Avoiding HR Nightmares – a Career Exchange Emergency Kit

The outcomes from HR practices and implementations can be mountainous, and with frequent changes to work laws, the way we recruit and technology changes, the chance for shortcuts to fall through the cracks into peril are high.

Because of this, HR needs to be more careful than ever. Mistakes can potentially land you and your company in a sticky and very costly legal situation.

Even small companies can suffer greatly from being lax with their HR processes. 

Imagine the following scenario, you hire someone based on face value, and you later find out that they don’t have the capabilities to treat your customers correctly and land your company a malpractice suit. This  example is a situation that can drain your company’s finance and time resources, or worst, damage your company’s reputation. Simply put, this is a situation you want to avoid at all costs.

The following are some tips that can help you avoid getting trapped in a sticky HR situation.

Transparent work expectations, policies, and procedures

From the very first day, be very clear to your employees about their performance expectations, and all the company’s policies and procedures they are expected to follow. Transparency helps employees to understand their expectations better, and therefore maximizing their chance of achieving success. It also minimizes any discrepancies between the employers and employees, lessening the chance of experiencing any negative feelings for both parties. Additionally, a clear guideline of the company’s policies helps employees from committing any misconduct. Should a violation occur, transparent policies will also help you to justify your decision for a disciplinary action or termination. One way to ensure transparency in this area is to create clear policy templates.  You could provide policies to employees as part of their on-boarding to facilitate uniformity of communication across the board.  

Keep up-to-date with the current employment laws and workplace regulations

Employment laws and workplace regulations evolve over time. You need to make sure to stay up to date to ensure compliance. This is really important, because a violation of these laws and regulations can potentially result in dreadful legal consequences for your company. Online resources such as www.workplaceexpress.com.au provide this information to help employers keep up-to-date with current laws and regulations.

Document, document, and document!

Consistent and accurate documentation is extremely important in human resources, especially for work events that may pose legal issues in later down the track. Things that you unquestionably need to document include employees’ absenteeism and tardiness, deficient performance, misconduct and violations of company’s policies, disciplinary actions, employment termination, and any discussions with the offending employee surrounding any of these issues. On a brighter note, you can also document any recognition and positive contribution employees made, leading to provable movements in pay rises and promotions. These written records can serve as your legal justifications should someone question the decisions you made, and since HR have quite a high rate of movement; makes task hand down easier when you’re moving on to bigger things! They can also protect you from any lawsuit associated with workplace disputes, saving you from headaches! Having a filing system with a folder for each employee, up to date with all relevant documentation will help to make documentation easy and effective. There are also apps and programs that you can download to streamline your communications. They serve as a time saver and ensure accurate records.

Without good workers, businesses would fail. Therefore HR has a key role in the success of a company. By being transparent with what you want in a worker, keeping thorough and accurate documentation and ensuring that rules and regulations are adhered to, you can avoid HR nightmares. 

For help managing employee communications, Psych Press can be used to supplement your business' HR requirements. They provide an all in one tool that is useful for documenting and tracking communications with employees. For more information, contact our partner company Psych Press about what a tailored total HR solution can do for you. Email info@psychpress.com.au or call 03 9670 0590.