Starting and running a business is hard. As business owners, you don’t know what you don’t know.
When you’re first getting off the ground, it’s easy to make mistakes. You might not even realize you made a mistake until it costs you time, money, or stability as a business.
That’s why we exist.
HR regulations involve a lot of legal jargon, and they get updated often enough that it can be challenging to keep up. Operating at status quo may get you to a certain point, but it will eventually catch up with you and could get your business in serious trouble.
We keep an eye out so you don’t have to. Here are three areas you should be aware of as your business grows.
Compliance
Compliance is one of the areas of greatest risk as you grow. Some business owners think the government isn’t paying attention to small companies, but they are. And some of those fines for non-compliance are hefty. We’ve seen them sink small businesses, some who knew they were violating the rules and some who didn’t.
You could be misclassifying your employees and not even know it. Get someone to audit your workforce and their responsibilities and check it against the Fair Labor Standards Act to make sure it’s correct. Your payroll company (if you have one) is not responsible for this. YOU are.
In addition, many people classify their employees as contractors when they aren’t. We’ve written about this before, and this is one of the most common areas that we have to correct when we start working with new clients. You can pay a little now or pay a lot later in back taxes.
These services are part of what WhyHR does on a regular basis. We review everything about your workforce to ensure you’re in compliance and reducing your risk as much as possible.
Policy
As much as you might dislike the idea, you WILL have to write an employee handbook at some point. It’s a helpful tool for creating your company culture and making sure everyone’s headed the same direction and has a shared understanding of what’s expected. Policies also protect your company should any legal action occur related to harassment, discrimination, or other issues.
Every small business is going to have a worker’s compensation claim at some point. It’s a question of when, not if. If you don’t have the right policies in place for worker’s comp and many other things, it can come back to haunt you.
We help business owners and companies write the policies that make sense for their company culture while also protecting them from a wide range of potential legal issues.
People
You’re not going to have the same people on your team forever. Having a solid recruiting and retention strategy keeps you from getting caught off guard when people move on. Benefits, remote work, monetary compensation, and other essentials of your people strategy matter, too.
Job descriptions play a role as well. Do you have well-defined job descriptions for every role? Writing a good job description will help them know what they’re supposed to do and help anyone else who steps into that role in the future.
People strategy is often an overlooked part of HR. It’s unfortunate, but it’s true. Many companies get bogged down in benefits and payroll and forget to be strategic about their people. We help you stay focused on the people strategies that matter to build the business you want.
Need help with any of these things? WhyHR is here to take care of the HR tasks you don’t even know you need. Whether your business is on an even keel or struggling with unforeseen HR issues, we can help. Contact us today and find out what we can do for you.