Ways Not Having HR Hurts Small Business Growth

It’s an exciting time in every small business owner’s career when the prospect of being able to hire to fuel growth becomes a reality. In these seasons, you go from self-employed to entrepreneur in the eyes of others. It’s a good feeling to know you’ve finally grown out of your garage and/or living room. Small business growth is exciting, but there are real challenges ahead if you plan on being successful. This is especially true if you don’t have any qualified HR professionals helping you ensure healthy growth. 

Human resources always seems like the one thing small business owners put off getting themselves involved with until something happens. The key to substantial small business growth is avoiding unnecessary pitfalls than can delay and even sideline positive growth. Some assumptions go along with putting off professional HR solutions that should be dispelled. Getting real about HR takes an honest appraisal of one’s perception of it and make informed decisions going forward. We’ll take a look at the most common ones. 

Small Business Growth Requires HR For Good Reasons 

They say, “You don’t know what you don’t know until you know.” That philosophy falls short when it comes to employment law and potential lawsuits. It’s much better to arm yourself with as much information as possible if you want to make hiring and keeping employees a positive experience for everyone. 

HR is a lot of things in a small business, but there are a few things it is not. In larger companies, the tendency to put HR on their island and think of it as something separate from the rest needs to be eliminated from a small business owner’s mind. HR is not Internal Affairs. Their job in supporting small business growth has a lot to do with helping a small business owner avoid issues with labor laws and compliance. Issues with labor law is an excellent thing to avoid. HR is an ally, not the creepy snitch skulking around the office looking to find fault with how you are running your business. 

When small business owners don’t take HR too seriously, they will usually try to do it themselves until they pass it on to a family member. Maybe it’s because they trust the family member to let them know if things aren’t going a certain way, perhaps it’s because a family member may overlook something that shouldn’t be done. No matter what the reason, unless your family member is an HR professional with experience being one, you should find an HR solution that will keep things going in the right direction with your employees and labor compliance. 

Growth Almost Always Means Employee Hiccups 

There are the people you hire at the very start of your business when you don’t really have a lot of leverage, and then there are the people you hire when you need something more. Those two sets of people are rarely the same. Not to say the ones that have been with you from the beginning won’t still be there, but you might find, if you haven’t already, it is not likely. The reason is simple; your growing company has by now faced challenges, experienced growing pains, and stretched your employees enough to know when they might snap under pressure. 

A manager of 2 or 3 may not be able to handle managing 10 or 15 and increased workloads. When this happens, you are with faced some serious decisions. No one likes to be in a position to have to let people go or tell them they are not working out. How that plays out could significantly impact your business. Making termination decisions on the fly can have painful ramifications. A qualified HR professional will be able to advise you on how to do this well. There are the legal aspects of termination and the workplace impact it has on the employees that remain. Both of these issues need to be considered when any decision impacts the existing workforce. This hiccup goes much smoother when HR by your side. 

Making good hiring decisions has a lot to do with knowing what you are looking for in the first place. How do you know what a good Accounts Payable person is if you’ve never done the job yourself? Making the right hiring decisions is ensured with an HR solution that is adept at vetting candidates and helping small business growth by hiring excellent employees. 

Small Business Growth Is Made Easier With A PEO 

Did you know working with a PEO can help ensure small business growth for your business in many ways? A PEO is your solution for all things HR, payroll, insurance, and compliance. For all the things small business owners lay awake at night thinking about, a PEO is likely the solution they need. HR requires expertise if it is going to help a small business grow well, with a PEO by your side, you can’t go wrong. If you’d like to know more about how a PEO can help your small business grow this year, contact us today.