No dedicated hr team? You need these essential hr tools and solutions

Having robust HR tools and processes are absolutely essential, but you need more than just someone doing payroll tasks, or advertising vacancies online.

If your business can’t justify full-time HR resources, don’t worry, you’re not alone.  According to research by the UK’s Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development (CIPD), just 29% of companies with fewer than ten employees, and only 47% of small businesses with 10-50 staff have just one person in an HR role.

In many small firms, HR tasks become the responsibility of the business owner or someone like the financial controller. Yet even if you’re the most seasoned entrepreneur or have tasked your highly-experienced finance manager to oversee HR related matters, this is a lot to take on without professional HR experience.

With the complexity of the Australian employment landscape, the devil is in the detail. And you can inadvertently put your business at risk if you’re not on top of the latest employment rules and regulations. As an employer, just consider some of your legal obligations around paying staff:

• Paying your employees correct wages under the applicable modern award
• Applying any penalty rates for overtime or weekend work
• Issuing accurate pay slips
• Sending PAYG tax instalments to the Australian Taxation Office
• Choosing a default super fund
• Paying superannuation contributions into your default super fund or your employees’ nominated funds on or before the due date each quarter
• Keeping appropriate records

Get any of this wrong and you could be facing backpay liabilities, along with stiff penalties for breaching workplace laws. And add to this a good dose of reputational damage for underpaying employees which could take years for you to put right.

Of course, you don’t have to do this all on your own. There are various HR tools and other options available to help you nail your HR requirements, including:

• An outsourced HR consultant
• Customisable templates for employee contracts, HR policies and other HR documents
• An HR hotline
• An all-in-one HR, payroll and benefits platform

With outsourced HR, you get access to professional HR talent with the exact expertise you need, when you need it. And you can forget about compliance headaches because skilled HR professionals are totally across all the latest developments in employment law and the rules and regulations around hiring, managing and terminating employees. A good outsourced HR professional an also help you set up HR systems and processes in-house and evaluate and implement modern HR tools and HRIS solutions for your ongoing HR management and recordkeeping.

Downloadable customisable HR templates, forms, policies and documentation are a great foundation for any growing business, bringing uniformity and consistency to HR practices. But they still need to be tailored to your business, and are not a cure-all for all HR requirements.

HR hotlines are typically provided as subscription based services. They are staffed by experienced HR consultants who can answer your queries on specific HR matters, and give you guidance on handling everything from onboarding, award interpretation and employee entitlements such as wage rates, annual leave, and superannuation. They can also help you manage poor performance, or follow due process in dismissals, and redundancies. However, as with most things in life, prevention is better than cure, so using a hotline before you fire someone is much better than contacting them after you’ve received an unfair dismissal notification from Fair Work Australia.

By automating HR tasks with an HRIS solution, you can save time, create efficiencies, and minimise risk across the business. You’ll eliminate slow manual processes and spreadsheets and the errors that go with them, freeing your staff to work on more strategic, income-generating projects.  You’ll also have up-to-the-minute reporting tools that provide valuable insights to help you steer your business. With employee self-service functionality, your employees can access and update their own records which not only ensures greater accuracy but it also reduces the HR workload.

Of course, for an all-in-one HRIS, you can’t beat Employment Hero. The HR tools on the Employment Hero platform help you handle everything from recruitment and onboarding through to performance management and termination in a structured, systemised, and compliant way. Plus, everything’s easy to access 24/7, and documents are automatically updated so there’s no need to manually update them.

To see for yourself how Employment Hero can ease the stress of managing day-to-day HR tasks, and free up more of your time to work on stuff that really matters, request a demo today.

Employment Hero is Australia’s first all-in-one cloud HRIS offering a comprehensive HR software, payroll system, and employee benefits platform in one easy solution. Trusted by Australian businesses, Employment Hero is about making rostering, onboarding, performance management, time tracking, payroll, and award interpretation a snap. Employment Hero’s HRIS also integrates with Xero, MYOB, KeyPay, and Accountright Live. Stop wasting time with spreadsheets, and request a demo today.