Setting up a Human Resources (HR) department to support your employees is an important piece of corporate structure. When properly staffed, this department will monitor your organization for compliance and work to ensure enforcement of labor laws. A well-built HR department structure can assist in retention efforts that increase employee engagement and promote belonging in the workplace.
When building an HR department, you need to know the organizational structures necessary to set it up for success. The Houston employment lawyers at Feldman & Feldman are well-practiced in assisting organizations in evaluating their structure to build and maintain employee support and is ready to help you. Below, we examine what you need to know about setting up an HR department.
What Is Human Resources?
Before diving into the specifics, it is important to understand the varied functions of Human Resources (HR) within an organization. HR is responsible for your organization’s foundational roles, including:
- Recruitment and selection
- Employee onboarding and training
- Performance management
- Compensation and benefits
- Employee relations
- Compliance with labor laws and regulations
- Organizational development
HR’s ultimate goal is to attract, retain, and develop talent while ensuring that the organization operates smoothly and legally.
What HR Does in a Company
In short, HR focuses on the development of your workforce. This can include identifying the positions your organization needs, recruiting and selecting the best individuals for the respective roles, and engaging with employees to create a supportive work atmosphere. HR also applies best practices for compliance with labor laws and proper administration of benefits. Depending on your specific organizational needs, HR will also be the department that oversees the development of training programs to promote a culture of belonging and encourage professional growth.
Different organizational types have different needs from an HR department. Specific workforce and industry requirements can dictate HR’s goals, such as:
- Information Technology (IT) – HR expends a lot of effort on recruitment due to the highly specialized roles involved in keeping networks, software, and hardware running and marketable. Total rewards packages are critical because of the heavy competition.
- Retail – In retail spaces, your business experiences high turnover and has requirements to focus on short-term recruitment for holidays or particular seasons. Many of the employees are customer-facing, and training and development about customer service is critical to success.
- Manufacturing – Here, HR likely focuses on employee/labor relations, training programs on safety and compliance, and worker health and safety. Without these, production can drop quickly and negatively impact your business’s bottom line.
- Healthcare – HR will be focused on internal controls for regulatory requirements, worker wellness, and preventing burnout related to workers covering long shifts.
These are just some examples of the nuanced work an HR department may perform.
Organizational Assessment Is the First Step
Organizational assessment starts with a thorough understanding of your current workforce, your organizational charts, and what you want for the future of your business. By evaluating how many employees you have versus how many employees you need, what types of roles you need to have at all times, and what skills are needed to fill those roles, you can gain a better idea of how you want to structure your staff to support the organizational culture you are seeking.
This analysis will result in the identification of gaps in your structures and allow you to affirm or adjust your priorities.
Determining HR Objectives
The next steps of an organizational assessment are identifying and outlining the objectives and goals of the HR department for your specific organization at this specific time. Be sure to take time to check those objectives and goals against your organization’s mission and vision statements. They should be compatible and reflect your core values.
Examples of HR objectives are:
- Ensuring recruitment efforts are focused on filling skills gaps
- Improving employee retention
- Engaging employees to increase satisfaction
- 100% compliance with labor laws and regulations
- Creating and maintaining a culture of belonging
Each objective should be tied to a goal that allows you to track the progress of the department and establish clear expectations for its staff. With properly set goals and objectives, your HR department will be able to set a course for your entire organization through a properly developed performance management program.
Policies and Procedures Provide Clarity
Nothing helps lower litigation risk more than properly developed and consistently implemented policies and procedures that cover nearly everything an HR department will do. From onboarding to exit procedures, fairness and clarity will protect you and your business from allegations and lawsuits. Properly managing expectations and holding employees accountable for actions that go against your policies and procedures can go a long way toward demonstrating the overall organizational culture.
Clear policies and procedures will also set your employees up for success and address behavior and conduct issues before they occur. Feldman & Feldman can help you build strong policies and procedures that help to protect you in litigation. From ensuring your company meets federal and state requirements in your hiring processes to assisting you in the development of disciplinary procedures, we help you have strong structural protections and improve employee morale through clarity in expectations.
Setting up your HR department for success through these measures ultimately contributes to overall organizational success.
Those clear expectations allow for collaboration, strong communication, and dedication to your mission, which results in stronger work product. Without policies and procedures to convey your organization’s work toward consistency and compliance, employees and applicants are often left to “imagine the worst” when HR action or assistance is needed.
How to Staff the HR Department
Your HR department must fit your organization in size and need. Factors to consider when standing up an HR department include size, roles, and objectives. For any role, you want to hire someone who has the skills necessary to be successful and the dedication to apply those skills to their work.
Depending on your organizational needs, as identified in your assessment, you will likely want at least a manager and specialists in recruitment, professional development, wages/salary and benefits, and employee engagement. You may also want to have a generalist on staff who can support a variety of tasks across the various subspecialties.
If your organization is rapidly changing or brand new, recruiting and onboarding staff to create an HR department in the structure you need can be challenging. Feldman & Feldman can help you develop policies and guidelines to build an HR department that will meet your organizational needs. Following an assessment, we will help you focus on developing procedures, planning a training program, and creating processes to keep your new team up-to-date on what they need to know to keep your business compliant and protected.
Seek Professional Guidance When Setting Up an HR Department
After you set up your HR department, be sure to evaluate performance as the HR department does its work. Allow for regular check-ins on the established goals and objectives. You may want to consider applying key performance indicators to your HR department to keep track of the impact of the structure on your budget.
Feldman & Feldman is ready to help you understand the role of your HR department, evaluate the needs of your organization as it is and how you want it to be, define your goals and objectives, and develop a workplace program that represents the best of what you want your organization to be. Call us today to help you develop policies to recruit and retain the best talent for your company and watch your business soar.