The BER months (September through December) are a favorite season for many. There’s renewed energy from back-to-school routines, football weekends, holiday gatherings, and the cozy shift in weather. Yet for many, it’s also a high-pressure time of year, with competing priorities at both work and home. At home, there’s the stress of new routines, sports and extracurriculars ramping up, holiday parties, decorating, and endless commitments as we head into the final stretch of the year. At work, it’s reviewing project lists, measuring progress against annual goals, and balancing year-end performance reviews with strategy, budget, and planning for the year ahead. With all of this, it’s time to reflect on how we are closing out the year compared to the goals we set back in January and for many of us to think about how we will get everything done in the remaining weeks.
Studies show that autumn is the most productive season. For HR and business leaders, this window of time is critical. The ‘BER months’ provide an opportunity not only to finish strong but also to set the stage for success in the new year. Whether it’s updating policies, preparing for compensation reviews, optimizing HR systems, or launching long-postponed people initiatives, now is the time to prioritize the projects that will have the greatest impact on employees and the business.
Here are some key people initiatives and projects to focus on before the year wraps up:
- HR Assessments
- Compensation Structures
- People Surveys
- Performance Reviews
- Training & Coaching Programs
- HR Systems
HR Assessments:
When was the last time you stepped back to confirm your people, processes and technology truly align with the current needs of the business? Assessments provide that opportunity offering an external lens to identify what’s working well and where improvements can be made.
- These could answer questions like: Are we compliant on state, federal and local regulations? Do we have the right people, processes and systems in place that align with the business goals? Are we influencing and driving change to meet the organizational and team needs? From a broader organizational view, they can also clarify those moments when you sense something isn’t working but can’t quite pinpoint what.
- Engaging an external third-party resource helps mitigate bias and brings fresh perspectives that are often hard to see internally.
- An assessment not only highlights strengths and improvement opportunities but also provides clear, actionable recommendations. You decide what to prioritize, when to act, and how to address each area. Not everything requires immediate action, and the recommendations can be built into a phased plan that fits your timeline, whether short-term or spread out over months or years.
Compensation Structures:
Compensation studies should be done every 1-3 years, given the frequent market changes. Compensation is one of the most critical drivers of attracting and retaining top talent, and it’s far more than just market data. In our experience, many organizations lack the right information to diagnose their challenges and build solutions that align with their talent strategy.
- Compensation is both an art and a science. In fact, the past three years have brought more change in compensation practices than the prior two decades combined, requiring real expertise in this space.
- Market analysis and benchmarking data is just a part of creating a strong compensation plan. Before you even start pulling data, you need to ensure your job descriptions are updated and match the true duties your team is performing. Some companies will only do a job title match for pulling data. Think about how different a Project Manager could be at one company over another. Detailed job duties are crucial to setting accurate salary ranges.
- With updated job descriptions and reliable data, the next step is building salary bands and embedding pay equity principles. A strong compensation partner can then help design a strategy that evolves with performance development and career pathing, creating a forward-looking plan rooted in your company’s unique compensation philosophy. A really strong partner doesn’t just design the strategy though, they also educate your team along the way, building confidence in both the philosophy and how to carry it forward for years to come.
People Surveys:
Do you know how your employees feel about your company and its goals? Research consistently shows that engaged, satisfied employees are more productive and positively impact the bottom line. The real question is: how often are you capturing and evaluating their perceptions of how things are going?
- Employee experience surveys provide valuable insight into how employees view the organization. These insights help leaders identify where changes in policy, process, or communication may be needed to create a stronger workplace experience. Common survey topics include organizational culture, leadership accountability, policies and practices, recruitment and retention, and talent management areas such as performance management, career development, succession planning, mentoring, coaching, and training.
- Comprehensive surveys can uncover root issues, while shorter pulse surveys serve as useful check-ins or follow-up, often conducted every 1–2 years between comprehensive surveys.
- If you’re seeking feedback specifically about HR, service delivery surveys can provide clarity on employee perceptions of HR awareness, responsiveness, timeliness, resolution quality, and escalation processes.
Performance Reviews:
When’s the last time your performance process was updated? The way work gets done and the way people want to receive feedback and develop has shifted dramatically in recent years. Traditional approaches like the annual review often fall short of meeting employee needs and influencing organizational outcomes. In fact, more than half of employees believe annual reviews do little to improve performance.
- Today’s performance management needs to balance organizational outcomes with employee growth and satisfaction. That means moving away from legacy, one-time reviews and toward clear, ongoing communication that makes performance expectations transparent.
- Employees want real-time feedback and clarity around their future. They’re asking: What skills do I need to develop to earn a promotion or raise? What outcomes does leadership expect from me? How will I know if I’m on the right path?
- Whether your process is paper-based or system-driven, it should be easy to understand, digestible, and actionable. Employees need to see what opportunities exist and how to reach them. Career paths don’t have to be a ladder—they can be a lattice—but everyone deserves recognition for their contributions and a clear understanding of how to achieve their goals.
Training & Coaching Programs:
Coaching and training are essential in driving growth for both individuals and organizations. Yet, these efforts often get pushed aside by day-to-day demands or budget constraints. With more employees expecting development opportunities as a reason to stay, now is the time to invest in programs that strengthen leadership and improve workplace interactions. Skill-building and mentoring initiatives also support succession planning and workforce development, especially as Baby Boomers begin retiring from the workforce.
- Host a targeted skills workshop on timely topics such as communication, building relationships, inclusion, time management, or leading hybrid teams equipping staff with practical tools they can apply immediately. These could be half day sessions or short lunch and learns.
- Offer coaching for emerging leaders to strengthen decision-making, relationship building, and confidence in preparation for the year ahead. External coaches can provide valuable benefits to increase performance and development for both the individual and the organization. These can be done as 1:1 sessions or small groups.
- Run a multi-generational workforce session to help teams better collaborate, improve understanding across age groups, and reduce friction.
HR Systems:
Technology can either empower a team to be highly productive or, if inadequate, make them inefficient and frustrated. Which category do you fall into? Are your systems providing efficiency or are they frustrating people?
- For HR teams, having accurate employee data that’s easily accessible is critical. Employees need access when they need it, and managers must be able to quickly generate reports to make informed business decisions.
- With the rapid growth of AI and evolving technology, having the right HR system is more important than ever. But even with a system in place, it’s essential to ask: Is it being fully optimized? Is your team trained to use it effectively? Are all the modules you’re paying for being used correctly? Or maybe now is the right time to implement a new HRIS that captures employee data securely while giving managers the insights they need to manage more effectively.
- Partnering with an expert to select, optimize, or implement an HRIS ensures you ask the right questions upfront, align business needs with system capabilities, and drive strong user adoption so your team spends time on meaningful work, not wrestling with technology.
Before you start to feel too overwhelmed, it’s common for many teams not to have the bandwidth or expertise to take on some of these projects. HR is being required to do more and more with leaner teams every day. Some of these require a deep expertise that most HR teams don’t have on their roster. In addition to project support, outsourcing or fractional HR support could be a way to help with the many demands of HR, allowing you to get caught up or ahead of it.
Exude Human Capital provides dynamic solutions in HR outsourcing, compensation strategies, strategic advisory, organizational and cultural assessments, DEIB advisory and training, coaching, and leadership development programs. We understand that people are the cornerstone of every successful organization. We’re dedicated to helping organizations—big, small, and everything in between—lift up their people, their mission, and their bottom line. Our diverse team of talented consultants is committed to delivering impactful, tailored strategies that align with your goals and values.
Grab that pumpkin spice latte, dust off those annual goals, and make the BER months the most productive few months of the year.
Let’s talk about the projects you’ve been meaning to tackle…before the ball drops!
