The first step of corporate growth is understanding your pitfalls. You must know your weak points to advance further ahead. So, it is essential to conduct a performance review to learn about the weak links in an organization.
In this regard, audits are an efficient way of doing so. They are an in-depth study of the business processes to understand its positives and negatives. It gives a fair idea of what needs to change. One such important audit in a company, among many others, is the HR Audit.
The HR (Human Resource) Audit is the process to evaluate a human resource department's performance. It examines various aspects of the HR tasks in a company. These can be policies, processes, procedures, documentation, and systems.
In ascertaining these, an HR Audit looks into the various fronts of human resource personnel's work. Some of these are:
These sections form a crucial part of the HR functions in a company. Therefore, a study into these fronts gives a fair idea of the HR performance in the company.
Besides reviewing the HR professional's work, an HR audit also serves many other purposes. Here is a quick look at a few of these purposes.
These were some of the purposes for conducting an HR Audit. However, based on the different purposes, there are also different HR Audit types to consider. Some of these are as follows.
For every operation audited, know the mission . the purpose. the reason for being.
– Larry Sawyer
These audits take place to ensure that there is an I-9 form for all employees in the company. The I-9 form is a legal requirement for companies to verify that all their workers have valid employment authorization. This step is a must for employment in the United States of America.
An I-9 Audit checks for any mistakes in the filling procedure of this form. It also looks into the need for further documentation in the future.
An audit on policies reviews the company's current and upcoming policies to ensure consistency. Policy audits are also necessary to ensure that they have full compliance with the governing legal norms.
Compliance Audits ensure that the company's practices are one with all employment laws. These audits look into the leave structure, disability structure, health and safety, hr policies, payroll, etc.
This kind of audit specifies all its efforts in one department. It can be payroll, benefits, performance, etc. Departmental audit keeps on changing departments to review different divisions of a company.
This audit looks into uncovering mistakes in the company's salary structure and working hours for its workers. It reviews the legal working hours for everyone, salary computations, overtime compensation calculations, etc.
A safety audit looks into the steps necessary to ensure employee health. While working onsite or even at the office, a worker may be vulnerable to many aspects challenging its health. This audit makes sure that a company does everything possible to limit risk in the workplace.
As the name suggests, a hiring audit reviews the hiring process of a company. It ensures that the hiring strategies are consistent, effective, efficient, and fair.
This audit checks up on the employee training and development programs in a company. It identifies where new training programs are necessary and how to improve on the old ones.
A benefits & compensation package audit checks up on the salary and benefits package. This audit looks upon minimum wage, compensation as per the company's objectives, appropriate employee benefits, etc.
These were a few HR Audits that a company must undertake to review its legal standpoint and performance. While performing these checks, there are also a few other things you must check.
An HR checklist is a list of things you must keep an eye on while performing HR Audits on different divisions. These checklists are generally very long, but here are some critical points for various departments to keep it short today.
If you pay peanuts, you get monkeys
– Chinese Proverb
To conduct a fruitful HR Audit, always assess the situation from the workforce’s point of view. Evaluating the performance from a work staff’s point of view will give you a new perspective and show you more areas for improvement.
These were some of the points you must review for HR Audits on different divisions of the company.
Audit findings are easy to come up with, successful change from a finding is true internal audit value.
– Michael Piazza
Conducting and determining a proper action plan from an HR Audit is as important as having one in the first place. Improper audits can give misleading results, which can lead to wrong management decisions. So, you must have a clear understanding of these audits.
The information above should give you a fair idea of what, why, and how regarding a human resource audit.
This article is written by Jyoti Prakash Barman. He is an in-house Content Marketer at Vantage Circle with interests in music and automobiles. For any related queries, contact editor@vantagecircle.com
