HR audit
HR audit – do you know how effective is people management in your company?
Every project aiming at increasing company effectiveness – in any area – should start by assessing the existing situation and formulating a diagnosis, followed by adequate recommendations of next steps.
It is up to the company management to decide whether and to what extent to implement those recommendations. However, in order to be able to make sensible decisions, those in charge first need an accurate picture of the state of affairs – and that is best provided by an objective external expert.
When one works in a company it usually does not take long to notice that some processes do not work or are not effective. But it is much more difficult to precisely indicate what exactly is not working and how it should be structured in order to bring the required results.
In the area of people management – which is a key area for every company, as companies do not exist without people – the best way to answer those questions is to carry out an HR audit. This can be useful at any time, since it is always possible to improve various processes and make them more effective; there are however special situations, when an audit is simply indispensable. Such situations include, among others:
- Taking over by a new owner/CEO/director
- Preparing for a merger/acquisition/takeover
- Implementation of a new business strategy, requiring engagement and support of all employees
- Receiving poor results in an engagement survey and preparing to draw an action plan
- Departure of the hitherto HR Head and starting a search for a new one.
An HR audit should be carried out by an expert with adequate documented experience; it should cover all areas of people management in the company: HR and salary administration (including the HR software), recruiting processes, training and development systems, organization structure (including how adequate is the span of management to the scale of the company), compensation and motivation systems, evaluation and goal-setting systems, structure and quality of the HR team, role of line managers at different levels, HR policies and procedures, internal communication – and possibly other aspects as per company characteristics. An HR audit is based both on the analysis of existing documents and on interviews with managers and other employees. Depending on the size and the complexity of the firm, as well as on the expectations of management, an audit can take from several weeks to several months, so that the auditor can at the end submit an accurate picture of the situation and recommend an action plan.
All general management projects carried out by SW Mentoring start with a detailed audit, based on which concrete improvement or development steps are proposed. Those can be implemented by us or become an action plan for others, as per the client’s decision.