Understanding people and getting them to deliver on your requirements is probably one of the most complicated aspects of running any business. The complexities of working with people don’t fit nicely in a spreadsheet. Yet getting the HR and people components of your business right is critically important. Employee overheads take up a huge chunk of your operating costs.

Your business is growing and you feel great about it but with every new employee that joins your team, you find your desk drowning in more paperwork and your inbox-clogging up with even more emails. You’re starting to realise you’re spending more time on managing employees than growing your business.

You have more annual leave requests to process, more sickness and absence to record, more employee files to put somewhere safely and you have employees needing your help and management left, right and centre.

The ‘look into HR support’ entry on your to-do list is nagging away at you. You must get to it soon, but where do you find good HR support and how will you know what’s right for your business?

At Cornerstone HR we speak to lots of prospective clients who are in a bit of a tail spin and don’t really know exactly what they need when they first speak to us. Usually the only thing they know for sure, is that they need some form of HR help and pretty urgently. And nine times out of ten this is because the lack of HR support in their business so far has meant they have a pressing issue to deal with.

We’ve pulled together this guide to help you ask the right questions when looking for qualified HR support so you can be ahead of the game and get the HR support you need, before an issue arises.

1. Do they really understand small business? Firstly as a growing small business you need an HR team who understand the details of running a small business, which really does vary a lot from working in a corporate environment. A lot of HR consultants gained their HR experience working in a corporate HR department. This doesn’t necessarily prepare them for the very different world of small business HR.
2. Can they deliver? We advise checking whoever will be looking after your business has practical experience working in a similar environment to yours. You might also like to check if they’ve worked in your industry and ask for references from the businesses they’ve worked in.
3. Can you really rely on them? Much of the time you’ll seek HR support when your business hits a problem that it can’t handle alone, and much of the time, an HR service is peace of mind that they are there if and when you need them. So when a prospective HR business says they’re “just a phone call away”, make sure they really are. You want to know that in an emergency you can get straight through to a qualified professional. Not a call centre, not an admin person, but someone who can give you qualified advice.  One way to see how responsive a prospective HR support firm is, is to see how quickly they get back to you when you first get in touch. And on the off chance you can’t get through first time you should expect them to ring you right back to help.
4. Do they use jargon and leave you baffled? Poor HR support will simply quote employment law at you when faced with a problem. Employment legalese is not only unhelpful, but is potentially dangerous if you misunderstand what they are saying. A good HR support person will put the employment law and the solution to your problem in plain English and explain exactly what you need to do without confusing you.

When your HR support person offers you advice, they should be clear as to the potential risk of each course of action both for you and your employees, so you make any decision armed with all the details.

Candid advice – you need to have someone who can be open and honest with you if you’re managing people and not getting positive outcomes you need to know where you’re missing the mark, you need an HR person who can be honest with you.

There’s a lot to think about when finding HR support for your business, who is likely to be a good fit for your business. It’s never ‘one size fits all’ when you are dealing with people. We know from our experience, that we are really right for some businesses, and not right for others. Hopefully this blog provides you with some food for thought when it comes to choosing the right HR support for your business; we follow these principles in the services we offer.