8 Human Resources Problems You Should Be Paying Attention To

Looking to scale your business? Begin by setting up a solid foundation on which to build. But be careful on how you set up that foundation. The best businesses consist of not one….not two…but five core pillars for strategic depth. So in order to scale your business you need a rock-solid base in all the five core pillars of your company: Sales/Marketing; Operations; HR; Executive Leadership; and Finance.

Today, I want to address the eight questions you need to ask yourself regularly to strengthen your Human Resources pillar.

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1. Do you have a clear and effective hiring system?

Ask yourself these questions:

• How well has it shown itself to perform?
• Do you have a solid onboarding process that warmly and effectively brings on new team members and quickly empowers them as a highly productive member of the team?
• Are you able to hire and onboard a new team member without your interference?

2. Do you have the right team on the bus with you?

• Do you have dead weight or low performers who really should be cut?

• Are the team members in the correct positions to utilize their skills and talents?

3. Do you have systems for training and reviewing team members?

• How well does your company do at reviewing your staff and giving them meaningful feedback?

• Is this personality driven or systematically designed?

• How well do you do at developing talent and enhancing your team’s skills?

• Does your team have a clear map to follow to have a full and productive career with your company, or do they just do a job and fill a box?

4. How is your employee retention?

• How long do your employees stay with you?

• What’s your turnover rate?

5. Does your staff have a clear understanding of job functions?:

• Does each of your employees understand what his or her job is and how that job fits into the bigger picture of the company?
• Do they know the key results they are responsible for and how the company will measure them on those responsibilities?
• Do they have a clear understanding of the resources and authority they have in pursuit of these key results?

6. Are you legally compliant?:

• How well does your company do at complying with all local, state, and federal labor regulations?

• How well have you trained your staff on issue like sexual harassment and HR best practices to stay out of legal trouble?

7. Are you handling benefits correctly?:

• How well does your company do at managing your employee benefits?

8. Are you working together as a team?:

• How well does your team communicate with each other internally to get valuable work done in an excellent fashion?

• Is this ad hoc or do you have formal communication systems and processes to make sure your team coordinates effort and resources to best effect?

Once you have determined how your human resources pillar stacks up, set in place a plan to strengthen areas that need improvement and review every quarter.