As an HR, you are responsible for the relations that an employee will build with the organization. The initial interactions will determine the levels of motivation and tenure. In human resources, it’s especially essential to error-proof your actions and make well-thought-out decisions. Outdated policies and inadequate documentation can cause even the strongest companies to stumble when it comes to HR issues.
It’s easy to ignore the human resources side of your business when things are flowing smoothly. Being proactive in HR, recognizing and rectifying HR mistakes before they become serious problems, can save you countless headaches and protect your business against costly legal claims. HR personnel plays an important role in the organization because they interact with the employees and management alike. Having SPOCs who don’t make the common mistakes, or any other HR violations, is important to ensure that the organization manages the employee-employer relationship well.
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Some common HR issues are
Incorrect Performance Management
Performance management is an important part of any employee assessment. If a performance appraisal mechanism in place is not appropriate, it can cause significant employee disgruntlement. Sometimes, even though the policies and practices for appraisal are standard, the method employed can be unfair to someone.
As an HR, you should ensure that the appraisal mechanisms that the managers use are unbiased and that all the employee achievements are documented. Performance management mechanisms are also useful to assess how an employee is performing. Organizations employ this common method to track the performance and validate it against the standards that they have set for the roles. This process involves a joint assessment with the managers, and the results flow upwards for a summary assessment of the entire teams. HR leaders need to establish sound processes to prevent any errors or HR mistakes in the process.
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Incorrect Assessment of Performance Issues
Organizations draft clear policies and establish streamlined processes that are useful for identifying employee behavior and what is allowed and what isn’t. In case there is a breach of these policies, HR personnel should document all these breaches. This is important because it matches employee performance with the standards that the organization has set for those roles. If the performance issues are not appropriately recorded, it could cause several conflicts within the organizations.
HR personnel needs to set up adequate policies to ensure that all employees’ safety and dignity are protected. This includes policies like Prevention of Sexual Harassment (POSH), Internal Complaints Committee, Grievance Redressal, Escalation of issues, and other unique processes.
Incomplete Employee Records
Maintaining complete and comprehensive employee records is important for several reasons, one of which is to ensure an organization knows who they are hiring and what their credentials are. Maintaining complete records is also important from a financial controls compliance perspective because incomplete employee records signify lax on the part of the organization. Besides, incomplete records also mean that the organization did not perform its due diligence in vetting employees. Companies have strict policies that govern how vetting employees should happen. Incomplete records signify the employee hasn’t been vetted and can pose a threat to the organization now or in the future.
Every company that will get audited needs to keep this because statutory auditors rely on the internal audit report to an extent, and employee record check is an important part for generating a no qualification report. Therefore, having complete records goes beyond a company’s internal processes as well, affecting third parties.
Vague Job Description
When you’re hiring, it is essential to understand why you’re hiring. Selecting an employee and then trying to fit him in some role will be a costly affair for the organization. One bad practice here is to hire an employee just because an entire team has a vacancy. If you don’t understand what the vacancy is about or what role it should fill, it is difficult to identify what you’re looking for in a candidate. Usually, hires are supposed to be role-specific, which means you can’t expect them to have more generic skills than an average person in a team has. If you don’t understand the role clearly, you could lose valuable employees whose skills would have perfectly complemented the team.
Having a job description is also important to have a conversation about the dynamic and changing nature of employment. A job description clearly outlines what is expected from a role and what the prerequisites are. If there is any change in the employee as a result of any personal or professional changes, job descriptions will be useful for an interactive conversation about whether the employee will come back to his role or take some alternate position. If the employee would take an alternate position, would he need any stirrups to transition, or are his skills suitable enough is a discussion that HRs would be better equipped to have.
Conclusion
The role of HR is a delicate one because it balances so many things. With the changing perceptions about human assets, there are a lot of changes within the broad area of human resources. Companies worldwide realize the importance of training, learning and development, recruitment and selection, maintaining diversity in the workforce, and managing change.
But, each of these activities means you need to define the working relationships with your employees.
That means drafting clear employee contracts.
It is not enough to draft a vague document and include a clause stating that the role will change as and how the organizations require. That will open the organization to a lot of lawsuits and confusion. To retain valuable employees, you need to communicate with them what you expect from them. One way to do that is to communicate during the interview process. But oral agreements are never useful.