Category: Article

As your business grows, so too grow the challenges and headaches you face. You may have initially run everything on your own or in a small team while trying to get the business off the ground, you have now begun to hire employees to take your vision to the next level. Where you may have once personally worn several hats – sales, marketing, and customer service – you’ve now had to hand off those duties so you can focus on strategy and growth.

Yet as an employer, it’s those staffing issues that can sometimes leave you wanting to tear your hair out. Hiring is a complex task, and not every dream candidate will turn out to be the right fit for your organization. Even the best employees will occasionally run into issues and conflicts that you may not know how to resolve. As your team grows it will be important to have systems, policies and procedures in place to help deal with difficult situations, and even prevent them from arising where possible.

Having an outsourced HR department is your best first line of defense. The term ‘HR business partner’ seems like it might be exclusive to the corporate world, but it paints a great picture – HR at its best should function as your business partner. Our primary goal is to protect your business, and our knowledge of people and of your workplace helps us put systems in place to make that happen. 

As outsourced HR experts, our business is people, and our fractional approach to consulting allows us to focus on your people. We understand employment law, but we also understand how it connects with behaviour, psychology, and even attitudes and beliefs to determine how the workplace should function best. We know what best practices look like in a situation, and the small, incremental steps that it can take to reach them.

HR professionals work to protect your workplace in two key ways. The first is from a lens of prevention. The last thing you want as an overworked business owner is to spend countless hours drafting a policy manual, which will then require further investments of time for tweaks and upgrades as law and best practices change. Leave that to us. We regularly draft the policies and procedures that tell your employees how you want your business to operate. We also understand employment law, and will make sure that your policies are compliant with crucial legal requirements, which can help defend you against any potential legal claims.

We also resolve difficult situations. When you need to have a difficult conversation with an employee you may not know how to proceed, but we do. We can take part in these conversations and guide them towards a resolution before a problem persists. When performance issues arise, we step in to help with performance management, and can lay out the framework for clear expectations of how to turn a bad situation around wherever possible.

When a situation cannot be resolved, we are the business partners who can guide you through how a termination should take place. Terminating employees is never enjoyable, and if done badly can even lead to employees making legal claims for bad faith. We walk you through every small step, from preparing the documentation and the terminating letter to how to notify the employee and what next steps should be taken afterwards. We recognize that employment lawyers may sometimes be required (especially if the employee responds with a lawyer’s letter or claim), and can help bring an employment lawyer into the picture where they are needed to handle any legal disputes. 

We tell our clients that there are ‘no bad questions,’ and we mean it. Our business model puts us on retainer, so that you can pick up the phone at any given time without having to worry about us billing by the minute. In fact you should never be afraid to call us – if you’re questioning how to handle a given situation it’s always better to ask then to make an error trying it on your own. 

We recognize as HR professionals that the legal landscape is always changing. Even when we think that we may have ‘heard it all before,’ new situations will always arise that require a fresh perspective, or a unique approach. Throughout the pandemic, for example, we helped our clients quickly pivot into effective work-from-home people management, even when they had no previous policy infrastructure for that setup. We are up to speed on some of the latest issues (see our recent resources on vaccine policies and return-to-office planning) and are able to provide a customized perspective tailored specifically to your organization.

Our job as outsourced HR professionals is to protect your business. We do this by offering solutions that save you as an employer time, money, and headaches. Hiring us as your business partner means that we can take some of those headaches off your plate, and provide custom-tailored advice for your business that won’t break your budget. 

Looking to learn more? Book a time below to connect with a member of our team.

If you’re like me, you started your career working for someone else. You may have had several jobs prior to your current role, and each one of them formed you into the business owner that you are today – I know mine did. 

Whether your experiences were wonderful or challenging, your brain was likely taking mental notes about how you intended on running your own business someday.

Even if you had fantastic mentors, you may not have always agreed with their every decision. There are numerous occasions in your career development where you’ve said to yourself, “when I’m in charge, I am going to do ___ differently.” You may choose to emulate some of your mentor’s choices, or do a complete about-face on others, but every environment that you have worked in gave you a sense of how you would want to run your own operations.

Now you are in charge as a business owner, and you’re the one making the rules. This is a tremendous power – as a business owner you can run your workplace practically however you want so long as you stay within the limits of the law. Yet to run that workplace effectively, there are a few things to remember when making the rules: they should be clear, they should be consistent, and they should be communicated to everyone. The best way to meet those thresholds is by creating an employee handbook. 

“[T]o run a workplace effectively, there are a few things to remember when making the rules: they should be clear, they should be consistent, and they should be communicated to everyone.”

Let’s be honest – no one reads a policy handbook for fun! They may be long, and even a little dry, but they can go a long way towards protecting your interests while allowing you to run your business as you see fit. If you’re not familiar with handbooks, you may well be raising an eyebrow. Here are just a few reasons why handbooks are important:

Ramp up new hires faster and introduce them to your workplace culture:

While some standard workplace policies are common to most employee handbooks (think vacation, overtime, and leave policies), additional contents are entirely at your discretion. If you want to implement a specific dress code, put it in the handbook. Do you want a policy about animals in the workplace? How about one on visitors, outside food, or internet usage? All of those go into a handbook as well. If there were ever rules that you wanted to implement for your workplace, the employee handbook is the place for them.

Communicate expectations to the team to lighten your own burdens:

One benefit of having policies is that you do not have to do the heavy lifting at every turn. Policies can assign duties and responsibilities to other managers within your team, especially when it comes to reporting or enforcement. Vacation requests, for example, can become the responsibility of a direct manager. As the team grows, other managers can take on additional responsibilities under these policies, taking some of the weight off of the C-Suite’s shoulders.

Protect your business by documenting your compliance with the law:

When used properly, the handbook can become a staple of your workplace. It may never become daily reading, but all employees should be familiar with its contents as a reference point in order for it to be effective. New and existing employees alike should sign off agreeing that they are familiar with the policies, and acknowledge that those policies govern your workplace. If someone violates a policy by way of innocent mistake, they can be gently reminded and re-educated about the policies and your expectations. If violations are more serious, or occur repeatedly, discipline measures as outlined in the policy may be appropriate.

Defend lawsuits from exiting employees by showing that you took the right steps:

Taking serious disciplinary action such as termination of employment in response to serious or repeated policy violation may lead to a claim for wrongful dismissal. Should that happen, your policy handbook may turn out to be an integral part of your defense. In order to effectively discipline an employee for policy violations, you will need to clearly prove that you had an established policy in place, the employee was aware of that policy (hence the sign-off), and that they were reasonably disciplined according to the measures taken in the policy. That policy handbook is not just a manual; it may also shield your business from unwanted liability.

Wondering if your business needs a handbook? Here are some key questions to ask:

• Are you over 15 employees? Above that threshold it can be tricky to manage every little thing yourself, so a handbook can be incredibly helpful.

• Are your policies piecemeal? Did you grab a few off a friend, or download them from a generic website? If that’s the case, then you’re probably missing some key ones.

• Did you customize your policies for your business? Having a well-tailored policy means more than just swapping out another company’s name for your own. If it isn’t suited to your business, it likely isn’t protecting your business either.

If you need to draft your workplace policy manual (and we recommend that you do), it’s best not to go it alone. Policies should be written carefully so that they communicate expectations clearly, and do not violate human rights law (most every policy will have inherent exceptions built-in where human rights conflicts may arise). Most importantly, the discipline warnings for any violations should be carefully crafted in order to protect your business against potential legal claims that may arise. 
We are happy to help go through your policies and make sure they properly protect your business. Our Fractional HR team can conduct a free review whatever policies you have in place and give them a score from 1-10. If any of your policies are out of shape, we’re happy to work with you on a plan to build out a proper handbook that can help you and your team move forward. Contact us today to learn more about our services.