5 Reasons Why Your Growing Small Business Needs An HR Partner!

As a small business owner, like Me, I am sure that you wear many different hats each and every day, and some of those hats you may not be experienced enough to do but you feel that you have to. The last thing you want to do is try to "wing it" with HR, especially as you grow. HR compliance is extremely important, tricky, and can be VERY costly to your business when you make mistakes. Below are 5 reasons why you need to have an HR partner to keep YOU and your growing small business protected.

1. HR Compliance is VERY important.

There are so many aspects to HR compliance that can get a small business into trouble if not done carefully and according to the law. This can range from simple things like completing an I-9 document correctly to more complicated compliance issues like making sure that every employee has the correct employment status according to the FLSA laws (Fair Labor Standards Act). Trust me when I say that the very last thing that you want to happen is to have the Dept. of Labor tell you that you have misclassified your employees, and now you owe thousands of dollars in back pay and fines! Not fun! An HR partner can help you make sure that your employees are classified correctly, compensated correctly, have job titles and job descriptions that articulate their roles and responsibilities correctly, and ultimately make sure that you are protected.

2. Your Office Manager is most likely NOT an HR professional.

Many small business owners make the mistake of thinking that HR is just a bunch of "administrative tasks", and that their office manager or the office admin can simply handle it. Big mistake! HR is far from being an administrative job. Putting the HR compliance into the hands of your office manager or general office admin is just as dangerous as trying to wear this hat yourself. Don't get me wrong, your office manager and other administrative employees serve a huge purpose for your business and are fantastic I'm sure, BUT unless they have had significant experience specifically in HR then you are putting you and your company at great risk. What you need is an HR partner to come in and set-up all of your HR compliant processes, procedures and systems, and then work with your Office Manager on training them how to do all of this correctly and per applicable laws.

3. Hiring is really, really hard.

Recruiting and hiring new employees can be exhausting for most small business owners that are trying to grow their company. More often than not you are so busy that you have little time for it, you don't enjoy doing it, or you don't really know how to interview someone to help determine if they are actually a good fit for your company and the role that you are interviewing them for. As a business owner, recruiting and hiring new employees that will help you grow your business is one of the most important things that you will do. Additionally, making sure that you are hiring the right person for the right position is imperative! The other aspect to your hiring process is the candidate experience. You want to make sure that you give ALL candidates a fantastic experience with your company during every point in the interview process, regardless if you end up hiring them or not. Every single person that applies to your company for a job will end up being either a promoter of your brand, or someone who is out in the marketplace telling others about the horrible experience that they had with your company during the interview process. As a growing business you want to make sure that every candidate tells people that even though you didn't hire them that their experience with your company was so fantastic that they recommend everyone apply with you! An HR partner can help you build a solid recruiting process that creates candidate pipelines for current and future positions so you can scale successfully, and create an interview process that not only helps you better identify the right candidate for the right role, but also provides a stellar candidate experience so that you have people raving about you and your business in the local community!

4. New employee on-boarding isn't a joke!

So you have identified the perfect person for that role you have been trying to fill, and now they have showed up for their first day. Awesome! Now what? Well, many times small business owners are not nearly as prepared for this as they should be. You have spent all that time, money and energy trying to find this person, and now they show up for their first day and nobody is prepared. This is a horrible experience for a new employee on their first day. Equipment isn't ready, logins/passwords haven't been created yet, other employees have no idea that this person has even been hired so when they show up nobody has any idea who they are, their desk or office hasn't been cleaned and prepared for them, no training plan has been established, there isn't any new hire paperwork or employee handbook established, created or prepared for this new employee, and most likely there is nothing in place to evaluate how this new employee is actually performing in their new role at 30 days, 60 days, 90 days, etc. See how horrible of an experience this would be for a brand new employee that you worked so hard to get.....This is something that an HR partner can help you with. Preparing for, organizing and establishing a solid new hire orientation and on-boarding program will give your new employees an outstanding experience, along with helping to set them up for success in their role.

5. Employee engagement IS a real thing.

Employee engagement is incredibly important! This can include things like recognition programs for work anniversaries, birthdays, employee awards, or just simply giving honest and thoughtful "Thank You's" to your employees. Employee engagement also includes things like career planning and professional development for your employees. Talking to your employees regularly about their career goals and career path within your company as you grow is really important, and can mean a lot to them. Many of these types of programs can be created with little to no financial investment, and really go a long way with increasing engagement with your employees and making them feel valued and appreciated. An HR partner can work with you and your employees to help develop internal programs like this that will help create a great working environment that your employees will enjoy coming into everyday.

These are just a few reasons why it's important for a small business owner to have a strong HR partner. At a certain size it just doesn't make sense to have an experienced HR professional full-time internally on your staff, so having an HR partner like People Focused HR is ideal and can be very impactful for your growing small business. People Focused HR would love to meet with you to learn about your HR needs, and talk with you about what we can do to help. We can also come in and perform a free initial HR audit that will show you from an HR compliance perspective what you are doing right, and what areas are really putting you at risk.

If you are interested in contacting us to set-up an appointment then please click on the link to our Contact Form below and our team will be in touch with you soon. Thanks!

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https://www.peoplefocusedhr.com/contact

Jamy Smith

Owner

People Focused HR