Like accounting services, marketing, training and technology, human resources has become a vital area of business that serious companies can no longer ignore. Trained professionals leading this charge in your business can make the difference between solid bottom line performance or becoming extinct. In this final week of ask the Human Resource experts, we have been able to give answers to three important questions gathered from the field.

Question: 1. How do you create career advancement opportunities for employees in a small business environment and family businesses?

Answer: In very small family oriented business, it becomes quite challenging for employers to keep staff engaged and motivated who might feel after a while that their roles are stagnant. No one wants to be in what we commonly call a “dead-end job”. Creating titles and introducing a strained hierarchal system is definitely not the route to take and usually produces more issues than anything else. Here are two practical organisational moves that might prove useful:

1. Make it about compensation- introduce a performance based payment system where they are remunerated based on their level of productivity.

2. Most people in the workplace will admit they are less thrilled about a title and more excited with what they take home in salary at the end of the day.

Give them a meaningful stake in the business. In everything people what to know: “What’s in it for me?” Company shares, employee dividends or bonus, employee recognition and other significant assessment initiatives will create the buy-in that employees need to remain engaged.

Question: 2. What tips can you give to the employee or manager having to cope with a well-connected (even politically) belligerent- incompetent employee?

Answer: The politics is real even in small work environments. Employees and managers need practical HR related skills in navigating the business of surviving difficult employees. Here are five tips:

• Listen to them carefully and try not to “tone them out”. I know it’s tempting, but usually, the cry for attention over powers what is really being said by the employee.

• Give very clear behavioural feedback. The employee must know how you feel about each behaviour that is in breach of acceptable workplace protocols. Be courageous.

• Document every step of the way. People sometimes need to see on paper how consistently they have been in causing a disruption.

• Establish consequences both positive and negative to behaviours demonstrated.

• Don’t render evil for evil and bad mouth the employee in question. A tit for tat mindset further places strain on the relationship.

Question: 3. What is the benefit of outsourcing my Human Resources Function?

ANSWER: A lot of small to mid-sized organisations typically have someone who is grandfathered into an HR role. Generally this person has several other duties and wears “multiple hats”, in some cases HR duties can fall on owners and executives of these size firms. HR Consulting can be a cost effective resource to make sure you are staying in compliance, keeping constant communication with employees, management and executives and give you the ability to carry out common and practice HR processes and solutions.

Most importantly it offers your organisation consistency in these policies and procedures which reduces your legal liability, improves culture/moral and overall communication within your organisation. An HR outsourced company or consultant also allow you the opportunity to free yourself and other employees from the administrative burden that HR can pose to those that are better suited what they were hired to do and focusing on their main tasks to help the organisation the way they were intended to.