HR from Scratch? Yeah, we love it!
By Nicole Sandage, Manager for HR Virtual Services
I have the pleasure of serving several our clients virtually. One that comes to mind is a client that first began business as a small startup. Over the years, the business had grown to 60 employees with multiple locations in multiple states. The owners had been handling HR, but with anticipated continued growth they needed support in developing strategic HR processes that would bring consistency and structure to the people side of their business.
When we began working with our client they lacked formal recruiting and onboarding processes, had no real strategy for determining compensation levels for employees, and had inconsistent application and communication of HR processes and procedures. The lack of consistent HR processes and procedures was creating organizational confusion, increased work, and inconsistency in application of people processes throughout the entire employee lifecycle. This negatively affects morale and can even put the organization at risk with respect to business asset protection and liability.
Our dedicated team worked closely with our client to set up a baseline HR infrastructure. We started with creating customized documents and processes for onboarding employees. This included forms for payroll setup, offer letter templates and new hire onboarding checklist that helped ensure that new hires across locations had a consistent onboarding experience and that key processes and communications occurred. Most important, their documents were not off the shelf, we created them to align with their brand.
We then moved to creating a template for job postings to ensure that open positions were posted in a consistent manner that represented the organization’s brand, provided a compelling reason for candidates to consider joining the organization and attracted talented applicants. We worked with our client to develop and document a recruitment process that covered each step of the process and included interview questions for both pre-screen and in person interviews.
With recruitment and onboarding processes in place, we then turned our attention to creating job descriptions for each position. The job description development process opened dialogue within the organization allowing for greater alignment on job responsibilities and a fresh review of the organizational structure to ensure that it was best supporting the business. With job descriptions created we were then able to complete a compensation analysis and provide market data that the organization could use to ensure that new hire offers were competitive and to review current employee compensation levels against the market. Having job descriptions in place also provided a great foundation for performance achievement. We were able to create a performance framework that included a 60-day review to help ensure that new hires were on the right track. It also included annual performance reviews that looked back on past performance on job responsibilities and looked forward to performance objectives for the upcoming year as the exchange should be motivational and a coaching exchange versus demotivational and a judging exchange.
Through solid implementation and commitment from our client the organization is now better positioned to attract, retain, and develop talent to support the continued growth of the organization and the attainment of business objectives. And with a solid foundation of aligned tactical processed upholding strategic HR processes and procedures the organization can continue to build on this foundation to best support future organizational changes and growth. We believe in strategic HR day one, employee one! If you didn’t think you could have a dedicated HR team for the price of one, guess what? You can with us!
