Assessments can serve as compass for trek through HR wilderness

Busy human resources professionals can easily get caught up in the day-to-day and lose sight of the path they want to be on, but an assessment can guide the HR team out of the weeds and back on the road to reaching an organization’s goals.

Lori Kleiman, a Chicago-based HR consultant, recently conducted a webinar for Business & Legal Resources titled “HR Assessments: How to Develop an Effective Plan for Measuring Your Department’s Strategic and Compliance-Based Goals” in which she explained why an assessment is worth the time and trouble. 

“Unless we take time … to step back and really look at our own processes, our own procedures, how do we know we’re doing things the way we want to be doing them?” Kleiman said, adding that doing things the way they’ve always been done doesn’t mean the job is getting done in the best way. But by conducting an assessment, HR can show the management team that legal compliance is in order and that the HR team is meeting other needs of the organization.

Kleiman says an assessment is similar to an audit that checks whether procedures are compliant and effective, but it goes deeper by also providing a measurement of effectiveness. Also, through the assessment process, the HR team often will find ways to streamline processes and discover early warning signs of trouble before they turn in to legal action. Assessments also can show the management team how HR is aligned with the strategic practices of the organization.

First steps
Conducting an assessment begins with decisions on what the purpose and scope should be, Kleiman says. The team may be interested in limiting the scope to just a few issues, such as compliance or best practices. Or the team may want to conduct a more strategic assessment that looks at how the HR function is aligned with the rest of the organization. Or the team might want to cover all areas involving HR.

Determining the purpose and scope at the beginning is crucial to an effective assessment. Kleiman advises HR professionals to consider their influence within the organization when deciding what to tackle in an assessment.

It’s important to consider HR’s level of influence because “you may stir up certain things that you know your organization is not willing to change, and that may put you in a very uncomfortable position,” Kleiman says.

Crucial areas to assess
An HR team struggling to decide on a feasible assessment project may want to consider the four areas Kleiman considers crucial to examine regularly.

1. I-9 audit: Make sure I-9s are completed for each employee within 72 hours of the hiring date and that they are retained separately from the employee’s personnel file, Kleiman advises. It’s not illegal to include them in personnel files, but it’s ill-advised since I-9s contain information such as heritage and citizenship status that shouldn’t be available to all those who have access to personnel files, she says.
2. Employee handbooks: Kleiman urges HR professionals to make sure handbooks are up to date. “There will be nothing worse during a lawsuit of some sort or any kind of employment action than if you have an employee handbook with outdated information,” she says, adding that handbook language should stay away from terms like “always” and “will” and instead use words such as “typically” and “generally.” She also says to make sure handbooks include essential policies such as employment at will, pay practices, how pay errors are handled, harassment and discrimination, Internet and email, and confidentiality. Also, employers covered by the Family and Medical Leave Act (FMLA) must notify employees of their FMLA rights, and the handbook provides that opportunity.
3. Fair Labor Standards Act: An assessment also provides an opportunity to check the status of exempt and nonexempt employees. “If you take the time in your organization to do this, it will help move any issue the Department of Labor might find from a willful violation, which has a three-year penalty, to just a more standard violation, which only has a two-year penalty,” Kleiman says. Also, check that the organization is in compliance with overtime practices, that timesheets are properly retained, and that any independent contractors are truly contractors instead of employees.
4. IT department: Examining BYOD—Bring Your Own Device—policies also is important, Kleiman says. Often BYOD policies are being drafted with HR, IT, and legal involved, and it’s important to spell out who has rights to various kinds of information even after an employee leaves employment. IT-related policies also need to cover website monitoring, who is responsible for email tracking, and how e-mail is to be reviewed.