At a certain point, the pressures and responsibilities that you carry as a business owner may be simply too much. And that’s normal and healthy! What you need to do is hire other people to take off some of the administrative weight – and an HR person is perfect for that.
Manage Personnel
The first and foremost responsibility that is given to an HR person is the management of the employees. They can be the ones that interact most directly with your other hires on most or all matters, leaving you to deal with the higher-level technicalities of running a business. When you need more people hired, your HR person will be the one to take care of it. They have the training, education, and experience to make difficult and emotional decisions with a level head. This is especially important when it comes to letting employees go.
Handle Benefits
An HR person also connects employees with benefits. Depending on the size and scope of your company, you may have many numerous options for benefits. Accordingly, your employees are going to want to carefully choose the plan that fits best for them. Your HR hire will be able to advise them and help them through this process. They will also know the legal requirements for benefit-related matters – such as the technicalities surrounding a 401(k) plan. A 401(k) plan requires non-discrimination testing to ensure it isn’t disproportionately benefiting certain employees; that is a caveat, for example, that they will know how to deal with.
Take Care of Workplace Disputes
A massive drain on your time, energy, and mental clarity, as the sole administrator of a business, will be personal problems between employees. Worker infighting – or even just a non communicative, passive-aggressive environment – can create a really toxic workspace. Hires who exhibit racist, sexist, homophobic, or otherwise bigoted behavior need to be taken care of as well. A trained, experienced HR person would deal with every problem listed above and more. Imagine how much better off you would be without that on your mind!
The interpersonal skills that are required in the running of a business are no easy matter. It seems the ideal businessperson is one who has a head for logistics, finances, advertising, people, and products! Hiring an HR person can take off so much of that stressful weight of responsibility that it is definitely worth your effort and money to look into hiring one.
Check out this article on training that you need to provide for your employees!
