What do small business owners lose sleep over? Is it competition, lack of market, lack of growth? If you are losing sleep over people, you have a problem – because you should be thinking about competition, market, and growth!
No People Plan
Most small business owners start without people plans. The most they do is budget for employees. In their mind, at that time, people are not resources. They are consumers, bodies, and hands. Employees are the dreaded full time equivalent, or FTE.
The owner doesn’t really mean to feel this way. But, it is easier to draw a plan in straight lines where people are used and retained like laptops, furniture, and staplers. If you find this cynical or nasty, the point may not be clear. Small business entrepreneurs have a unique passion and 3-D grasp of their business goals. They feel you reach these goals together, in part, because you all share the same vision. Many entrepreneurs can carry this off thanks to their pure passion and energy.
No up-front investment
The entrepreneur can make prudent but far-reaching moves from the start – without any major investment. That first step is to commit to a concern for people as people. If you want the bodies there when things go right or wrong, make that choice early on.
You do not need a human resources person in place at the beginning or even early on, so long as you can budget the time it takes to make employees feel valued. If you have two or three employees, you should allot time for their payroll, employee evaluations and labor relations, including discipline. You can handle policies or compliance issues with regular conversations, team meetings, and an FLSA posting on the wall. You can cover most liabilities with a good commercial insurance umbrella for the time being.
However, what you must do is schedule your next move. You must calendar where and when things will get hard for you management wise. The longer you juggle the more likely you are to drop the slipperiest ball. So, say to yourself, “I need to pass this responsibility off at end of Q4” or “I cannot make this business work if I don’t put someone in charge once I have 5 employees.”
Such prudence keeps you thinking on a straight line, but it also respects the rhythms and cadences that really run the business.
No Big Deal
The first venture into Human Resources management is the Payroll Clerk or possibly Office Manager. If you are grooming someone as Office Manager, that person should be able to take on a lot of your juggling with basic software. You should write their job description to require Word, Excel, Access, and QuickBooks. And, keep your eyes open for Cloud applications and billing through PayPal type of platforms.
By this time, you should have something more on the planning agenda than revenue benchmarks. You need something in your organizational bank that will write job descriptions and structure compensation, prepare and communicate policies, and manage conflict resolution and behavior discipline. Now, this “something” can either be you or you may consider the other options available.
No Deniability
At this point, you could be courting risk. If you have left all of your HR tasks to a Payroll Clerk or Office Manager, you are leaving all this to be learned on the job. You will not be at arm’s length or enjoy deniability in the face of an audit, investigation, or labor charge. In fact, your having loaded all these varied responsibilities on one person will not reflect well on you.
You need to decide how much longer you want this exposure. The growth you had hoped and planned for brought you to this point. Now, you need to manage the moment. Part of the solution lies with investment in HRIS software to relieve the employee you have assigned these duties. There are a number of programs that will ease your personnel administration – including integration of payroll and benefits, time and attendance, performance management and evaluation, and more. Moreover, there are systems that will not overwhelm your current needs yet have the ability to grow with future requirements. CompareHRIS.com is one site that offers free tools to research and compare HR software systems.
No Problem
A well-selected HRIS platform will leave you to establish more personal employee relationships and a lot more time to spend on business innovation and growth – the reason you got into business in the first place.
