The Perfect Fit: HR and Your Business Size
How big does my business have to be before HR is a requirement?
Human Resources, or HR, is an integral component in most large businesses—but what about smaller ones? If you’re here, you’re probably already wondering whether or not you should hire an HR professional. While HR isn’t always necessary for small businesses and startups, it’s never an unwelcome addition either. Here are a few reasons that you should consider implementing an HR program regardless of how many employees you have.
The Basics
HR departments handle a myriad of different situations, from employee onboarding to counseling and workplace culture management. The differences between HR departments’ responsibilities are vast and impractical to cover here, so you should just focus on what they have in common: they all save you lots of time and money in the long run, and they make your company a better place in the process.
Even if you weren’t to consider every possible task that your HR department could feasibly take on, think about how much easier your company’s operation would be if HR simply handled the onboarding procedures. Instead of taking precious time and resources away from their most efficient operations, you could leave one of the most important times in an employee’s career to someone who knows how to handle it best.
Spending money to make money isn’t always the most viable strategy, but investing in HR for your company has a proven financial benefit from this angle—especially when you consider that your employees will perform better as a result.
Where this theory falls short is for small, tight-knit companies with roots firmly embedded in workplace culture. While there’s always room to add more professionals to your staff, hiring an HR employee may put you in a redundant position if this is your situation.
Improving Morale
Human Resources employees have unique advantages insofar as they are able to view other employees objectively; by operating outside of the boundaries of normal workplace culture, they’re free to analyze and—if need be—critique it free of bias.
To this end, HR departments can usually identify budding problems in your workplace well before they manifest into actual problems. Furthermore, your HR team address existing problems of which you might even be completely unaware. Since employees will usually feel much safer discussing workplace drama with an HR employee than with you, your HR team can help mitigate small problems before they turn into losses.
Of course, there don’t have to be glaring problems in your workplace to warrant some tweaking or additions, and an HR team can help elevate your company beyond your potential scope. It’s hard to deny that a nonpartisan perspective is typically beneficial, both for your employees and for your business as a whole.
Morale can always stand improvement, no matter how carefully curated your workplace environment is. You might not be able to justify hiring a full-time HR team to assess and reconstruct your business culture, but you should at least consider bringing in a contractor to give you a cursory overview. The trade-off is that there will always be a disconnect between contractors and employees, whereas HR members are ultimately part of the team.
Technicalities
The less-fun stuff that you can offload onto HR employees includes things like payroll management, legal navigation, and pretty much anything else that involves loopholes, compliance, and keeping your foot as far away from your mouth as possible.
If you’re sitting on only 15 employees, you’re probably relatively familiar with some—if not all—of the annual legal pitfalls and how to avoid them; however, if you plan on growing even by a factor of two, your potential culpability will grow exponentially. Put frankly, you have better things to do (and things at which you’re more proficient) than juggling a bunch of numbers and legislature. With an HR department, you can leave all of that to the professionals and focus on what you do best.
One could dedicate an entire book to the benefits of having an HR department handle payroll rather than doing it yourself, but the abridged version is this: payroll mistakes aren’t cheap, and they don’t go away. The fewer wrenches in the system with which you have to contend, the smoother your whole operating will be—and the fewer catastrophic failures you’ll have to experience. Letting HR handle your payroll is the single best decision you can possibly make when adding HR to your staff.
There are also wellbeing issues to consider, such as your employees’ mental health or other potential hiccups that are bound to arise as the year grinds on. Your workers aren’t perfect, and they will invariably need some kind of mental help along the way; an HR department provides an in-house answer to that eventual concern.
Growing Your Business
Human Resources departments are also known for locating and recruiting talent. As your business grows, you clearly don’t want to add average employees to your operation—you want the best. It’s not feasible on any level of business to hand-pick every single new face, so let someone who understands your business on a fundamental level do the legwork.
Of course, HR isn’t just there to bring new people in. Your HR team will help hone and develop your employees as your business grows, allow the employees to grow with the business rather than struggling progressively more to keep it standing. Happier, more developed employees make for better employees, and that’s always good for you.
Finally, your HR team will help employees with things like exit interviews and post-work counseling, which helps decrease the negative stigma around an employee leaving (volitionally or otherwise). It’s always hard to cope with the loss of an employee—especially one engrained in your workplace culture—but your HR department will make the process easier on you, the remaining employees, and the employee who leaves.
Abacus Payroll’s HR Help Center.
Adding any number of employees to your staff is a momentous undertaking, and a Human Resources department is no different. Whether you’re considering adding an HR department or you’d just like to know more, call Abacus Payroll at (856) 667-6225 today!
