HR: Why Outsource
To celebrate the launch of our new website, our lead HR consultant, Kate Willcox, has taken a break from helping clients to provide some insight into the HR tasks organisations can take care of in-house and when it’s best to talk to a professional.
After explaining briefly the tasks HR work involves, Kate tells us about the aspects that are better left for HR experts. Finally, you can learn more about the advantages you get as a client of CBR Business Solutions.
Kate and her HR colleagues are chartered members of the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development.
Kate has been helping SME’s and charities with their HR needs for years, spending the last 4 and a half years here with us at CBR Business Solutions.
What does HR work involve?
Successful HR work involves a whole myriad of tasks. If your organisation employs people, you will have a lot of obligations and tasks which will involve HR. These will start at the recruitment phase and go all the way through the employment life cycle – the next step being induction or “on-boarding.”
Once an employee has been through induction it’s likely there will be a probation period. It will be the Line Manager’s responsibility, with the support of HR, to deal with that effectively and appropriately so that the new employee is up and running in their new role as quickly as possible.
Beyond probation, HR may be involved, alongside the line manager, in working with the employee providing support and supervision and helping with the appraisal process. These type of tasks should go right through to the end of employment where somebody leaves your organisation, at which point HR will deal with issues such as finishing contracts and employment.
Often In-house HR departments also deal with payroll and various other issues within the employment life cycle such as grievances, disciplinary issues, sickness and absence. They can also be involved in performance issues, maternity and family friendly policies such as flexible working and parental leave, restructures and redundancies and TUPE (Transfer of Undertakings (Protection of Employment) Regulations).
When to contact an HR Consultant?
For day-to-day HR tasks there is no legal obligation to be professionally qualified – but
whether you’re a small organisation employing one person or a much larger organisation, a qualified HR consultant can provide specialist support.
If you’re a small or medium sized organisation you will probably be doing many of these transactional tasks in-house anyway – there are some things (such as those linked with employment legislation) that you need to make sure you deal with appropriately – this is when contacting an HR professional is highly advisable.
For example, you need to get professional advice on whether your contract of employment is robust and you should also ensure that you’ve got the right policies and procedures in place – it doesn’t matter if it’s one or ten employees, employment legislation still applies. CBR Business Solutions can help you with all of this as part of our start up package with new clients.
I can’t stress how important it is to make sure you’ve got everything in place starting with a proper contract of employment, robust policies and procedures which support both the employer and also their employees. Investing in professional help at the start could save the potentially substantial costs of an employment dispute later on.
How can we help?
As HR experts, we’re not here to do your everyday, transactional HR – but we are here to help and advise you through specific employment issues when they arise with one of your employees. We work closely with our clients and pride ourselves in building excellent working relationships. Our clients know that they can speak directly to one of our HR Consultants about a specific issue and continue working with that HR Consultant throughout.
By having an HR Consultancy on-board you can also save yourselves the costs of having to employ your own HR professional in-house, which can be expensive when you are only a small organisation. If you are a larger organisation and have some HR support in place, then we can help and support that in-house HR when there are complicated HR matters that need to be resolved.
We also have a link with an top firm of Employment Lawyers so we can access additional legal advice on employment law on your behalf.
Get in touch with us
You can contact us to discuss your HR requirements and if you join us as a client we will undertake an HR Audit as part of our set up package, allowing us to fully understand what your organisation is, what you do, who you’re employing and any plans or issues you’ve got that need to be addressed.
We offer support over the phone or via email and, particularly with local
clients, we can meet with you and also have an in-house presence should you require it.
You can also get valuable free advice and information at ACAS – the government advisory body on employment.
