What does a HR Consultant do?

So, what exactly do we do at Westcountry HR?

We are often asked;

·        What is HR?

·        What does an HR Consultant do?

·        Why would I need an HR Consultant?

So, I thought I’d tell you a little about what we do here at Westcountry HR.

HR stands for Human Resources which, most simply, is ‘the department of a business or organisation that deals with the hiring, development, administration, wellbeing and training of staff’.

So, what exactly does that mean and involve?

As well as doing the basics such as recruiting new employees and ensuring your employment contracts and handbooks are accurate and up to date, the HR element of your business is also there to help develop, train and motivate your employees. An experienced and skilled HR Consultant will also provide advice and support and help you to produce long-term strategies for the growth of your company.

To give you more of an idea of just what’s involved, here’s a little breakdown of some of these key tasks:

Advice, Guidance and Communication

An experienced HR Consultant will also support you with increasing employee satisfaction and motivation, which is vital to keeping your staff happy. Your HR Consultant can often be a safe and reassuring person for staff to go to when in need of personal support, to discuss a grievance or to simply have a chat about their career and progress. A HR Consultant can also help you deal with internal communications, such as important messages and creating newsletters.

This is just a sample of the roles and responsibilities a HR Consultant can help you with. Getting a HR consultancy to support you with all your Human Resources needs is a great way for small-medium sized businesses to get the development and expertise they need without taking on full time employees and potentially paying out high salaries unnecessarily - not to mention the savings on holidays, sick pay and all the lunches and coffee breaks!

Administration

The amount of administration required to support the employees of a company is often underestimated. The bigger the company, the more employees, which means more admin and paperwork to be done! This paperwork and various admin tasks will often include; contracts, handbooks, policies and procedures, forms, letters, preparing reports - such as sickness, annual leave, new employees and leavers - certificates, managing payroll, stationary, computer users – including email usernames and passwords - and so much more.

Getting the right support in place to take responsibility for these tasks is just as important as doing the tasks themselves – and that’s exactly what Westcountry HR can do for you.

Recruitment

This is probably the most obvious one, but what does the HR department deal with in the recruitment process and why is it so important that it’s done well and carefully?

It starts with the job adverts and job descriptions, it’s important to ensure that these are done accurately and in detail so that any potential applicant can easily identify if a role is suitable for them, and in turn, that they are suitable for the role. It will also help you to reduce the number of people applying who are not suitable for the role. The next step is sifting through the applicants, this can be quite an onerous task at times, reading through all those CVs and finding people who have the right skills for the job.

Once you’ve narrowed down your applicants, next, you need to interview them. It’s really important to come up with and ask all the right questions to ensure you find the exact right employee for you, the role and for your business. Finally, once you’ve found the right employee, you’ll need to get your induction processes and training plans in place to ensure your new employee fits seamlessly into their new role.

Getting your recruitment processes right is very important for your business. A company without the right team will struggle to be successful and grow.

Training

For your employees to be at or above required standards and stay good at their jobs, they need to be trained regularly. A skilled and qualified HR Consultant will help you analyse your staff and teams and decide what training is required. They will discuss training needs with management and will prepare and organise any training that needs to take place. They will prepare the training materials and where required will help you to find external companies who can provide the training. Once training has taken place your HR support can also collect feedback from the external training companies and also from your staff (which can then lead to making training reports) and so on.

If you’re interested in learning more about what we do and how we can help you, please contact Westcountry HR today, we’d be delighted to help.

www.westcountryhr.com

Tel: 01626 367595

Email [email protected]