By Stephanie Hammerwold
Small businesses do not often have a dedicated HR person. Usually HR responsibilities are covered by an office manager, the business owner or someone else with an endless to-do list. While this approach can work when employee numbers remain low, there comes a point when a growing business should consider a full-time HR professional on staff. Here are the top ten signs you need to hire an HR person:
- You can’t find the time to adequately manage leaves of absence in accordance with state and federal law.
- You have 50 or more employees. There are extra laws that apply when you reach this size, which can be a challenge when you are not an HR professional.
- Your most recent employee handbook is so old that it was typed on a typewriter.
- Your employee files are unorganized stacks of paper in a drawer.
- You believe HR is only about paperwork because that’s the only part of HR you have time for.
- Your new employee orientation and training consists of throwing an employee into the job and hoping they figure it out on their own.
- Hiring becomes a challenge.
- You find yourself googling labor laws on a daily basis.
- Managing the people part of your business is all you do, and things like accounts payable/receivable, office supply ordering and such never seem to get done.
- You desperately dream of the day you can hand off harassment complaints to someone who has experience investigating such things.
For more information on knowing when it’s time to hire an HR person, see my post over at Blogging4Jobs.