Behind every business is a busy HR team dedicated to supporting all employees from the ground up. For startup businesses, this can be a confusing concept to get right. As a teething company, you are likely to get it wrong at some point down the line. However, with the correct guidance, you can minimize your shortcomings. Throughout this article, we will guide you through every essential step involved in a successful HR setup.
Why Have an HR Policy?
Before we dive in and dissect the ins and outs of Human Resources, you need to understand why they’re important. For your startup, creating HR policies revolves around protecting you in the interim, while securing your future. The stronger your HR, the happier your employees will be, and the better your talent retention will be. On a basic level, your policy needs to comply with federal laws. However, your policy needs to run deeper than that – it needs to guarantee a flawed experience that will boost your business ROI. Once you’ve begun seeing a return, you can hire G&A Partners for HR services Salt Lake City to take on some of the menial tasks.
Step 1 – Have a Plan
Although you don’t need to have everything up and running on the day you launch, you do need to have a plan at least. This will cover your back as you creep into the opening states.
Step 2 – Smooth Onboarding
Outlining exactly what your hiring procedures are is imperative, even for a startup business. In this step, you need to decide where you will source talent, what your talent criteria are, and how you will work your onboarding process. You need to make sure you’re prepared for hiring no matter what stage in the game you are in. You will need:
- A well-written job offer letter
- Employee details and payroll information
- Equality terms and conditions – you need to be transparent
- Employee verification form – 1-9
- Any other employment agreements including intellectual property
As well as ticking the required paperwork boxes, you need to set your new employees up for success. Use the onboarding time to nail down your expectations from day one. During their first few months, make yourself available for regular check-ins.
Step 3 – Compliance, Health, and Safety Regulations
Your new business needs to be safe for everyone involved, and you also need to comply with various federal and state laws. For example, you must adhere to the Occupational Safety and Health Act. You will need to consider a safety and behavior plan:
- Behavior – This involves your sexual harassment policies, equal opportunities, as well as any other discipline guidelines you need.
- Safety – This entails marking down the fire escape routes and creating action plans for all instances of safety. You also need to note down your provision for first aid and what equipment you have on-site.
If your HR department works to ensure federal regulations are adhered to, you will cover your backs in the unfortunate event you face lawsuits. As a manager of a startup, you need to ensure your HR team stays ahead of the trends – because workplace policy evolves all the time.
Step 4 – Employment Compensations
You’ve got your hiring process off the ground, you’re compliant with state and federal laws, and now it’s time to decide how you’ll keep your talent onboard. Your compensations need to be appealing and compete well with your opponents. Your plan needs to include vacations times, sick policies, retirement benefits, and any other employee incentives.
- Payroll management. The best way to keep on top of your payroll is to automate the process. That way, your HR team can spend more time focusing on what matters – helping your business grow.
- Pay structure. You need to carry out competitor research and formulate a pay structure that competes well. You can find out more information about pay structuring here.
- Company perks. You will have the required benefit. However, to make your workplace more appealing, you need to throw in some extra additions that include 401K accounts, medical cover, and life insurance.
Step 5 – Secure Employee Relationships
Grievances happen in the workplace no matter what you do to avoid them because we’re all human at the end of the day. You can stay on top of these by being explicitly clear about your company values from the onset. Further, you should create an avenue for generating feedback – this can be as simple as creating a monthly questionnaire with the opportunity to make suggestions. After you’ve received feedback, you should consider changes seriously to make people feel valued. If you can’t fulfill requests, you need to be clear as to why – this will strengthen your company’s integrity and increase productivity.
Step 6 – Nail Down Training Material
In the teething stages of your new business, you need to ensure everyone is adequately trained. You can keep on top of this by keeping accurate and update personnel files, creating employee progress and tracking procedures. If you don’t train your employees properly, they will underperform and bring your revenue down.
Step 7 – Be Ready for Inevitable Audits
This is a scary business but, eventually, you will be audited, and you need to have everything in order. Failure to do so can result in fines and lawsuits. To help you out, we’ve included a list of everything you need to produce for an audit:
Documents
- Personnel files
- Safety action plans
- Required posters
- Performance evaluations
- Business strategies
Policies
- Payroll
- Benefits/compensations
- Recruitment procedures
- Training and onboarding
- Employee relations
- Company policies
- Pay structures
Keeping accurate documents on all of the above points will help you to stay legal and pass your audits.
Developing HR procedures takes hard work and a lot of time. You need to know the latest regulations and ensure you tick the legal boxes. Then, you need to take your policy further than that by ensuring that it benefits the employees on every level. Once your HR department is up and running, place everything into a booklet that can be used by employees as well as anyone else – this will ensure transparency.