As a business owner, you might be inclined to leave HR management to the specialists you hired to carry out that function. However, it’s really important that every business owner should have at least some grasp of the principles involved in human resource services so that you will be aware of what’s happening in your own company.
The people assets who work for you are undoubtedly your most valuable assets, and that’s why it’s so important for you to have an understanding of what’s going on in your company’s resources management. Here are some of the most important areas that you should be familiar with so that you can maintain good relationships with your employees and count on good productivity from them.
Recruiting and Hiring
These might be the two most visible aspects of human resource services because, after all, they are one of the primary functions of any HR department. Good employees are literally the lifeblood of any organization and that means finding the best employees is one of the most important tasks of any company. You can use a number of different processes to recruit good candidates, and this will have a direct bearing on the type of candidates who respond, and which parts of the country they respond from.
Once you have a pool of candidates, it will be necessary to conduct interviews and assessments, conduct background checks and reference checks, and carry out drug testing so as to ensure that there are no undesirable elements in an employee’s history. Depending on how many candidates you get from your recruitment process, it may be necessary to make use of some screening methods, so as to narrow down the list of candidates. Of course, the ultimate aim of this whole process is to hire the very best candidates and the best fits for your workplace.
Performance Evaluations
After you have hired an employee, it then becomes important to evaluate their performance, so you know whether or not you’ve made a good choice with your new hire. If an employee does not fit in well with the working environment and the other personnel in your company, it will not be conducive to a productive work atmosphere, and it may actually degrade overall performance.
The job description which you established before hiring an individual can be used to assess their performance against the responsibilities outlined in the job description. For the most part, companies will use an annual performance evaluation cycle, after an employee has passed an initial 90-day probation period.
This will identify high-performing employees versus those who are middle of the pack and low performers. One of the most useful factors in performance evaluations is that it can point out to a candidate employee where they need help and where they need to improve their overall job performance.
Professional Development
When it’s apparent that an employee is struggling in their job responsibilities, learning and development can contribute in a major way to improve performance. Human resources will generally be responsible for providing the materials necessary to stimulate employee growth and to help improve their performance. Ideally, your company should have an established budget for learning and development processes and any materials which might be required.
This could involve training on-site or at remote locations, and it might also involve maintaining a number of videos or printed materials about how to properly perform various job functions within the company. These are things that contribute to employee satisfaction because they help an individual become better at their job, and provide them with a sense of personal growth.
Succession Planning
While it may not be an issue in the first few months after hiring an employee, succession planning is something every HR department should view as critical, especially for valued employees. This is necessary so as to avoid having your company experience major difficulties when a key employee departs for another job.
Every employee in your organization should have a backup who is capable of moving in and immediately performing as needed. If your company does not have any succession planning process in place, you could find yourself in a very awkward situation when an important employee suddenly departs.
Benefits and Compensation
This is probably the single area of human resource services and administration in which an employee is most interested, and for that reason, you as a company owner or manager should also have a major interest in it. All your employees should have fair compensations to motivate good performance since they’ll be more likely to remain loyal to the company for a long period of time.
Primary compensation is the amount of money that you pay an employee for their duties, while secondary compensation consists of perks such as flexible work hours, pensions, daycare benefits, vacation time, and perhaps even a company car.
HR Information System
If your company has a really good HR information system, it will support all the important aspects of human resources described above. For instance, it will have software that is capable of tracking applicants during recruitment processes and monitoring performance on an ongoing basis. It might even have a good learning management system to distribute content to employees internally, and maintain budgets for training and acquiring learning materials.
A payroll system might be included in your HRIS, and this will avoid the necessity of having payroll processed by a third party. You might also expect succession planning to be monitored and maintained within your HRIS so that the process can be formalized and there won’t be any oversights in covering important employees.
Virtually you can include all the important functions your HR department should carry out in a single outstanding HR information system. Given the fact that this function is so important to your company, it’s definitely worthwhile having a good system in place, so that you won’t have to worry about the proper handling of employees.
