Terminating an employee may be the worst task that HR professionals are required to undertake. Even if they occur only infrequently, the meetings almost always have the potential to be unpleasant or, in the worst cases, contentious. The best approach is to put your head down and just get through it, right?

Wrong.

There are actions you can take in advance of a termination meeting to increase the possibility of the relationship ending calmly and perhaps even amicably, with minimal disruption to your business. Follow these tips, approach the situation confidently, and you may be surprised at how well things actually go.

The research* provided by The Aberdeen Group on successful approaches to managing a workforce has so far focused on automation of employee management tasks and integration of workforce management systems.

The final and least technical practice is for an organization to always be improving an its approaches and methods of managing their overall workforce. Such improvement is a long-term proposition that takes place gradually. It requires persistence and a commitment to merging modern HCM tools with a consistently advancing workplace culture. As both become more developed and in aligned with one another, an organization's workforce shifts from a practical cost to a strategic and competitive advantage that provide the business with a true edge in the marketplace.

This four-part series takes research* done by The Aberdeen Group on successful approaches to managing a workforce and presents it in graphical form. Businesses that practice all of these behaviors tend to function efficiently and reduce - or eliminate - the wasteful costs involved in managing people.

Integration is the second beneficial practice. Many organizations still manage time and attendance with one automated system, payroll with another, and human resources with no intelligent business system at all. The systems that are in place tend not to communicate well, which is unfortunate, since they all fulfill critical functions with regard to workforce management and coordination, and miscommunication just means more time and more cost spent on otherwise simple tasks. Implementing a unified Human Capital Management system can store all of your employee information in a single location and transform your workforce from an expense to a strategic asset. Here are just some of a unified system.

In this four-part series, we're sharing visualized research* on the impact of efficiently managing an organization's workforce by practicing three habits. The first habit, automation, can mean many things, from building a performance review workflow system to deploying electronic timecards to offering Employee Self Service tools that your employees can access wherever they are and whenever they need to. Implementing a unified Human Capital Management system can provide all of these benefits to your organization and transform your workforce from an expense to a strategic asset. Here are just some of the advantages of doing so.

What makes some organizations exceptionally efficient - and therefore cost effective - at managing their workforces while others struggle just to make sure employees show up? It's not luck, and it's not just the way things are. By embracing three key practices, almost any organization can begin transforming their workforce from a burden into a strategic benefit. Over the next four weeks, we'll share with you some research-based infographics* that highlight each of these three practices. Let's begin with an overview and the potential benefits.

If you are one of the few, select individuals who loves addressing and managing Workers' Compensation issues, then any HR department would be lucky to have you. It probably means you're extremely organized, exceptionally patient, and incredibly resourceful. You probably have the tact of an international diplomat and the steel-trap memory of an elephant.

For all the rest of us less naturally inclined towards this topic...well...we need some extra help.

No company can force its employees to be engaged. Employees have to want to participate fully in the life and culture of a workplace. The good news, according to a recent Gallup survey, is that employee engagement is on the rise, with 34% of U.S. workers reporting feeling engaged at work. That percentage ties the highest in Gallup's history of taking this poll. Even better, the 13% of actively disengaged (i.e. miserable) employees is the lowest level ever reported. So whatever strategies employers are using to engage with their employees is taking the trend in the right direction.

The less-than-stellar news is that the remaining 53% of workers (i.e. the majority) are considered not engaged. Gallup defines this category as workers who "are not cognitively and emotionally connected to their work and workplace; they will usually show up to work and do the minimum required but will quickly leave their company for a slightly better offer." If your company's employees are amongst the 66% of casually or actively disengaged workers, what can your organization do to change that? This is an important question, since employee engagement indicates your employees’ commitment to their work and the success of your organization. If your employees aren't engaged, the goals of your business will suffer.

Workplace culture is one of the most elusive yet important aspects of any organization. It depends, in large part, on the people who work for you, so you'll never have complete control over it. It responds collectively at times and individually at others and so remains difficult to influence. Free and expensive actions alike can impact it, meaning that its monetary costs are unclear.

And yet culture is often the key factor determining why talented and hard-working people remain with organizations that may be otherwise challenging places. It is frequently synonymous with employee job satisfaction and can have strikingly positive reverberations when it comes to customer retention and a company's bottom line. By the same token, a unsatisfying culture can end up costing an organization alarming amounts in lost productivity, negative reputation, and poor recruiting ability.

All this month, we're focusing on the need to foster great workplace cultures. If you haven't already done so, we encourage you to register for our free webinar on this topic. We also have a great Company Culture HR Toolkit that you can download to learn strategies and tactics for improving - or getting started on - the culture in your workplace.