members more effectively.
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2. Performance management

Performance management involves collecting feedback, tracking goals, identifying development opportunities, and implementing performance improvement plans (PIPs), bonuses, merit increases, or promotions.

These are essential responsibilities for every people manager. However, without the right planning framework, defining, reviewing, and measuring performance metrics can be time-consuming and disorganized. 

So, it’s crucial to ensure your leaders cover the core phases of the performance management cycle — planning, monitoring, reviewing, and rewarding — and provide staff with a clear breakdown of their progress and goals.

Fortunately, modern people management software makes it easy to implement formal HR processes at scale, empowering your managers and employees with actionable insights through one centralized platform.

3. Training & development

Employee training doesn’t end with onboarding. Ongoing development is essential for HR management, especially for companies seeking to provide non-financial incentives for their top talent.

A Pew Research survey found that 63% of workers cite a lack of advancement opportunities as their main reason for quitting. With that in mind, HR managers must use performance data to identify skills gaps and schedule relevant, regular training and development programs for staff at all levels; this can improve employee engagement within your company and help prevent skills gaps from impacting productivity during challenging recruitment periods.

Leapsome Learning streamlines learning paths across departments and experience levels, providing structure and data-backed insights to help your operations managers and people professionals build a culture of continuous improvement.
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4. Workforce planning & management 

Forward-thinking businesses need forward-thinking HR processes that anticipate hiring and workflow demands.

Workforce planning includes day-to-day staff management and a bigger-picture HR strategy — covering everything from PTO and shift planning to overtime and absence management. 

Monitoring these data metrics is vital for succession planning and ensuring you have the right talent in the right place, at the right time. This requires balancing HR management with other company goals, ideally through an integrated human resources information system (HRIS).

Our own HRIS tool was created to help users consolidate people processes, harness advanced AI and analytics, and manage fewer vendors — all with a people-first approach, resulting in happier HR teams.

Leapsome HRIS consolidates crucial HR functionalities, including workforce data management, document tracking, payroll, and reporting. The result? Fewer errors, better data security, enhanced operational efficiency, and a better employee experience.
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5. Compensation planning & payroll

Ultimately, your HR operations managers are responsible for ensuring staff are paid on time and in accordance with legal and regulatory requirements. Effectively managing these admin duties is also essential to your commercial success, supporting efficient budgeting and workforce planning.

Implementing systems to automate routine HR tasks like payroll processing and compensation management can significantly reduce manual labor and remove unnecessary friction from your HR processes. 

Accessing a consolidated view of accurate payroll data, salary benchmarks, and bonus schemes makes it easier for ops teams to plan and deliver compensation efficiently. Plus, modern, self-service HR platforms allow employees to access their data at any time, making their lives easier and reducing the burden on your people management professionals.

Leapsome Compensation can help you build employee trust, increase retention, and empower leadership to make better compensation and promotion decisions with scalable, streamlined processes and reusable templates.

‍‍6. Feedback & praise

Receiving multidirectional feedback from managers and individual contributors is essential to building an inclusive and thriving company culture, which in turn increases productivity and retention.

‍But feedback alone won’t get these results. People professionals need to make it actionable by systematically collecting, categorizing, and analyzing feedback. 

‍These insights can come from one-on-ones, annual reviews, continuous feedback, or even watercooler conversations. No matter the source, keeping accurate records allows you to benchmark performance, identify areas for improvement, and trigger appropriate responses — ensuring you always give credit and encouragement where it’s due.

AI-powered HR tools like Leapsome’s can help human resources leaders comb through data, extract insights, and take meaningful action more effectively. For example, our AI tool can analyze feedback in seconds and extract common themes, eliminating hours of manual work.

7. Benefits & rewards

Replacing employees comes at a much higher price tag than investing in meaningful benefits. So, develop a generous benefits and rewards program to care for team members and ensure they’re happy to stay in the long term.

Developing, communicating, and maintaining employee benefits programs may include:

• Plan design — developing or customizing a scheme in line with employee feedback, company culture and goals, as well as legal regulations

• Communication & enrollment — outlining the details of employee benefits and ensuring staff have the information they need to access these perks

• Payroll integration — coordinating with finance departments to ensure benefits deductions (when applicable) are accounted for.

• Compliance & reporting — keeping records related to benefits administration and audits to ensure ongoing compliance. 

• Data management — maintaining accurate records of benefits selection and updating them where appropriate over time.

• Evaluation & improvement — updating benefits schemes consistent with staff feedback and business requirements. 

Intuitive, people-first software like Leapsome’s HRIS can help HR leaders manage benefits administration by automating routine tasks and providing a consolidated view of employee data. In addition, our interconnected Surveys tool makes it easy to prompt team members for regular feedback on benefits and rewards programs.
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8. Employee relations

Shaping positive employee relations is essential for building an engaged workforce and reducing turnover. 

Research has shown that organizations with high employee engagement have 23% higher profitability, which means employers have a vested interest in improving this HR metric. In practice, that means taking a multifaceted approach to workforce management using a range of methods, including:

• Establishing clear channels of communication
• Defining and enforcing HR policies
• Creating performance management frameworks
• Issuing guidance for conflict resolution
• Conducting employee engagement analysis

Managing these HR initiatives requires various systems and surveys that create large volumes of quantitative and qualitative data. That’s where HR process management software like Leapsome comes in, providing the means to seamlessly implement different programs and analyze their results across your organization.
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Boost retention with streamlined HR processes

HR teams are fighting an uphill battle to improve employee performance and reduce attrition rates. 

However, putting the right HR processes and systems in place can help people professionals structure HR departments for success. 

Taking advantage of the latest software to automate HR workflows and increase efficiency will have positive impacts across your organization, helping managers ramp up employee engagement and productivity.

Leapsome has a wide selection of people management tools, providing a centralized hub for monitoring, reviewing, and optimizing core HR processes. Armed with data-driven insights, survey templates, performance frameworks, and goal-setting tools, we can help you elevate your people strategy and cultivate a company culture you’re proud of.
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⭐ Optimize your people and processes

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