Investing in an audit to explore the current status of your Employee Life Cycle is a prime opportunity to get beneath the skin of your organisation. Not just from a “paperwork and box ticking” perspective, but more so to uncover “The People Journey” and to ultimately obtain a clear picture of what you do well and which areas require improvement or a flair of creativity.
There are multiple types of HR Compliance Audits on the market. It is advisable to be clear of your company’s objectives and intentions. Are you seeking legal compliance, best practice and guidance on HR policies, wanting to set expectations or have the competitive advantage by being an Elite Employer and offering your employees an outstanding employment experience?
An HR Audit helps ensure that organisations taking their first steps into truly owning their internal HR function (that may historically have just hoped for the best) can achieve direction and clarity.
It can also be suitable for organisations looking to outsource or upgrade their Human Resources. An HR Audit can give a Human Resources Service provider true visibility of company policies, employee records, HR processes, data protection, as well as their retention rate. Most importantly, however, it can show what they are inheriting and the priority projects to focus on during the partnership.
An Employee Lifecycle Audit is a decisive step towards evaluating and optimising the entire employee journey. To review your company’s current objectives, culture, policies and procedures, to scope the challenges ahead and help your company become an Elite Employer.
From Employer Branding (attracting your ideal hire) to Recruitment and Onboarding (being a new employee and your journey throughout probation period), Employee Development, Retention and finally Employee Separation (you can’t always escape it), at OutThere, we recommend having regular HR audits and having your HR audit checklist to hand. They do have their place and should be completed as an annual/bi annual task of the greater HR Strategy.
From ensuring HR processes to boosting employee engagement, our in-depth process and unbiased 360 feedback could be the key to unlocking employee engagement, employee wellbeing, performance and productivity levels, whilst providing the competitive advantage you seek.
Here’s a guide to what’s involved.
The Employee Lifecycle Audit “OutThere Stylee”
An HR audit with us is considerably much more than running through an HR audit checklist and keeping you out of any legal trouble. And while an audit of your employee life cycle may sound daunting (especially to the Human Resources department!), it needn’t be. At OutThere, we promise you this: we will tell it like it is.
We’ll dispense with the jargon and lofty, unrealistic goals, to offer you a number of practical, actionable recommendations to help your HR professionals, people managers and C-Suite move forward with a renewed sense of purpose and positivity.
HR Audits/Employee Lifecycle Audit Process
Our tried and tested HR audit process and HR compliance audit forms part of the overall Employee Lifecycle Audit. It involves consultation, business discussion, 360 feedback, documentation and final feedback and recommendations. We assess every stage of the employee lifecycle when we conduct an HR audit, including:
Employee attraction
Your people are your biggest asset and today’s workers are highly mobile and all the more demanding of their employers for it. We look at how you can creatively attract new employees, communicate your brand values to the outside world and also consider your reputation as an employer.
Also getting the job descriptions defined before going to market will ensure you attract the right candidate and interview appropriately. Optimising this stage is the first step in giving you a richer stream of talent to draw from.
Recruitment and selection
We’ll review your recruitment strategy to consider factors such as up to date vacancy marketing, diversity goals and efficiency.
We’ll also evaluate how you engage with candidates in terms of screening , shortlisting and interview processes. Whilst seeking to optimise and empower your managers, we’ll simultaneously seek opportunities to cut costs or streamline administrative processes without losing the human element of the process.
And let’s not forget the HR nitty-gritty, including contracts, maintaining accurate personnel files, complying with data protection legislation surrounding personal information, and complying with employment laws.
Employee onboarding
Today’s newbies are tomorrow’s lynchpins, and a positive onboarding experience which includes consistent practices for each and every new starter, can build a strong foundation for a career with your company.
We’ll thoroughly assess the onboarding experience you offer new hires, from your Employee Handbook to expectation setting, employee engagement and wellbeing initiatives for new employees, and getting them embedded within the company’s culture and values.
Employee development
Opportunities for learning and development are a huge contributor to employee engagement and ultimately retention. We’ll establish your performance management procedures and how performance evaluations are conducted, plus review personal development plans, succession planning tools and look at a skills gaps analysis and core competencies.
Employee retention
We’ll review your employee retention and absence rate, the perks and incentives on offer, your company culture and engagement levels. Motivators such as health and safety, employee wellbeing, employee assistance programmes and workplace inclusion will be appraised too.
Employee separation
Firstly, prior exits can often offer essential insight into the employee perspective. In addition to disciplinary procedures, how redundancies or leavers are handled can help you ensure any red flags identified by employees at this stage are acted upon appropriately. But let’s be honest. If the recruitment processes and appropriate audits including the space to fully assess and review your employees is not on point, it will result in exits.
We can’t always get it right and the reality is people move on. We just need to ensure we have all the best initiatives in place to retain our top talent.
Bursting the bubble
We’ll seek to understand from the HR Audit what the business objectives, expectations and goals are, and conduct a thorough review of any inherited employee relations issues and bring a broader perspective to the table.
Working within one company, it can become all too easy to see the world through the lens of your one organisation. As independent consultants, we can help ‘burst the bubble’ for your management team and HR professionals, by sharing wider trends and taking an unbiased, objective stance.
Do you know how your employee perks stack up against your competitors? And do you think your organisation would sit well in an ‘Elite Employers Club’?
At OutThere, we keep up to date with what’s trending within companies, plus keep abreast of the latest employment practices and ever-changing rules of employment law.
Benefits of conducting an HR audit
A human resources audit of your employee lifecycle usually paves the way to multiple benefits. It could help you avoid costly tribunal claims, improve employee engagement and retention or align the employee experience with company objectives.
It could result in attracting a richer pool of talent. Or, indeed, totally rethinking how you harness the untapped potential within your company, via an improved learning and development strategy.
The possibilities are endless. At OutThere, we’ve helped companies improve productivity, develop their people management and adapt from a historical mindset to a future-focused one. Your unique situation and audit outcomes will determine the solutions and benefits – there’s no one size fits all when it comes to HR Outsourcing.
Your audit results
Our project list, along with compliance updates, outdated policies and procedures and audit actions will form the basis for your next steps, offering a clear and concise roadmap for how to proceed and make positive, tangible changes.
You may wish to implement the recommended changes yourselves via your in-house HR professionals, or engage with us to implement the changes – the choice is yours upon understanding the whole picture.
When should you conduct an HR audit?
A yearly review can certainly aid an internal culture of continuous improvement and a proactive approach. This way, the resulting recommendations can be integrated into your human resource objectives and all progress monitored.
Contact us today
Why leave management inconsistencies, outdated HR systems or processes and non-compliance to run unchecked? We can collaborate with your HR department to arrive at a joined-up approach that’s true to your organisation’s mission, values and purpose, to drive improved employee satisfaction for the future.
Get in touch to discuss your Employee Lifecycle HR audit via a free initial consultation. We appreciate no two businesses are the same, and beyond the process itself, we will offer you a tailor-made package based on your specific HR audit outcomes.
