Running a small business has its share of challenges, especially when it comes to managing your team.
Creating a positive workplace culture, improving operational efficiency, and ensuring compliance with evolving regulations like, Labour’s Employment Rights Bill, are crucial for success.
To help you make your HR processes the best they can be, we’ve outlined our top 9 HR best practices for small businesses.
9 HR best practices for small businesses
Set clear company guidelines
If it’s not written down – it doesn’t exist.
Having documented policies isn’t just about having rules. It’s about demonstrating your company’s ethics and standards, which reassures your employees about how situations (like Statutory Sick Pay (SSP)) will be handled.
Clear guidelines offer comfort and clarity to your employees, ensuring they know what’s expected of them and what they can expect in return. This transparency helps build trust and shows that your company cares about its employees.
Setting clear company guidelines should be at the top pf your list when implementing HR best practices
Improve your internal communications
By making sure that your employees are always informed, even during challenging times, you can prevent any unpleasant surprises and build a culture of openness. This HR best practice helps your employees understand the reasons behind difficult decisions (such as cost-cutting measures, or staff restructuring). Don’t forget, communication isn’t just about bad news! It’s important to share in and celebrate success too.
When considering communication strategies, aim to provide key messages through a variety of channels. Sending out emails on important issues might mean that you’re excluding a segment of your workforce that might respond better to verbal comms or audiovisual content like webinars.
Develop a clear recruitment strategy
This can’t be emphasised enough. It’ll be even more important to get it right from October 2024, when Labour’s Employment Rights Bill comes into effect.
The cost of a bad recruitment decision can be very high and draining, not just on your finances, but on your resources too.
The next time you need to recruit, go through a planned approach and ask yourself:
- Do you need to amend the skills, knowledge and experience that you usually look for? Can you add in some improvements and efficiencies rather than taking a one out, one in approach?
- How do the KPIs of the role align with your overall team goals?
- How are you going to evaluate the performance of a new recruit from day one?
- What interview techniques/assessment are most applicable for the role? Do you need to test a skill, knowledge or behaviours? And how will you do that?
Perfect your onboarding process
Onboarding is one of the most crucial elements of an employee’s journey with your business. You should have a clear plan in place to provide them with the best possible start.
From their first day, your new employee needs to know:
- What they’re expected to do and how their performance will be evaluated.
- What support/tools and resources they can access to help them settle in and become proficient in their role.
- What the standards of behaviours are and the rules around typical issues like absence reporting, requesting time off, and raising a grievance.
- How and when they’ll be paid and how your bonus or performance payment schemes work (if you have them).
- What will happen throughout the probation period and what they can expect from the probation evaluation process.
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Focus on employee engagement
Engaged employees perform better, that’s just a fact.
Your culture isn’t driven by the words you’ve written as part of the onboarding pack. Culture is behaviour that’s on display on an every-day basis. It’s driven from the top and mirrored in the way that employees interact with each other and their clients.
Here are some key HR best practices that contribute to a positive company culture:
- Clear vision and values.
- Open communication.
- A focus on employee well-being.
- Recognition and appreciation.
- Collaboration and teamwork.
- Strong diversity and inclusion.
- Leadership that demonstrates integrity and accountability.
- Opportunities for personal and professional growth.
Implement regular feedback and performance reviews
While it’s easy to focus only on non-performers, acknowledging and celebrating the efforts of top performers is just as essential. A monthly “shout out” for individual or team achievements, whether for hitting milestones or exceptional customer feedback, shows your employees that their hard work is noticed and appreciated.
Regular performance reviews should be more than a formality, they provide a platform for meaningful conversations about an employee’s role and the direction of the company.
By creating a two-way dialogue, these reviews not only help identify areas for improvement but also offer a genuine opportunity to thank your employees for their contributions.
Retain your top performers
People stay in jobs where they feel happy and content. Some may be motivated by the opportunity to earn more money, while others value a good work-life balance. The key to retention is understanding what motivates each team member and avoiding a one-size-fits-all approach.
Whether it’s offering promotion opportunities, flexible working conditions, or even small gestures like a pizza lunch on Fridays, what matters is that these actions are done with authenticity and care.
By tailoring your approach to meet individual needs, you show your employees that they’re valued, which in turn helps keep your top talent engaged and loyal.
Encourage work-life balance initiatives
When the lines between work and home blur — especially with the rise of remote work post-Covid — it’s crucial to prioritise productivity and prevent burnout to maintain a healthy balance.
With new rules around the right to disconnect that will affect small businesses from August 2025, it’s important to review and adjust workplace habits and expectations. Ask yourself: are we being fair? Are we promoting a healthy work-life balance? Are we implementing HR best practices?
Make your processes more effective with Cintra’s services and HR best practices
Cintra’s payroll and HR services for small businesses enhances your HR processes by providing tailored solutions, HR best practices, and comprehensive support across all aspects of HR. Book a personalised demo today.
Find out more about Cintra's HR services covering HR admin and onboarding, ER issues, HR policies and handbooks, compliance and much more.
