A novel coronavirus (nCoV) is a new strain that has not been previously identified in humans.
It was first encountered in Wuhan in 2019 and affected more than 80,000 people across the globe causing over 2,700 deaths.
Common signs of infection include respiratory symptoms, fever, cough, shortness of breath and breathing difficulties. In more severe cases, infection can cause pneumonia, severe acute respiratory syndrome, kidney failure and even death.
HR leaders should safeguard against the spread of the illness, without causing panic.
To avoid the spread of misinformation, HR should endeavor to ensure that employees aren’t sharing false information or gossiping about others. HR should ensure that employees rely on facts, not hearsay.
HR departments should emphasize preventative steps for guarding the workplace against all viruses.
HR should have a plan ready to deploy. That plan should be created in partnership with other departments, including risk management, finance and IT.
Beside provisioning free masks and sanitizers, the cleaning schedule of the office can be increased.
Senior management has to walk the talk to ensure they mask up wherever appropriate to.
Temperature taking could be incorporated so that everyone in the office would have a peace of mind and not be paranoid that their co-workers may be infected. Such information should be openly available so that employees have complete trust in the information provided.
Lunch could be catered so as to minimize employee’s exposure to crowded areas like the food center.
Evaluate unnecessary domestic travel.
Review basic health and safety protocols.
Update your human resources policy.
Keep employees updated.
In general, human resources departments should strive to contain the spread of communicable diseases such as the coronavirus by emphasizing employee hygiene, monitoring the spread of infection, and considering more serious emergency protocols if necessary.
Risk management is a process that allows individual risk events and overall risk to be understood and managed proactively, optimizing success by minimizing threats and maximizing opportunities.
Every business and organization faces the risk of unexpected, harmful events that can cost the company money or cause it to permanently close. Risk management allows organizations to attempt to prepare for the unexpected by minimizing risks and extra costs before they happen.
The importance of risk management are as follows :
a risk management plan for an organization can save money and protect their future.
This ability to understand and control risk will allow organizations to feel more confident about their business decisions.
Creates a safe and secure work environment for all staff and customers.
Increases the stability of business operations while also decreasing legal liability.
Provides protection from events that are detrimental to both the company and the environment.
Protects all involved people and assets from potential harm.
Helps establish the organization’s insurance needs in order to save on unnecessary premiums.
Below are 5 risk management steps for effective risk management process :
Step 1: Identify the Risk. You and your team uncover, recognize and describe risks that might affect your project or its outcomes. There are a number of techniques you can use to find project risks. During this step you start to prepare your Project Risk Register.
Step 2: Analyze the risk. Once risks are identified you determine the likelihood and consequence of each risk. You develop an understanding of the nature of the risk and its potential to affect project goals and objectives. This information is also input to your Project Risk Register.
Step 3: Evaluate or Rank the Risk. You evaluate or rank the risk by determining the risk magnitude, which is the combination of likelihood and consequence. You make decisions about whether the risk is acceptable or whether it is serious enough to warrant treatment. These risk rankings are also added to your Project Risk Register.
Step 4: Treat the Risk. This is also referred to as Risk Response Planning. During this step you assess your highest ranked risks and set out a plan to treat or modify these risks to achieve acceptable risk levels. How can you minimize the probability of the negative risks as well as enhancing the opportunities? You create risk mitigation strategies, preventive plans and contingency plans in this step. And you add the risk treatment measures for the highest ranking or most serious risks to your Project Risk Register.
Step 5: Monitor and Review the risk. This is the step where you take your Project Risk Register and use it to monitor, track and review risks.
Risk is about uncertainty. If you put a framework around that uncertainty, then you effectively de-risk your project. And that means you can move much more confidently to achieve your project goals.
Note : Jumpstart : HR is one of the experts in HR industry that handles risk management effectively and efficiently.
HR consultants must be proficient in IT, accounting, sales, marketing, finance and, of course, human resource management as to fully understand issues and inefficiencies in human resources and how to remedy them.
Most HR consultants are educated and experienced HR generalists or specialists, as this type of HR career involves possessing a deep understanding of everything from organizational management to labor laws to equal opportunity employment and beyond.
HR are responsible for a number of functions within a business including: management ,recruitment, training and development and compliance.
Performance Management
A HR consultant will advise you on how to put a comprehensive performance management plan in place and show you how to use it to its maximum potential.
By ensuring that every employee is contributing towards the goals of the business you will ensure your business grows whilst motivating employees to perform to their best ability.
Effective Recruitment
HR consultants can help in the area of recruitment by providing advice to business owners on the optimum recruitment strategies as well as assisting in hiring decisions and reducing your “cost-per-hire” by ensuring you recruit the best candidate.
Employee Development and Training
A HR consultant can be of great assistance to help maintain employee motivation levels, enhance staff performance, identify the right training to develop the correct skills and ensure your employees are adding value to your company while retaining them at the same time.
Compliance
Having a HR consultant, you can have peace of mind that you are running the business as you should be and won’t face the risk of any trouble in the future. HR professionals can also provide you with the reassurance and advice you need.
All businesses, regardless of size, need HR expertise, by using a HR consultant, business owners can leave HR in capable hands while dedicating time to other essential areas of the company.
Please do contact us at https://jumpstart-hr.com/contact as we would be delighted to discuss this topic with you further to see how we could support you in whatever area of your business we can.
Retaining top talent and boosting employee morale are crucial to your company’s success. So instead of waiting for things to go wrong, or accepting substandard performance from our employees, it is vital for employees to receive ongoing performance feedback, or interim coaching. If you want better employees, you better initiate efforts to make them.
Hence, employee coaching is necessary for every organization. Coaching in organization is an invaluable tool for developing people across a wide range of needs. It also provides an invaluable space for personal development.
Below are the benefits of employee coaching.
Increases Employee Engagement
Using coaching as an employee engagement strategy allows the individual to actively participate in their role within your organization. They are also provided constant feedback from their coach. Because of this, coaching gives individuals a connection to their work, effectively improving employee engagement as well as company culture.
Demonstrates commitment to individuals and their development
Today’s workforce is invested in their career development, and they expect their organization to be invested as well. A coaching program is a great way to show individuals that you are meeting this expectation. This increases the likelihood that they will stay with you.The benefits of employee retention are huge. It leads to lower hiring costs, prevents a dip in productivity, and retains important employee knowledge.
Helps identify and develop high potential employees
A coach can identify high-potentials efficiently through assessments from coaching software. High-potentials are the ones to consider for future leadership, because their potential sets them, and your organization, up for success. That means you want to identify them early so you can place them in leadership development programs.
Increases Communication
Communication skills are vital to productivity and profitability for your organization.Employees can experience an increase in morale, productivity and commitment if they are able to communicate up and down the communication chain in an organization.
Who does coaching?
Some managers do , but in order for employee coaching to be more effective it should be performed by an expert.
Jumpstart:HR offers employee coaching in a very affordable way. Contact them at https://jumpstart-hr.com/contact
You’ve heard the statistics about how hard it is to run a business these days but have you considered that neglecting startup Human Resources strategy issues are a major blind spot hurting small businesses across the country? If you talk to many Founders, the reality is that Human Resources is an afterthought and strategic HR is rarely discusses until a) the company is in serious trouble financially or b) a serious HR issue happens that might land the organization in court. Recently, Entrepreneur.com shared an infographic that chronicled why businesses fail, how many companies are started and closed every year, and how long most startups last (hint: 50% fail by year five). When we consider the amount of time, money, and momentum invested in starting and running a business, a 50% failure rate is not okay. I’ve met business owners who’ve dumped their 401k’s into a debt-ridden business and worse – entrepreneurs who’s home life has been wrecked due to the difficult rollercoaster ride of running a startup. Running a startup is a grueling grind and there’s no guarantee that you’ll be successful; but the one area that startups should try to invest in if they want to succeed is their strategic startup human resources operations.
Here are the five reasons why startups fail and my take on the HR adjustment that can fix or alleviate these challenges:
19% of small businesses fail because they are outcompeted.
The Strategic HR Fix: Small businesses that are outcompeted either need a) faster, smarter decision-making skills or b) talented and qualified people on board who can address business issues of the day and the future. The reality is that some small businesses hire with a collaborative mindset that gives unqualified people chances to do things they’re passionate about but not technically proficient in. I once had a $13million dollar software development client but the CTO had very little experience in modern technologies that were relevant in their field. The company was losing marketshare to competitors who did not offer the total package approach my client offered but instead they offered modern solutions that were easily upgradable and plugged in well with other tech systems in their customer’s organizations.
When you’re losing to competition you need intel and a plan. A strategic HR advisor can identify skills gaps within your organization and set growth goals for your people or suggest new hires that need to come in and breath life into your organization.
Key Takeaway: A strategic HR advisor can be the champion for creating a competitive learning environment which raises the quality of your team output.
23% of small businesses fail because they don’t have the right team.
The Strategic HR Fix: This one is pretty obvious – you need new players on your team – but the “why” behind having the wrong employees varies from small business to small business. In my experience, family businesses tend to struggle with this the most because sons, spouses, and siblings can be given preferential treatment when it comes to hiring and promotions – which means responsibility is being given to someone who hasn’t actually proven they can get the job done. Small businesses can also have a “family” atmosphere which means relationships are formed and it’s harder to make decisions based on a person’s ability to get their job done. Small businesses that ignore sound HR influences suffer from having team members they might love as people but hate from a productivity and results perspective.
When you don’t have the right team, it’s important to assess what’s working and what isn’t. A strategic HR advisor can identify who is making the greatest contributions to your organization and who are the bottlenecks.
Key Takeaway: A strategic HR advisor can be the neutral third party who makes recommendations based less on relationships and more about a small business’s strategic business goals.
29% of small businesses fail because they run out of cash.
The Strategic HR Fix: Did you know that the top expenses in business are 1) insurance 2) taxes and 3) employees? (source). If you do not have a strategic HR advisor there to assist you in managing these expenses, it’s quite possible that you’re paying too much. Recently, a former client of mine was struggling with letting a six-figure executive go who’s impact and skills were no longer felt in a tangible way at the company. To make matters worse, the company was very much cash-strapped and failed to have oversight on employee vacation accrual and use. We were able to put the financial projections and implications on paper and make recommendations for what to do next. The difficult decisions to let the executive go (gracefully) and put in accountability measures for vacation usage wound up saving the organization a significant amount of money that could be re-invested into the business or set aside for a rainy day.
Key Takeaway: A strategic HR advisor can project the financial implications of employee-oriented decisions and recommend a clear path forward.
42% of small businesses fail because there is no market need for products or services.
The Strategic HR Fix: This one can be tricky because in a small business – especially in a startup where the current owners are the founders – there can be a dogged obsession with seeing a singular idea come to fruition. This obsession can pay dividends if there’s a market for the product and/or services the founder wants to bring to market but what happens when there is no market? What happens if there is a market but the company is trying to sell to the wrong demographic or packages it the wrong way? I remember feeling really bad for an older gentleman at my incubator who dumped his entire 401k into entrepreneurial efforts. He was working on developing a mobile game that was so singular in focus that there was no market for it and the cost to bring it to market was too much of a burden to bear. Small businesses who fail because there is no market need for their products or services usually establish an organizational culture where no one can tell the CEO “no.” It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out no one’s buying what you’re selling but it does take a reality check and courage to pivot and say “okay, what’s next?” and to create an environment where subordinate employees feel empowered to add value even if it means disagreeing with senior leadership.
Key Takeaway: A strategic HR advisor can help create a culture of trust and help identify talented professionals who can help your vision become profitable.
82% of small businesses fail because they experience cash flow problems.
The Strategic HR Fix: If we are being totally honest here, most small businesses are one emergency away from going out of business. That emergency could be dried up sales, an inability to make a bloated payroll, a customer who wants to sue the organization, or legal fines and fees due to legal non-compliance (just to name a few). A strategic HR advisor is able to help manage corporate expenses and make smart recommendations – like business and errors and omissions insurance – that reduce overhead and serve as a safety net in the event of a business emergency. Taking an intentional and strategic approach to managing the human resources in your organization is the missing key to small business longevity.
Key Takeaway: A strategic HR advisor can manage costs on the biggest overhead items in your budget while also making recommendations that preserve peace of mind in the midst of the ebbs and flows of business.
Sexual Harassment Training is Needed in US Workplaces
Recent reports show that 1 in 3 US women have experienced sexual harassment at work – but did President Trump’s latest run-in with a reporter add to that total? Inside Edition spoke with Jumpstart:HR, LLC CEO Joey V. Price (@JoeyVPriceHR) about this matter and what should happen if someone requests an investigation at your office.
Sexual harassment is a serious offense that should not be taken lightly. When requested, an investigation requires the utmost due diligence, empathy, trust, and documentation of facts, feelings, and recollections. If you are in need of HR consulting services to help protect your workplace from sexual harassment risk – or to carry out an investigation, contact us right away.
When “frequent” demeanor and/or conduct contributes to a “hostile or offensive work and environment” or if rejection results in retaliation.
President Trump is taking some heat for singling out an attractive reporter in the Oval Office Tuesday during an important meeting. “Where are you from? Come here, come here,” he told Caitriona Perry, the Washington correspondent for Ireland’s leading TV channel, RTE. Trump was having a phone call with Ireland’s new Prime Minister, Leo Varadkar, when Perry caught his eye. “She has a nice smile on her face so I bet she treats you well,” Trump told the new prime minister. More Inside Edition episodes on YouTube
