Why you need HR
In our recent article Back to Basics we talked about engaging people in business. But it got us thinking. HR is more then employment contacts. HR is the whole end to end system of people, I guess that’s why it is called the employment lifecycle, from hire to fire and everything in between. But what exactly does that mean?
As some point in most people’s lives, they’ve been an Employee. Which means they’ve probably had an employment contract, under some sort of induction, engaged in a review process and potentially even quit or been removed from a business. So, there is some sort of understanding around what this functional area of the business does. But when we say it’s more than just that, we’re not joking.
HR is a fundamental core business element
HR is a fundamental core business element and it’s easy to see why.
HR manages all the administrative stuff from a compliance perspective. We are the ones introducing, monitoring and providing feedback on rules and regulations that exist in business. If you think about it during the onboarding phase of an Employee it is highly regulated with documents, someone needs to administer or collate this information for document retention.
But realistically before you even get to that point HR has had to be involved in the recruitment phase of the employment. Whether it be finding potential employees, screening and assessing the candidates and negotiating job offers. HR have this involvement from the get-go. They are then responsible for ensuring that the Employees are working under the appropriate conditions as governed by legislation.
HR
The legislation is more then just the Fair Work Act. Consideration needs to be given to safety, anti discrimination laws and any applicable industry bodies. It’s a tough gig to be across all of these, especially when changes are happening quickly like they have during the COVID 19 pandemic. Not only are HR looking to ensure compliance within these areas, they’re also looking at how Employee performance is against some of these areas.
Employee performance is paramount to productivity and productivity is paramount to the bottom line of a business. HR has a huge impact in keeping workers happy and productive. This might come through a retention strategy, goal alignment and performance evaluation framework. There needs to be some metric to measure success and under-performance. Even if it’s a simple as a job checklist. Something is better then nothing.
Especially if things go sour! You guessed it—HR also have the fun role of performance managing Employees. HR also plays a part even in the termination and dismissing Employees. If we’re lucky we can also then be called upon to represent on behalf of the Employer at a Fair Work hearing. So if you didn’t believe before when we said we’re full employment cycle, perhaps you do now!
So now that we’ve blown your mind, hopefully you’re thinking about how you manage all this internally. If we’re being realistic you don’t need to. This is where we can help. Everything that we’ve mentioned above is something that we can do. Your people are our people. We can help you take the hassle out of managing this complex and ever changing minefield. There is a lot to understanding and comply with and the cost of non compliance is extremely high. You owe it to yourself to have the right process and procedures in place to protect what you have built and will continue to build.
Whilst we don’t want to scare you, the saying goes: “What you don’t know, you don’t know.” That has the potential to hurt you both emotionally and financial. We work with people, we know that they are fickle and complex but that’s exactly why you’d work with us. We get it. We want to make this core business unit one that is simple, straightforward and doesn’t create a headache for you!
If you want to discuss how we can work together please reach out to us at Now Actually.
