Refreshing Your HR Basics

When dealing with new hire onboarding, benefits administration, compliance issues, and more regularly, it can be difficult to keep your essential processes and materials up to date. Before a new season begins, it is a great time to check over your basics!

1. Employee handbook and acknowledgment
2. Offer letters
3. Job descriptions for each position
4. Sexual harassment and discrimination training sign off
5. Progressive disciplinary process and documentation templates

When your organization has these basic processes and materials refreshed and ready, it will make your time tackling HR tasks much easier.

Your Handbook
Your employee handbook is a compilation of the policies, procedures, and behavioral expectations that guide employee actions. Design your handbook to be a road map to the ethical and legal treatment for all employees. It should also include basic information about your company like mission, vision, and values. A well-written handbook will help you rest assured that employees are informed about appropriate actions and behaviors.

Your Positions
It’s usually easier said than done to have current offer letters and job descriptions. We recommend setting a routine schedule to go over employee job descriptions and check that your offer letters are relevant. To keep up with an ever-changing business environment, employees often take on new tasks as previous processes evolve and you want to make sure their job descriptions reflect these responsibilities.

Your Training
Remaining compliant with regulations for your company size and industry is essential. Create a routine of research and creative brainstorming to make sure you are covering the training your employees need and want. Total Solutions offers digital training programs for hundreds of topics and can provide custom materials and support from our HR experts.

Your Rewards
Prepare for your annual appraisals for employee performance. There should be no surprises for the employee when it comes to their performance review. Periodically reviewing job descriptions will also help ensure that employees are matching your expectations for results in that position. Salary increases and employee growth paths should be evaluated before beginning the appraisal process.

Less exciting, but just as necessary, checking your process for correcting behavior and discipline needs to be reviewed as well. Progressive discipline is a process for dealing with job-related behavior that does not meet expected and communicated performance standards. This process helps your employees to recognize performance problems and create an opportunity for improvement.

Refreshing these HR essentials will help your organization successfully support employees!

Submitted by Alex McLearn, HR Generalist