Most people associate Human Resources (HR) compliance with tedious administrative boxes that need to be ticked and dull, mandatory training. Yet, non-compliance can affect businesses and employees in the form of legal liabilities, fines, discrimination, harassment, or retaliation. Ensuring HR compliance is crucial to keep businesses legitimate and employees safe.
What is HR compliance?
HR compliance involves creating and maintaining policies, processes, and procedures to keep the work environment and employment practices aligned with the most recent applicable laws and regulations. HR compliance also refers to the practice of HR teams actively ensuring that the business and its people follow its policies, processes, and procedures and, stepping in to enforce them when needed.
Why is HR compliance important?
The goal of HR compliance is to minimise regulatory and legal risks while creating a just and equitable work environment. Non-compliance can lead to fines, penalties, or even lawsuits, that can harm a business.
Avoiding fines and legal issues – Businesses can be subject to an external audit at any given moment. Such a compliance audit aims to assess how well the company adheres to different applicable laws and regulations. The more compliant the business is, the less legal trouble it will have and the more money it will save.
Promoting fairness and equality – HR compliance helps ensure that all employees are treated fairly and consistently under the law. This fosters trust and boosts morale within the workplace. By staying compliant with anti-discrimination, wage, and pay transparency laws, for example, a level playing field is created that protects employees from biases and unfair treatment.
Maintaining business reputation – Cases of non-compliance regularly pop up in the media. Think of the misclassification of employees or the lack of workplace safety. These things can significantly damage a business’s reputation as an employer, a company, and a brand and hurt hiring and retention efforts.
How can you ensure HR compliance?
There are two key parts to ensuring HR compliance; conducting regular reviews and following best practices. HR compliance reviews are essential to verify that the business’s HR practices meet legal standards, and can help to identify potential risks, close any compliance gaps, and strengthen overall HR operations.
When it comes to HR best practices, building a compliant workplace is about integrating the laws and regulations into everyday practices. Adopting HR compliance best practices can help protect a business from legal risks and create a fair and transparent work environment.
Application and consistency are key
Once policies and procedures are in place, it is important that they are applied consistently. This is especially crucial for disciplinary actions, managing grievances, and investigating workplace issues. This can be achieved by outlining process steps in writing, keeping proper documentation, and educating managers and supervisors on how these processes work.
Train managers on compliance
Training managers and supervisors is an essential step towards HR compliance. Managers and supervisors play a critical role in ensuring HR compliance, especially regarding performance reviews, employee disputes, and disciplinary actions. Equally, they should receive regular training on anti-discrimination policies, and diversity practices, as well as updates on changes in laws and regulations to help mitigate risk.
HR compliance is not just an administrative matter. It is a collective effort between leadership, HR, managers, and employees to create a workplace that is transparent, fair, and safe for everyone. At Cornerstone, we can facilitate training for managers that focuses on understanding and implementing workplace policies to ensure compliance. Want more details? Contact us today to book a tailored training session for your team.
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