IT’S hard being the boss of a company. You need to make the tough decisions that no one else wants to make and you have to appear confident and in control at all times. It can be tough balancing the expenditure of the company with what’s best for the company. Many companies don’t have an HR department (even if it’s just one person) because it’s one thing they think they can handle themselves, but once you get more than, say, 10 staff, you will need to hire someone to do it … and here’s why.
Conflict Resolution
This is one of the main jobs of an HR professional and it takes training in mediation to get it right. If you, as the boss, are acting as the HR department, then your staff have no one to turn to if they have a problem with you. An HR professional can mediate any disputes between you and the staff and of course any disputes amongst the staff.
Employee Satisfaction
I find that managers are too close to the situation to accurately assess employee satisfaction. This is partly because employees are not going to feel comfortable speaking to you about any issues that they have (partly because you’ll be the problem). Having a HR professional can mean that staff have a person who they can talk too, but not only that, an HR professional will be able to conduct surveys and questionnaires to more accurately assess the satisfaction levels within the company.
Budget
What a lot of people don’t understand is that HR professionals are trained in HR. It is not just something anyone can learn how to do in a week on the job. One of the benefits of an HR professional is that they understand the salaries and can analyse job functions of current and incoming staff to best determine their salary. So before you offer that 25k position out, check with HR as it might only be worth 20k to start with.
File Management
This is a rudimentary task (handling the staff files) that anyone can handle, however it can be time-consuming for you to do, especially considering you have to be running the business as well. There are softwares you can implement like XCD HR online software, for example, that will streamline many of the HR processes, but it’s most effective when paired with a trained professional.
Training and Development
This depends on the industry that you work in, however at some point staff will need to be trained for more complex tasks or to be readied for promotion. HR staff are trained for this purpose. They can organise the training and keep a record of it as well as any staff qualifications, so when it comes to promotion time, you will have all the information and along with your HR department, can make the decision that best benefits the company.
As you can see, HR is not a waste of time and as your company grows the need will become greater and greater, so it’s best to invest in a professional now as the earlier they get in the quicker they can streamline the company and increase your profits.
