Human Resources policies and procedures are important as they provide direction for both management and staff, whilst ensuring that controls are in place that lead to fairness in managing staff in the workplace. Policies must, however, also be reasonable and applicable to specific environments. Ensuring compliance with employment legislation is as vital as the importance of informing employees of the rules, guidelines and their responsibilities.

So often, when the business starts small, the owners keep things loose and create rules as they go along. However, there comes a point when a company needs to coordinate processes and procedures and provide itself with legal protection. People are people, and when there are no boundaries, processes and procedures will be tested. With human nature being what it is, employees will take chances and, when needed, be “creative”. One needs a strategy for developing, communicating and enforcing a set of policies and practices that reflect your company standards of acceptable behaviour.

Building a great company has much to do with how people work together, whether there are clear expectations, and ultimately, how fairly people are treated as they help build and grow your company. The answer lies in how people policies and practices are designed as these will drive employee interaction and fulfil several important functions:

• Communicates values and expectations of how things are done
• Ensures the company complies with legislation
• Protects the company against undue employee claims
• Documents and drives implementation of best practices
• Drives fair and consistent treatment of staff
• Supports management to make consistent, uniformed and predictable decisions

Makes sense, doesn’t it? Call your Crowe HR Advisory team and let us help you put in place the best HR policies for your business.