Five Things Every Business Owner Needs to Know about Human Resources
As a business owner, human resources is one of your most essential functions. Nothing happens in your business without impacting the people that work in your business.
Here are five things you should know.
1. Candidate Selection is Key!!
There are multi-step hiring processes in large companies that utilize everything from phone screenings to job try-outs to determine if a candidate is a good fit. As a business owner, you don't have time to spend doing this for multiple candidates.
Ensure your job descriptions are clear and that you have a process in place for checking references and backgrounds before someone comes in for an interview.
Doing this upfront will save you time later by ensuring you know which candidates are a good fit on paper before you speak to them.
2. How to Deliver Job Offer
After you've chosen your perfect candidate, now it's time to offer them a job.
Job offers should be in writing and include all the terms of hire.
Make sure you have contingencies such as drug tests and background checks and pay rate, benefits offered, estimated start date, and documents required to start work.
You should also email those candidates who were not selected, letting them know they are no longer being considered. This allows them to continue their job search and helps create a positive employer brand reputation for you.
3. Have a Strong Onboarding Process
Onboarding an employee is an essential part of the employee life cycle.
How you start new employees will determine how they interact with your customers and how well they do their job.
Ensure that your orientation and onboarding process includes walking them through required paperwork, giving them a history of the company and its policies, and an extensive training period so they learn their role well.
4. Performance Management is Key
Often, business owners think of performance management as writing people up. But it is much more than that.
Performance management is ensuring that the person and organization meet their goals.
You do this through providing relevant information, maintaining two-way dialogue, identifying what your employees need, providing continuous support and feedback, and recognizing them for a job well done.
5. Evaluate Performance Consistently
Formal reviews are essential to ensure that all your employees are delivering the best performance possible. This a chance for you to sit down and evaluate each person against what you told them the job is. It is also time for you to
Determine how well you have done communicating what needs to be done.
This is also a great time to update your job descriptions because you can determine if there are essential functions that must be performed that you didn't previously recognize.
