Member Article

The Truth About ‘I Don’t Have Time For HR’

If there’s one thing that we hear time and time again from business owners, it’s that they just don’t have enough hours in the day to take care of their HR processes and procedures. There are a million and one things on their list to take care of, and it can be all too easy to leave the ‘people stuff’ until another day.

We run a business too, and we get it. You have to wear all of the hats, and it’s pretty rare to have absolutely everything under control at any given moment. But ‘I don’t have time’ just isn’t going to cut it when it comes to your people management practices. Here’s why…

Avoidable problems can take up way more time than you think

Let’s say, for example, that you don’t keep accurate written records of disciplinary meetings that you have with an employee. You hope that the issue will resolve itself, and that you won’t need to refer back to your notes in the future. But then another problem arises, and you suddenly find yourself in a sticky situation that could have easily been avoided.

We don’t like to think of HR as merely firefighting, but the reality of the matter is that a little time invested now could prevent your business from costly and time consuming scenarios.

**Time invested in streamlining your procedures can free up hours each week **

Right now, you probably have a ton of time drainers in your business that are making HR far more complicated than it needs to be. If you needed to find the phone number of a member of staff, for example, how long would that take you? What if they asked you how much annual leave they still have available this year? Or if an employee asked you for a copy of a particular policy, would that involve scouring through a mountain of paperwork?

Taking a little time to make your processes more efficient and getting things in good order could save you hours on a weekly basis, even if you don’t currently realise where you’re throwing minutes down the drain.

Using the services of a professional could create a huge return on investment

Okay, so maybe you really are strapped for time, and it’s just not realistic for you to take care of everything when you’ve only got 24 hours in your day. You might think that you can’t afford any extra help, but it might be the case that you can’t afford to NOT get some assistance.

Working with an HR consultant could help you to ensure that your people practices are helping you to meet your strategic goals, that you’re keeping your business on the right side of the law, and that you can put the majority of your time into the activities that bring about the best ROI.

This was posted in Bdaily's Members' News section by Oculus HR .