Running a small business can come with a lot of tricky challenges but doing something you love every single day makes it all worth it. As a small business owner or manager that has never had experience running a business before, it can be confusing dealing with all kinds of business aspects that you have never heard of. You are diving into the unknown, but we can help ensure that you will swim and not drown … in the HR side of things.
hussetHR was founded in 2013 and ever since then we have helped many businesses Australia wide navigate the world of HR. We integrate our experience and ability and the husset Model of HR creating the best business outcomes.
Our HR checklist for small business
- Integrate cloud services to manage your employees and payroll… we recommend ditching the paper!
- Arrange onboarding and off-boarding in an easy and efficient way
- Identify skills and training gaps
- Keeping updated on employee entitlement
- Create a wide range of employee development opportunities
- Hire employees best suited for your business
- Create an employee handbook
- Set up organisation wide policies and procedures
Lastly …
Partner with a team of HR professionals that allow you to focus on why you got into business in the first place.
What are the HR requirements for a small business?
No matter how big or small your business is, your employees are your Human Assets, or as we like to call them hussets!. This means you must always to put them first!
Australia has one of the most complex and confusing employment landscapes in the world. You are required as a business to correctly pay your employees, give them the correct entitlements, protection from bullying and harassment at work, flexibility and much more. Treat your employees how you would expect to be treated in a workplace.
- Know what award applies to your business
Many jobs in Australia are covered by an Award or enterprise agreement. There are many various industry, occupational awards, minimum pay rates, workplace entitlements and other conditions of employment. It is important that you negotiate and discuss your employees contracted hours of work at the business. This could either be Full-Time, Part-Time or Casual. All three of these have different employee entitlements so be sure to triple check everything to make sure you are doing the right thing by your employees and to make sure that you do not face any nasty surprises.
- Workplace protection + Safe working conditions
This one is a no brainer! All employees deserve to feel safe in their place of work. It is no longer about physical safety, mental safety must also be supported. This means any kind of bullying or harassment needs to be taken extremely seriously. Setting up employee standards as well as policies and procedures for these kinds of issues are fantastic way to not only prevent the issue from arising but make the process of dealing with an issue more straight forward. Further than that, it is important the you regularly train and educate your employees on acceptable workplace behaviour.
- Correct end of employment procedure
This is important to ensure you are preventing unfair dismissal issues for the business. There are also minimum notice requirements for the various kinds of employees, which you need to be aware of. Be the kind of manager that is happy for your team when they feel it is the right time to move on. Support them through this transition to show how grateful you are for their amazing help and ability.
- Offer training and development opportunities
Training and development activities are is something we regularly speak about on the blogs, but it is one that we think is HUGELY IMPORTANT! Employees want to know that they can grow and develop within the business. Not only will your team’s skillset continue to grow and develop helping you reach your business goals BUT it will also instil a greater sense of purpose at the company which = high job satisfaction levels!!
Access more information on employee training and development here.
Suggested HR strategy for small businesses
Here at hussetHR we are consistently working with businesses to create the best Human Resource strategy that is individualised to their needs. We strongly believe in integrating the husset Model into every business to maximise your Human Assets aka hussets!
The husset Model of HR is made up for 6 phases of the employee life cycle.
- Identify and communicate
- Find and recruit
- Onboard and induct
- Manage and develop
- Train and grow
- Retain and redeploy
Each phase should be performed over a recommended 6-8 weeks. This model helps business owners recognise what HR activity’s need to be performed to effectively utilise all employees from the beginning to the end of their time at the organisation. Each of these individual elements have various Human Resource activities that stem off them, which we can help achieve at your business.
The reason we encourage the use of the model is because it creates a continuous business cycle of improvement allowing for further refinement as the organisation grows and evolves.
Should small business owners use HR consulting services?
Ok so if you have not already, I am sure you are wondering whether you should begin outsourcing your Human Resources for your business. Some larger businesses choose to have an in-house Human Resource department, but with a consistently updating and innovating world outsourcing is becoming even more popular.
Outsourcing your businesses HR is a cost-effective method. You are making sure your business and employees are in the best of hands. Our services are all of what we discussed above like Fair Work compliance, employee onboarding & offboarding, performance management, as well as HR consultancy when you need us most. HR is no longer an administrative cost but a profit making function.
There are NUMEROUS benefits of choosing us to do your HR for you. Read them here!!
We hope this has given you a little indication of important HR topics you MUST be aware of when running a business. If you have any further questions drop a comment below or call us today.