What are the five reasons you don’t need a HR Manager in your business?

Let’s face it starting a business is hard, real hard - running it successfully is possibly even harder. There is so much to do in so little time and so much that you want to achieve with limited resources - and let’s face it, with limited cash. You have enormous dreams that you are desperate to make a reality.

The issue is that you need to maximise all the resources at your disposal, to squeeze the most out of them as you can. A critical but often under-utilised area within most small businesses is often your most expensive one - your employees. So I thought that we would explore the five reasons not to get any HR support:

1. You are an exceptional recruiter - many people think recruitment is easy, working with  your ‘gut feel’ until you hire your first ‘dud’. There is also a misconception that recruitment is a quick process. Trouble is, if you have 2 weeks’ notice written into your employees’ contracts, it’s highly unlikely that you will replace a departing employee in time.  The other issue is that employers don’t ask behavioural or cultural-fit questions, they focus on the technical ones - but they rarely test whether the candidate can actually do what they say they can

2. You are an employee relations lawyer – you are completely across all the employment relations legislation such as the Fair Work Act, Anti-discrimination Action and Workplace Health & Safety and you have implemented compliant policies, which have been shared  with your team )plus they have signed to acknowledge that they will abide by the policies). A quick test for you - what is flexible working and who is entitled to ask for it? What is a valid reason to say no?

3. You are a trained psychologist – employees are human and as employees they also bring their individual complexity, and their personal life to work. Throw is some office conflict and you need a counselling background to navigate the issues and more importantly, the solutions. Most business owners tend to fear the time when the tears start and a box of tissues and a lengthy session is needed to get the employee back to work

4. You are a sports coach - you are a high performance sports coach used to developing and implementing strategies to maximise the high performance of your athletes. Coaching and the constant development of your employees’ skills is your forte. You are used to progressing employees through the ranks. Remember people don’t leave organisations they leave managers

5. You enjoy firing employees – you know how to terminate employees for non-performance, gross misconduct, misconduct and also when and how you can make a role redundant. You have the documentation, understand what payouts are required and also have the stomach for it.

The problem is that you need to have all of the above covered plus have a knowledge and understanding about finance, social media, legal issues, marketing, sales and business development plus your core offering. Tough ask I think.

If you have all of this covered then you don’t need me or my team (and you are probably not reading this article anyway as your business is booming). Well done! If not, don’t stress - this is all fixable.

How would you rate your knowledge in the field of employee management?

Natasha Hawker owns Employee Matters Pty Ltd an HR Consultancy that assists small to medium businesses with their HR functions to make them more efficient and profitable. Their offering includes HR Management, Recruitment, Training, Coaching, and Exit Management – find them at www.employeematters.com.au