3 Key Tips to Succeeding as a Solo HR Manager in Malaysia

When you envisage a career in human resources (HR), you imagine a vibrant career shaping the livelihoods and professional growth of your company’s workforce. You think about recruiting the very best talents to strengthen the organisation, designing initiatives to ensure that the company’s most powerful asset — its people — continues to improve exponentially. 

However, for many of you working in smaller organisations, the reality can be slightly different. As a professional working in a small team or even as a solo HR practitioner for an SME or startup, the day-to-day of managing your company’s workforce can range from simple, repetitive processes — all the way to mediating more challenging situations, such as performance improvement plans and conflict management within teams. 

At the end of the day, being a solo HR manager in a small business can be a lonely journey. But thanks to the onset of digitalisation, the effectiveness of a solo practitioner can be multiplied exponentially. Here are a couple of tips to help you to survive (and even thrive) as a solo HR practitioner in Malaysia for 2022 — and beyond. 

1. Familiarise yourself with local employment law

HR managers in small companies are probably already used to having to deal with almost everything, so a good tip is to ensure that you have a general understanding of employment law in Malaysia. You don’t have to have lawyer-level knowledge here, but be aware of the commonly-asked questions, including: 

• How to prepare the physical workplace for returning employees in 2022?
• Is medical insurance mandatory for employees in Malaysia? 
• Can employers reject resignation letters from employees?
  

And the list goes on (and on, to be honest). To help you get started with that — because we all know how tedious it can be to read legal rules and regulations, head over to the altHR Resources centre. And if you find our content useful, be sure to scroll down and subscribe to our blog for updates on future guides covering the end-to-end of HR for businesses in Malaysia. 

2. Automate the manual processes as much as possible

Our customers have told us that a large portion of time and effort for many HR managers goes into handling manual tracking, calculations, and other tedious, paper-based tasks on a monthly basis — sounds familiar? 

The solution to this common problem is pretty straightforward (once you’ve gotten the hang of it): automation. For those of you who aren’t familiar with this, automation doesn’t necessarily require a high degree of technical expertise, and you don’t need to be a software developer or programmer to get this up and running. 

Instead, look towards digital tools that can make things simpler for you. From the basics such as cloud-based collaborative tools like Google Docs, to cloud storage, and even digital tools like altHR, there are a multitude of options to help solo HR managers’ lives a little easier. Then, utilise the extra capacity to do big picture stuff — strategising your company’s HR goals, conducting HR gap analysis, and more. 

3. Make sure you have a good digital foundation

In that same train of thought, it’s also very important to build a good foundation for your HR, and consequently, your company to be digitally resilient. This is a key element of surviving the digital era in 2022, while ensuring that your workforce and business can withstand any potential obstacles that the years ahead may bring with them. 

To hold everything together for your company’s HR needs, it’s crucial to invest in the right digital HRMS to ensure that your workforce’s HR needs are comprehensively taken care of. Look for a solution that does more than just the basics of HR — including value-add features that will help your business to survive and thrive in the digital era. For example, altHR even comes with a performance management module to help you conveniently schedule and track regular performance reviews for employees, while you get access to a full suite of future-ready features that are designed for flexible, modern, digital workplaces — a staple of today’s most successful companies. 

For more information on that, scroll down to the next section.