Best Practices for Keeping Your HR Team a Key Driver for Business Compliance

For businesses to scale successfully, there are many priorities that their HR teams need to care for. While handling recruitment, payroll, and benefits administration are all part of these responsibilities, making sure the business understands and complies with industry standards governing everything from records management and data privacy to workplace policies is also a key responsibility.

However, navigating and meeting various compliance objectives requires more than a checklist. It requires a complete cultural shift that not only helps HR teams take their responsibilities more seriously but also encourages support and cooperation from all teams.

Below, we’ll cover the reasons why compliance matters in business settings and best practices for maintaining it.

Why Compliance Matters in Business Settings

Mitigating Legal and Financial Risks – HR compliance is an incredibly important responsibility for businesses. Taking the time to ensure HR practices are in alignment with industry standards actively helps to support the business’s financial viability long-term.Protecting Your Organization’s Reputation – In business settings, This can make it much more difficult to bring in new talent or limit staff retention rates, and also can have a serious negative impact on customer relationships.Enhancing Employee Trust and Engagement – The success of a business often hinges on an organization’s ability to keep its employees engaged and passionate about what they do. But this is hard to achieve without first establishing trust with them. Ensuring the business has lawful policies in place and is consistent in how they’re carried out is a great way to build and keep this trust with employees long-term.Streamlines Operations – HR teams to work off approved industry compliance frameworks are able to create more standardized workflows and best practices. This creates a crucial amount of structure in the organization that translates to accurate payroll administration, employee benefits coordination, and accurate record keeping.

Best Practices for Maintaining Business Compliance

Conduct Regular, Comprehensive HR Audits

An effective strategy for ensuring the business is always maintaining specific compliance requirements is to conduct regular HR audits. These can be likened to getting a complete health check-up on how the company is performing and whether or not it’s meeting all its obligations.

Develop and Maintain Clear Policies

One of the most important elements of helping your business maintain certain levels of compliance is by ensuring important company resources, such as employee handbooks, are regularly reviewed and updated. It’s critical that the message is clear that all new and current employees can trust and rely on the information they’re receiving from HR, and your handbooks are a good place to start.

Outside of these, you should also ensure that all Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs) that have been documented and stored on company intranets are regularly evaluated and updated as required. As businesses change, as well as the industry they represent as a whole, these regular audits give HR teams the opportunity to identify potential gaps in compliance or additional protocols that may need to be implemented.

Implement Robust and Ongoing Training Programs

Compliance is a broad business expectation that isn’t just specific to HR teams. There can be a range of requirements that organizations need to maintain to not only ensure safe and ethical business practices, but also help to ensure viable operations.

Because industry and operational compliance can mean different things to every organization, it’s critical to prioritize ongoing training in these areas for everyone. This is especially the case for managers and supervisors who are often the first line of defense on many HR-related issues.

Training each of these stakeholders on areas such as policies surrounding employee harassment and discrimination, workplace safety, or safe data management practices all help to add essential support to HR teams while also contributing to a much healthier and sustainable company culture.

Master Effective Record-Keeping and Documentation

Clear and consistent documentation is one of the most important elements for HR teams to master. This is critical when trying to prove compliance and can help validate various best practices when being audited or needing to defend a legal dispute.

Stay Updated on Legal Requirement Changes

Employment law is rarely a static element for businesses. Over time, the requirements for HR teams and other key departments may regularly shift as new legislation is passed or there are industry updates at the federal, state, and local levels.

As a growing business, it’s critical to have a plan in place for keeping informed of all these new changes. One way to do this is to encourage your HR teams to subscribe to various legal resources and mailing groups. They could also join professional HR groups like SHRM or regularly attend industry webinars and check government websites for any changes that might impact them.

Engage With Legal Counsel as Needed

Your HR team is skilled, but they shouldn’t have to be legal experts, too. Knowing when to call for professional legal advice is a key part of smart compliance management.

It’s a good idea to have an experienced employment lawyer on standby for when new compliance regulations are difficult to understand. You shouldn’t hesitate to consult them on areas that require more experience to navigate, such as during more sensitive terminations or before you roll out a significant new company policy. This can help your HR teams navigate more complicated situations more confidently.

Keep Your HR Team Compliant

HR compliance requires a continuous commitment to doing things the right way for your business and your employees. By adopting the practices discussed, your HR team can confidently manage legal complexities as they come up while building a fair and ethical workplace for everyone.