Your business is only as good as the people you hire. Everyone knows this but many small companies fail to allot the budget for an HR Manager, whose primary function is supporting the people behind the products you’re pushing. Neglect of HR is particularly true in startup environments, where organizations are more focused on pushing a product into the marketplace.
But the benefits an HR Manager can bring are enormous. HR Managers are particularly important for organizations that are planning to grow. HR Managers can find talent and keep you legal and compliant with labor laws while doing it, but those are just some of the benefits they offer. Here is everything you need to know about HR Managers and why it might be time for you to find one.
HR Managers handle the tasks related to your most important assets: people. They can handle everything from hiring and firing to paying workers, overseeing benefits, and improving staff morale. They do all this while guiding companies through the tricky regulatory issues that come with hiring workers.
Most startup companies don’t make hiring an HR Manager a priority and instead adopt a do-it-yourself approach. Or they may hire a third-party vendor to handle the trickiest HR functions, such as payroll. As these companies scale, the importance of having a human resources professional onsite often becomes apparent. HR Managers keep businesses functioning by resolving workplace issues. They manage the people-centric functions of a company while serving as the perfect buffer between management and employees. HR Managers are the people administrators of the employment world, handling functions like:
The job varies by company, but HR Managers are frequently called upon to improve recruitment and retention of new and existing talent. In most markets, this is a huge job, as the current talent shortage requires 24/7 coverage to source and hire key positions. HR Managers can be segmented out into specialist roles. such as Payroll Managers, Recruitment Managers, or Labor Relations Directors.
The Bureau of Labor Statistics says HR Managers typically have specialized training in the form of a bachelor’s or master’s degree and often attend specialized classes throughout their career in order to keep up on labor laws.
The value of an HR Manager is clear, but how do companies know when it’s time to hire one?
Knowing the right time to hire is tricky for any small company experiencing growth. Certainly, there are budgetary issues that facilitate the decision, but there is also an element of guesswork in balancing these decisions. Here are seven questions you should ask to help you determine if it is the right time to hire an HR Manager:
One of the biggest benefits of having an HR Manager is that they can handle the tasks associated with recruiting new talent. With historic unemployment levels, recruitment has become hugely important. HR Managers work with recruiters or outsourced staffing firms to scour the market for workers. When they find them, the HR Manager has an important role during the interviewing process.
Most HR Managers go through a standard system of checks and balances in their hiring process before they select their new hire.
There are two primary ways for an HR Manager to assess and pick a new hire. The first is the review process that typically involves phone, video, and in-person interviews.
The second part is that element of guesswork in the HR Manager’s decision-making process, which requires something that is not very sophisticated or organized: human intuition. Human intuition is that process of knowing instinctively whether you trust another person. While the HR Manager backs up their gut check with facts from the candidate’s job history, it is the candidate’s intangibles that require the HR Manager to use their experience and feelings to ensure you hire the right talent.
Most HR Managers will suggest that the hiring process is logical and scientific, and for the most part, it is. But the best HR Managers also bring great people skills that help them decide if the employee is a good fit for the culture of the organization.
The biggest challenge today for HR Managers is finding new talent. The days of placing an ad and having jobseekers knocking on your door are over. Attracting new candidates takes time, technology, and hard work.
Since most workers are currently employed, hiring today requires extensive effort to source new candidates. Sourcing is the process of building relationships with candidates that are open to a change but not actively looking for a new job. It’s a process that must be implemented regularly to keep a steady pipeline of potential candidates ready to move forward to interviews. Companies without an HR Manager simply don’t have the time to cultivate these relationships. As a company grows, the HR Manager may no longer have time for sourcing and recruiting. That is when they turn to a full-time in-house or third-party recruiting firm.
A staffing agency is the next logical progression of a company’s expansion. An agency can take on the full-time process of finding and building relationships with job candidates. It can help businesses find higher quality candidates by applying proven targeted search techniques based on the job skills you need. The best staffing agencies have already cultivated relationships with high-quality candidates. Hiring a staffing agency gives HR Managers a pre-built network of potential new hires.
Partnering with a staffing firm can free up HR Managers to work on some of the most challenging issues we see hampering employee retention today:
If finding new talent was easy, HR Managers would never hire staffing firms like Artisan Talent. Our job is to help HR and Hiring Managers focus on building the core strengths of the business to retain employees longer. We can help you find the high-quality talent you want to attract.