HR Department of One

Have you found yourself accepting the Human Resources position at a local business where you are the entire department? The position is filled with potential and opportunities to help skyrocket your career in Human Resources, but once you get into the position you find yourself overwhelmed and lost of where to start? The good news is, you are not alone. There are hundreds of HR professionals like you in the same boat.

When you are the HR Department of One you have the responsibility of Worker's Compensations, Benefits Administration, Compensation, Recruiting, Onboarding, Employee Relations, Safety Management, Diversity and Inclusion, Payroll Management, Training, Insurance Management, Organizational Management, Policies & Form Development, and so much more. So, how do you balance all of these items daily and keep above water at the same time? Here are my four steps to help you manage to be the HR Leader of your organization:

1). Eat the Elephant One Bite at a Time

Take the time to learn when the big deadlines are for your organization. For example; when do all the company benefits renew, when do policy revisions need to be implemented by, when does the company complete its annual performance review and annual raises, and so on. Once you know these big target dates you can map out your plan of the year by breaking it down by quarter. Then back into those dates to identify when things need to be completed by to meet these milestone deadlines. For me, I put my plan on a giant dry-erase board in my office with all my action items to check off as I get them completed to ensure I remain on schedule.

2). Get the Goals/Objectives from Leadership

It is important to set up times with the leadership of the organization to understand what is their view/direction and goals for the company. This will help you, as the strategic partner to understand where their pain points are and how you can set your goals to help them address them. By doing this one easy step it will give you the guidance and direction you need without having to directly ask what they want from you in this role, especially if it is a new role to the company.

3). Look for Inefficiencies within your Department

My favorite saying is "time is money" and when you have inefficiencies within your department you are wasting time and throwing money down the drain. If your company doesn't have a Human Resource Information System (HRIS) then that would be the first place I would start for your organization. This web-based software with improved efficiencies will free up your valuable time to focus on all the other important tasks. If you already have the HRIS system in place then look at ways to better utilize the software. Can you add a recruitment/onboarding platform, benefits management platform, integrate your payroll into the system for more seamless transactions, performance review platform, etc. Adding these all into one system where they all communicate will reduce double entry of data and make compiling reports and analytics a breeze.

4). Talk to the Employees

You can learn a great deal about what is going in the organization by talking to all the employees. By doing this you can get a general sense of what employees hold dear to them and what makes them stay loyal to the organization. Do they love the benefits package with the company or is it the company culture? Having a good foundation of what the employees hold dear; you know how to help navigate the organization to continue excelling in those areas. You will also learn areas for improvement and this is where you can circle back to step one and add it to your action plan for addressing.

The best part of these four steps that I have found very successful is that you can do them in any order and still accomplish the same outcome. Being the HR Department of One has the best of all words for HR Professionals, as you get the opportunity to be the strategic partner as well as being in the trenches doing the day-to-day tasks working with all the employees. And lastly, every day is a different day in the office. So if you like variety in your job, then you picked the perfect position for yourself.