As a small business owner, you have a lot on your plate and probably wear many hats. Sales manager, business development, sourcing, logistics and HR are just a few of your job titles, but somehow HR can overshadow all the others and consume too much of your time.
Small business owners face a number of challenges in managing their employees that often feel overwhelming and end up eating into time you could be spending on other areas of your business. Some of these pain points include:
Struggling to stay on top of labor laws and legislation
This is a difficult one for most small businesses because you’re not an HR manager and you’re not a lawyer, so keeping on top of the legislation is not high on your priority list. Nevertheless, being on the wrong side of the law can land you in hot water with the risk of fines and employee lawsuits increasing. Often compliance issues creep up because most business owners struggle to understand the difference between an employee and an independent contractor, so end up compensating employees unfairly.
Designing and implementing an effective employee hiring and retention strategy
Hiring and training new employees is an expensive exercise, so if you have a high staff turnover, as a small business you can ill afford the loss. Most small businesses do not have a hiring and retention strategy in place, so the costs of hiring are often higher; they tend to hire the wrong people because they don’t know what to look out for and have no clue how to keep staff engaged long-term.
Implementing and reinforcing a company culture
Culture always comes from the top down, so you need to create a healthy, productive, and enjoyable work environment that’ll give your employees a reason to stick around. This can be a challenge for small businesses that do not know where to begin when it comes to creating a vision for their company culture or implementing it.
Failing to resolve conflicts
Not everyone is going to get along in the workplace; that’s just a reality. At some point, someone is going to clash with a coworker, and you’re going to have to diffuse the situation. If you don’t act swiftly, employees may feel unsupported, which can lead to serious consequences such as lawsuits or defamation.
Not providing employee benefits
This is a problem most small businesses face as they are restricted by budget in many cases and can struggle to put together enticing benefits packages. Most employees expect paid time off, dental and health insurance but to attract (and keep) top talent, you may need to consider additional benefits such as retirement plans, bonus schemes and other incentives.
Many of these challenges can be mitigated by using comprehensive HR software to streamline the management of your employees.
The Benefits of HR Software for Small Businesses:
- Streamline Recruitment Campaigns
By automating specific repetitive tasks in the recruitment process, small business owners can make better use of their time to attend to other HR matters that require hands-on intervention. Some of these tedious manual tasks which HR software can speed up include:
- Posting jobs to multiple job boards, websites and social media to increase the visibility of the job posting and reach a wider pool of qualified candidates.
- Automatic screening of resumes for specific skills, qualifications and experience to improve the efficiency of the recruitment process.
- Structured and consistent interview process
- Tracking and managing applications in one central place
- Automate interview scheduling by enabling candidates to select a suitable time slot on a calendar for their interview, which eliminates any back and forth or the need for phone calls.
- Generating offer letters and employee contracts.
- Closer Monitoring of KPIs
HR software can provide an overview of important KPIs such as cost per hire, time per hire and the number of applicants per job listing to ensure your small business is staying on track with its goals. You need to set your specific goals and then can get real-time updates on progress via a dashboard or periodic system-generated reports.
- Manage Employee Development
On average, it costs a small business $4000 to make new hires versus just over $1000 to train existing employees – we don’t know about you, but that’s a pretty big saving. HR software can help managers set and track employee goals, including employee development goals in order to identify areas in which employees may require additional training or support.
In addition, it can automate the process of scheduling and tracking employee training and development activities such as scheduling online courses, in-person training sessions, performance reviews or any other necessary activities.
When you invest in your employees, you are making them feel valued and empowering them with skills and knowledge…this in itself makes it more worthwhile for them to stick around longer.
- Payroll Management
Humans make mistakes, it’s just one of the many things that make us who we are. But those mistakes can cost you time and money in some cases, especially when it comes to payroll management. HR software can automate payroll processes to reduce the likelihood of human error and save you from having to manually take care of payroll management.
- Employee Input
HR software gives employees more autonomy over requesting time off, tracking productivity and accessing schedules, eliminating the need for small business owners to do this manually. Putting this responsibility into the hands of your employees creates transparency and fosters trust between them and yourself as it requires honesty.
- Give Feedback in Real Time
Continuous feedback is essential, as we recently covered here, to ensure employees consistently reach their targets and give their best. However, when you’re caught up in the day-to-day running of your business, providing ongoing feedback can be a challenge. Most HR software has built-in instant messaging capabilities which enable managers to provide quick snippets of feedback throughout the day.
As we touched on before, HR software can also aid performance management through the setting and tracking of performance objectives. This enables managers to keep track of progress and provide feedback at scheduled intervals.
HR software often includes survey modules that enable small businesses to gather information on employee sentiment and other metrics to address problems quickly and create a work environment where open communication is favored.
- Improve Remote Working Teams
Remote work may be the way of the future but it presents challenges in managing remote teams. HR software can improve productivity tracking (time sheets), keep track of absenteeism and provide ongoing feedback for teams spread out across different locations. One major benefit to remote working teams is it’s another touch point to give employees a sense of connection and belonging.
- Improved Compliance with Legislation
While small businesses are exempt from certain legislation, there are still some mandatory ones they must comply with. HR software enables businesses to organize their legislative documents in one place such as business insurance, tax, labor law and health insurance.
- Quick Data Retrieval
HR software enables you to keep all your employee records in one place which allows you to get a quick overview of employee data faster. For example, if there is a dispute over days of leave owed to an employee, it is quick to retrieve information on the number of days they have taken time off already to settle any disagreements quickly.
- Enhanced Security & Risk Management
HR software stores electronic records of compensation claims, safety training, performance reviews, disciplinary hearings, workplace injuries and so forth to reduce your liability in the event of a lawsuit. As we mentioned above, when you have all these records stored in one place, it protects you in the event you are required to pull employee records if you’re hit with a lawsuit or dispute.
- Saves You Money
You can save money on hiring a full-time HR manager or outsourcing to an expensive HR firm by using HR software instead. This leaves you with more capital to grow your business and compensate your employees fairly.
- Improved Decision-Making Capabilities
By having all the important HR data at your fingertips, you can make well-informed decisions regarding raises, promotions or the need for additional staff members. This can all be accessed with a few clicks or viewed on various dashboards to make it fast and easy to gain a better overview of your business.
- Easier Onboarding and Offboarding
HR software can automate the onboarding and offboarding processes. Durning employee onboarding, HR software can send an electronic copy of your employee handbook to employees, a checklist of induction tasks, a list of KPI’s and schedule introductory meetings without you having to spend hours doing this manually.
In the case of offboarding, it can conduct an exit survey, calculate severance pay and automatically generate termination paperwork.
- Simpler Scheduling
HR software can automate the scheduling process by using algorithms to determine the most efficient and effective schedules for employees. This can help reduce the time and effort needed to create schedules manually and ensure that all shifts are adequately covered.
Many HR software solutions also offer self-service scheduling to select their preferred shifts and availability online, reducing the burden on business owners to coordinate teams manually.
Changes to schedules can be made in real-time with instant notifications or alerts being sent to employees to communicate changes to their schedules.
It can also help manage time-off requests, ensuring your don’t schedule someone on their day off and your operations run smoothly.
- Accurate Time-Tracking
If you sell time or need to keep track of remote teams, you need to be able to accurately track billable hours. HR software should have a time tracking functionality that enables employees to run automatic time trackers while they work which can generate daily, weekly and monthly timesheets to better keep track of output and for more accurate billing.
Closing Thoughts
As a small business owner, managing your HR function can be a daunting task but luckily HR software can come to your rescue. By streamlining and automating various HR processes, you can save money to reinvest into your business, improve employee engagement and improve your bottom line. So if you’re tired of the slog of managing your team, give an HR software like CrewHR a try and free yourself up to attend to other important tasks.