You may now be wondering why we’re writing an article on HR and Small Business when we are a marketing firm, a sales training firm, a branding strategy company. It’s because we’re passionate about educating our clients, our connections, our fellow business owners. Because we’re so passionate about business and education, we want to help you understand everything about how to make your business better. We’ve partnered and aligned ourselves with so many niche consultants and providers so that we have all of the access to experience, education, and services that our clients could ever need. Human Resources is certainly a need, ESPECIALLY for small business. We believe most small businesses may not know why human resources are so important to them. If you are a solopreneur, maybe it isn’t that important right now, but if you’re thinking about growing the business, it will be.
So what is HR and Small Business? For the purpose of this article, it is the necessary and synergistic relationship between business strategies, operational procedures, and human resource policies and knowledge. For this knowledge, we went straight to Paula Mathews of HR Compliance 101, a strategic partner of ours.
To really understand HR and small business you have to first understand the importance of HR. HR is all about employee relationships, hiring, retention, training, policies. We don’t know what we don’t know as business owners. As experienced as we are in our industries, we aren’t HR experts here at Shine. We may not know that unless you’re a government entity, there is no comp time. We may not know that failure to adhere to OSHA regulations now comes with a price tag of over $12,600 versus the $7,000 from just years ago. We may not know that if an employee is harassed for their sexual orientation, and/or their age, we can be fined and sued. We may not know that without the proper documentation, we have far less ability to enforce policies with employees. We may not know that if we don’t implement a behavior expectations rule for social media for employees, that our best clients could be getting turned off and offended by the off-the-clock conduct of our employees. HR and small business is critical to protecting your business and ensuring the best, and fairest, culture for your team. How expensive would these described issues be? Could you recover? What would you do if any of these happened? The slightest oversight in business can cost a business everything. The situations here are very vague and could be of small consequence. $100. $500. What if there were legal fees? Payouts? Fines? $5,000. $50,000. We’ve seen class action OT lawsuits cost businesses over $100,000 in legal fees for only 15 employees! What if you had an employee turn away your best clients, and each client told 15 connections. Could you make that up? Remember, it takes a lifetime to develop a positive reputation but only a minute to tarnish it.
People often don’t think of HR and the management and inspiration of people
We asked Paula to help us put this into perspective so that we can better educate our audience. She was instrumental in helping us help you understand what you should be paying, for good HR. A Full-Time HR Manager with experience will expect $50,000 – $75,000 yearly. If you have 50 or more employees, you may be at that size where you need this FT in-house position filled. The sweet spot for regular recurring HR needs is 5-49 employees in most cases. Less than 5 usually just need more one-time type services. HR consultants generally get paid in the $50 – $250 hourly mark depending on their level of experience. So how would you know that this saves you money as a business owner? Let’s look at numbers further. Clients with fewer than 15 employees pay on average to HR Compliance 101 only $1,000 per year. Organizations with 15+ pay around $3,500. This helped us understand the value of an HR Consultant and the benefits to us as a small business and we hope it’s helpful to you, too.
So, how do you know if you need help with HR? Paula provided us with an HR Self Diagnosis Test you can take for your business! You can access the test 2016 HR SELF DIAGNOSIS by clicking this link. You can download and/or print from this link as well.
We hope you enjoyed HR and Small Business and if you’re like us and wanted to know more, reach out to Paula, and check out her blogs. Education is key to growing your business!
HR Compliance 101 is a Human Resources consulting company. Paula provides HR services and consulting for the non-corporate business sector. She provides hiring/firing services, OSHA training and compliance, SOP creation and revisions, and nearly every HR need in between. Paula’s experiences have been in education and human resources making her a valuable ally to have as a consultant. She’s a master of helping employees play nicely, improve their time management, and she can help business owners improve the culture of their companies. You can learn more about Paula, the company, and how they help their clients on their website HR Compliance 101.
