Employees, Staff, Work Associates, Angel with Wings, Pain in the Arse…. What do you call the people you hire to assist with the operations in your business? The people you pay to work within the organisational chart to support your business structure, are they worth the money you pay?
How do you lead when you continue to hit a brick wall? And how much time do we take to investigate why that brick wall is preventing their growth? Is it their attitude? Is it because we are not giving them enough support and resources to do their job efficiently and effectively? Is it their job role they are having issues with or is it their personal life that is the cause of underperformance?
Your staff are your biggest investment when it comes to business and as employers, we can overlook issues as we are too busy looking at the bigger picture. How do we keep on top of due diligence and be a supportive network as well as ensuring that our employees are doing what they are supposed to be doing for their pay cheque?
Being an employer isn’t as straight forward as it used to be as ‘back in the day’ for example if employees had any mental health issues it was their problem to deal with and they were to keep their personal issues at home. People were not to discuss their feelings as the perception was it showed weakness or people did not want to know as they didn’t understand how to deal with certain problems regarding sensitive health or family issues. In today’s society we are all being educated for signs that individuals may need help and we are encouraged to ask ‘are you ok?’. I find the laws of today are headlining that employer’s are encouraged to investigate why employees are not performing in case there is underlying issues that are affecting their everyday life.
So how do we now define the meaning of ‘employer’ and what roles are we playing? Where does the ‘legalities’ of employment end with duty of care – our WHS laws have to be written so that the business is protecting itself from people without ‘common sense’ just in case someone thinks it’s great to nominate themselves for the ‘Darwin Award’! All Policies and Procedures must be outlined clearly because if the Employee Manual fails to state the behavioural standards of your staff you might find that you are facing an unfair dismissal payout because your employee thought that doing burnouts in the company vehicle was acceptable and does not agree that he should have been sacked! “I would have thought I would have got a warning and told not to do it again!”.
Some businesses opt to have a HR person with an ‘open door’ policy to discuss any personal issues so we can assist them in seeking help as we now have access to information of multiple professional services. But not all employers want this degree of responsibility as they find everyone else is being nurtured in every way but themselves and the general complaint is “I can’t have a HR Manager on the payroll as they cost too much money!” I can’t tell you how many bosses have used that line!
This is why outsourcing HR services are valuable, as you are not paying them a fulltime wage – you are paying for the services you require at the time. You can also have yearly policy health checks to ensure all your systems are up to date and current to keep your business compliant and give you peace of mind.
If you do the math = we can save you a lot of money!!
Feel free to reach out to Rebecca at Antz Labour Hire on 0447 018 671.