As an HR Consultant to Australian small business I often get the sense, when I introduce myself at a party, and the inevitable question is asked - "what do you do for work?", that people can’t quite understand the need for HR in the small business environment, or what it is I actually do. For many years I have taken umbrage at this and many times I have groaned to friends "small business managers don't even know what HR is, let alone how it can help them." However, I recently realized that by getting annoyed, I had set myself up for disappointment, as I had in fact made a c conscious decision to help this market with their HR issues. At the time of choosing, I did not realise the extent to which I would have to educate the market and convince them of need. Over time, I have sat in many small business offices where they have told me they don’t really have any HR issues, only to hear in the background constant enquiries about pay changes, complaints about excessive sick leave, another employee has resigned. “We do have a lot of staff turnover on our sites” one Financial Controller told me as a matter of fact as if there is nothing that can be done for it, after I had finally been given the HR contract after two years of meetings and proposals – I am a patient gal!
Being born and bred in small business and having a natural passion for HR I set off to bridge the HR gap for Australian small businesses. As with many good ideas I may have been ahead of my time, although I am not totally convinced of this. As I set out to promote HR to small business I was at the forefront (internet wise in 2004) of small business HR consultancy. However, I noticed the other players were busy positioning their websites to appeal to big business, rather than talking to the small business owner. I thought, “gee these guys must be good at marketing to be able to sell corporate HR to the small business man” and I started to wonder what I was doing wrong (because the conversations I was having at a grass roots level, continuously showed me that small business didn't know what HR was, let alone that they needed it). I pushed on, but ended up pulling my HR website and instead developed this blog. I was continuously employed in varying industries, largely on a contract basis, from word of mouth referrals. Once in the small business as a consultant, the great affect of HR can often be overwhelming to the business owner/manager and I thrived on delivering outcomes. Yet I still had a longing to bring small business HR to the masses and my hope with this blog is that small business owners and managers can gain practical, actionable solutions, to move their business into high performance mode, through good people management strategies. My purpose for this site is to use my small business experience, my HR skills and my out-of-the-box approach to solve people problems and provide quality free content on HR management tips.
I was really disappointed in the HR industry today as I googled ‘HR+Blog’ in Australia and was presented with a wide array of HR blogs speaking to HR professionals. No one was talking to the small business owner, yet again. However, approximately 90% of Australian businesses are small businesses! HR people can be very narrow, and I'll probably annoy a lot of my fellow industry people by saying so. Taking what the big business guys know and benefit from daily and morphing it into something useable and practical within a small business environment is what I love and passionately believe should be done.
My approach seems to be quite different to most HR consultants, due to my hands on small business management experience. I know what it is like to manage a staff of 10 across two sites, I know the constant pressures that small business managers face and the long hours they work. I know the disappointment at not having your staff appreciate all that you do for them! It is quite bizarre the passion that a small business owner can have for their business - the type of passion that wakes them up at 2am and has them creating colourful mindmaps on the kitchen table using the children’s textas, tip toeing around so as not to wake the house. This all encompassing passion can set you up for staff disappointments and I have had my fare share of them. Only last year at our work Christmas function I ended up in tears when the staff gave the Managing Director a Christmas present but didn't have one to give me (due to an innocent mistake by the staff member who had been charged with the duty, forgetting to bring it to the function). I had laboured over the staff's presents and stupidly spent a day of my bereavement leave (when my sister-in-law passed away) carefully selecting their christmas gifts. I wrapped them with my children’s help and carted them all the way in to the city venue. I had booked the venue, ensured the menu would be suitable for all tastes.. For all my care and attention, I received a big fat nothing! (this was a particularly emotional time for me with my sister-in-laws passing, but still!) I think a lot of small business owners can relate to this terrible feeling of receiving nothing back, when seemingly giving everything.
There are simple things that small businesses can do to retain their staff, keep them happy, motivate them (although they may never have the same passion as you do – unfortunate, but true!), recruit the good ones, create and develop high performers and move from a fire fighting approach to a high performing team. You just may not end up with a Christmas present at the end of the year!
What underpins great HR is a clear vision and values that staff can align with and buy in too. These two items, whilst being the concrete slab of good HR, are also really good business practice and something that few small business owners ever stop to consider. So, my number one tip is to create your vision and communicate it to your staff, all the time.
The second thing good HR does is create clear policies and procedures that guide employees and management in decision making. Whilst employees actually really like policies and procedures, because it makes things clear, small business owners find them hard work to construct and often have difficulty setting aside the time to do them. An HR consultant will guide you in the underlying issues to consider when creating policies and procedures. For instance, a simple company car policy is likely to arise out of an issue of someone using excessive fuel in the company car. The usual small business response would be to quickly construct a company car policy and distribute it via email. The employee in question would then feel victimized and unhappy and would share their hurt with others, thereby damaging many other employee perceptions within the company. The policy which is a re-bound policy probably will not address all the other potential issues and the next time an issue arises the manager will say “we have a company car policy, it should be in there”, so the next issue gets added into the policy and it gets distributed to the staff and the employee in question feels victimized… you get the picture. The tip here is that all HR policies and procedures are linked to each other and need to be assessed prior to distribution for their potential to inflame issues, loop holes that employees might use against you, contradictory messages between policies (ie the company is committed to a healthy and safe workplace in one policy and then they require you to work extremely long hours in another policy). What you write in one will relate in some way to what you write in another and you want to make sure your message is consistent and that it helps to mitigate your risk, not increase it!
As HR professionals are usually pretty good at writing HR policies and procedures, they are often systems people as well, and in small business, procedures that map a business system are invaluable! They make a business saleable, ensure new staff get up and running as quickly as possible and highlight inefficiencies in production/service systems. Personally, I love policies and procedures, which my husband finds quite disturbing, and I have mapped many production/service processes for businesses, extracted problems, workshopped and resolved issues that have been frustrating staff for years and then delighted in the increase in productivity. So HR and small business are a natural fit, when you think outside the box; and I haven’t even touched on staff performance yet! Next time….
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