For a small business, the human resources function is helpful for more than just payroll processing and handling insurance. Human resources play a major role in the company’s strategy as well as handling employee activities. One serious flaw with many small businesses or new startups is that they fail to recognize the quintessential nature of human resource efforts. Without appropriate in-house or outsourced human resource representation, a company can become severely hampered by problems such as employee turnover, low productivity, and morale crises. Any wise startup manager (or any business owner for that matter) will have carefully considered the value of human resources and their endeavors to represent this important element of business. Below are four reasons why your company should potentially consider getting some assistance with its human resources management.
Budget Control
Human resources can curb spending through various methods such as negotiating lower rates for benefits including health care coverage. Human resources can ensure realistic and competitive wages based on studies in the labor market, salary analysis based on specific job functions and employment trends. Because most small businesses have budget constraints, the human resources function is extremely helpful.
Training and Development
Human resources has the ability to conduct needs assessments for the organization’s workforce to decide the kind of employee development and skills training are necessary to improve qualifications and skills. Companies just starting out can benefit from human resources training their existing staff. It costs a lot less money to handle the training needs of existing staff versus hiring additional staff with more qualifications. This also helps reduce turnover and retains employees.
Performance Improvement
Human resources can develop your performance management systems. Without human resources having a plan to measure performance, employees can find themselves in jobs that don’t fit their expertise or skills. Also, when employees fall below the employer’s expectations, they might stay on the payroll creating too much wasted money on low-quality employees.
Conflict Resolution
No matter how small or large your business is, conflicts in the workplace are inevitable. Given the wide diversity of backgrounds, personalities, work styles and different levels of experience with employees, conflicting situations are bound to cause friction now and then. A manager in human resources or one of the human resources staff trained to manage employee relations situations can identify these conflicts and resolve them between two employees or an employee and a manager. This helps restore positive attitudes and builds better working relationships.
Having human resources as a part of your business will ensure that the workforce embraces the philosophy of the company as well as their business principles. For any small business, having a cohesive working environment is important. The first chance that human resources has to make this happen is by making wise hiring decisions to identify desirable personality and working traits along with on-boarding and orientation programs. For these reasons and more, every small company will benefit from having human resources involved in their business.
Information for this article was found on www.bamboohr.com