As a human resource professional, you are charged with many important and critical business functions within your organization including labor law compliance, report generation, record keeping, hiring and training, compensation, relational assistance and performance management. These vital functions must happen regardless of the size of your company and can often feel overwhelming for many in these important positions.
Whether you are handling in-house or using outsourcing services, there’s a wide variety of responsibility that the HR department encompasses:
Hiring, onboarding, disciplinary actions, performance plans, recognition programs, separation agreements; all our critical parts and a daily function for HR. It can also get much more complex and involve deeper knowledge on topics such as immigration issues, ACA and ERISA compliance, non-standard background checks, compensation matrices, and complicated payroll tax filings. Keeping up with myriad of human resource issues is an ongoing affair and requires constant maintenance to be successful.
To showcase HR as an integral function to the overall business, it’s imperative to find ways that can differentiate your company to showcase competitive advantages in the marketplace. One way to do that is through talent acquisition. HR plays a leading role. This requires screening candidates, conducting background checks, recommending desirable candidates that match culture and requirements and create offer letters with incentive agreements that will ensure a candidate will accept an offer. Sometimes that’s through typical job boards, and sometimes that’s through executive search functions, depending on the talent needed and the depth of experience desired.
Responsibility for payroll is intricate and can include providing multi-state payroll processing (including shareholder wage and premium payments), employee classification compliance and payroll tax filings. It's important that your company can provide salary grid maintenance to ensure compensation strategies are always up to date; thereby, avoiding unnecessary turnover and ensuring you stay competitive in the marketplace. Equally important for compliance purposes is the ability to submit workers’ compensation claims and provide time and paid time off (PTO) tracking.
Benefits info gathering and choosing can be a long and complicated process. Even when implemented, you must manage your FSA/HSA and retirement plans, keep track of your insurance provider invoices and generate ERISA documentation. It's also important to keep up with the benefit offerings for your employees to ensure informative open enrollment training and renewal education. In addition, it’s equally important to maintain and manage retirement plan contributions.
Keeping up with the latest developments in employment law and regulations that impact you and your employees can feel like a job unto itself. Once the laws are understood and interpreted by the HR department, it’s important for your employees to be informed as well in a way that is commiserate with their job function. Some of the best ways to accomplish that is through updating HR policies documentation and employee handbooks, which offer guidance and assistance with employee relations and policy administration.
Whatever business function you're in, we're here to help.
