Do you know what HR does and how the function of HR can support your business?

So, what does HR do? Well, HR is often one of the first points of contact for a new employee in a business, but beyond involvement in recruitment, many people don’t fully understand the extent of the support HR can provide a business. In fact, whether you have an in house HR person or department, or you outsource your HR services to someone else, your HR support can provide a number of functions for an organisation.

Compliance

Your HR support should ensure your business is compliant from an employment law perspective, which includes ensuring your employee contracts and policies are fit for purpose, and that you have and, importantly, follow the correct procedures. Failure to keep up to date with employment law or to follow correct procedures could be costly, especially if you end up at employment tribunal, so taking professional HR advice is definitely a worthwhile investment.

Employee Relations

Your HR function will also provide support for any employee relations and people management issues you might face, either managing or guiding you through processes and procedures including:

Engagement and Retention

Professional HR support can help you to get the best out of your teams. Specific HR strategies can be used to improve team engagement, motivation and employee retention, for example, all of which have positive benefits for business performance, cost saving and growth.

Learning and Development

HR can also help to deliver learning and development plans and training programmes. Investing in your team development will reap benefits in terms of performance, innovation and staff retention and can prove more cost effective than recruiting to replace people who leave for better opportunities.

Recruitment

Many organisations choose to outsource their recruitment to a recruitment consultant or agency, to make use of their knowledge & expertise and save time, but HR can support the recruitment process, including providing support with interviews and any subsequent onboarding of successful candidates.

Your HR Support function can also help to ensure your employee salaries and benefits are competitive, through benchmarking exercises and market knowledge, which will improve your recruitment success and employee retention rates.

When do you need HR Support?

You should consider seeking HR support as soon as you are thinking about employing someone, as you will need to have certain documentation in place e.g. employee contracts, and your employees will need access to an employee handbook and policies, as well as a contact if they have a grievance. Whilst in theory you can do ‘HR’ yourself, getting professional HR support can have many benefits and most business owners will find they don’t have the time or knowledge to do it themselves, particularly as the business starts to grow.

HR can help you if you are facing employee relations issues such as disciplinaries or grievances , employee absence issues (including poor attendance and long-term sickness ) and managing underperforming staff – ensuring you follow the correct procedures and providing support during potentially stressful situations. Often, line managers are not fully prepared to deal with the emotional stress that comes with managing people.

You may not need HR support everyday, in fact you may only require occasional help and advice, and in situations like this, outsourcing to an HR consultancy can prove cost-effective. A Pay As You Go HR service like ours means you only pay for what you need, when you need it.

If you do find you’re requiring more regular HR support, it may become viable to employe an in house HR professional or you could choose a retained HR service package with an HR Consultancy. We also offer such a package with an ability to choose how many hours support you need.

How does HR support employees?

HR exists to support employers, ensuring they are legally compliant and help them manage their employees. However, it can also provide support to employees through the implementation of employee wellbeing programmes, benefit schemes and Employee Assistance Programmes (EAPs). HR will also be the first point of contact for employees who wish to raise a grievance.

If you own or manage a business that does not currently have any HR support and would like to learn more about what HR does, talk to us about the support we can provide.

We offer a free HR audit of your current HR provision, documents and policies and provide different HR package solutions to suit your needs.