At Prestige Business Management, we understand how exciting it can be starting up a business. Our start-up services for small businesses are bespoke solutions designed to help improve your business processes. However, we also understand that not everyone understands every aspect of the business operation. In the spirit of this awareness, we have in the past created guides for key functions – like marketing. This time we have decided to focus on Human Resources.

As we’ve already stated it is an exciting time when you launch your own company. You focus so much of your energy making sure your product or service is just right and then you focus all your energy on selling it. This can leave some of the important tasks at the wayside. As your company grows, you cannot afford to leave human resource management on the side-line. As new employees become a big part of your growing business, you need sound HR processes to help make sure your company’s culture and values are cemented with new staff from the very first day they start with your company.

Bad habits and poorly managed staff can store up problems that can really affect your business in the medium-to-long term. Start-ups can ferment casual relationships during those early key stages of growth. However, being casual within staff relations can in the longer-term damage the company. You need to instill within your new starters the information and awareness within them that means they meet your key business needs. This is what good human resource management can do for your company.

So, start by focusing on the following key areas…

Recruitment

You need to approach recruitment by thinking about what kind of people you are looking for and what skills, experiences and motivations they can bring to your organisation. However, you source your staff – from agency to your own personal network – you need to write down the key skills and competencies required to carry out the core tasks and the responsibilities therein that this role demands.

Understanding this can help you plan. Now, this might sound blindingly obvious, but you’d be surprised how many companies employ the wrong people for the wrong jobs and it costs the economy billions.

One start-up problem is to recruit fast and to recruit within the familial / friend network – so getting a friend or relation as a staffer. However, this can lead to problems. As stated above, you need to identify what you want out of your employee. You need to identify someone who brings the right mix of skills and potential for your business – someone who can help you drive the company forward.

Contracts of Employment

You should invest in good contract of employment templates. This means they should include the basics like hours of work, where they work, overtime and holiday pay, employment termination notice periods, sick pay, pension arrangements and more. These are all cornerstone elements of Human Resource Management. These will create the guiding expectations for both you and your employee and these boundaries will define your professional relationships.

You will then need to think about payroll. Making arrangements for payroll can be difficult but Prestige Business Management offers bespoke solutions that can help make payroll easy to manage. Payroll, just in case you didn’t know, is all about making sure your employees get their pay on time and the correct Pay-As-You-Earn deductions are taken. By contracting this out you can focus on your business, your employees whilst happy in the knowledge your payroll is covered.

Employee Policies & Documentation

Your new staff will need handbooks, policy documents, and guidelines. The purpose of this is that by having a disciplinary or grievance or holiday policy, your staff have avenues of understanding events within the organisation. These guidelines will set out fairly and consistently how you will manage these processes in a fair and balanced fashion to meet both the company’s and the employee’s expectations of fairness and equality within the workplace.

You can access HR template and documentation web platforms. You can pay a one-off fee or a monthly subscription to gain access to a trove of unbranded documentation and guidelines that can help make sure you have a fully stocked policy library for your staff.

Training & Development

Staff training and development is central to personal development and growth. If you want your employees to grow and to offer your company greater value, then you need to invest in training for your staff. You’ll never find the dream employee who ticks all the boxes. Chances are key areas that you deem important for a job won’t be met by a new employee. He or she might match 60% of key performance areas – which means they might need training for the remainder. So, by developing training for your staff you can upskill your employees and give them the edge they need to match your expectations. Online platforms like Udemy, for only £9.99, can provide companies with training resources that can drive your staff forward.

Keep Your Staff Informed

You need to keep your staff motivated and to do this you need to keep them engaged. The best way to do this is to engage your team with goal-driven updates that can help visualise your objectives and plans in a way your employees can digest. By providing such resources, your staff can play a part in understanding the metrics that you have laid out for them to measure success and failure. Transparency is central to this endeavour.

Whatever your business – from a gym to a bar, from IT consultancy to agribusiness, your people – and the teams therein – and your business strategy are the two definitive experiences that will drive your company’s strategic goals forward. By harnessing these two dynamics you can utilise human resource management principles to really push forward your company.

Our latest Prestige Business Management partner, Ethical HR Solutions, can help assist you in a range of startup-related HR process development. Why not read more about our HR partner? If you’d like to talk to us about Payroll services and more, why not get in touch with today on 0203 773 2927 for more information?