SocEnt Q and A HR expertise series with Diane Rance

Over the next six months we will have a once monthly Q and A livestream with Diane Rance, a Coach and Mentor in helping to grow people and organisations. She will be discussing everything to do with HR and your business.
In the first of our series we discussed the best ways to navigate job descriptions, person specifications, contracts and the key policies and procedures when starting to employ people. Some of the key takeaways were:
1). Get someone else involved who knows you or the business:

• It’s easy to hire someone who is just like you, but the danger with this is that you don’t get diversity of thinking. It’s important to have someone that is just as passionate, just as energetic, but needs to have a different perspective to you to bring a ‘richness to your decision making’
• With that external and second opinion you can achieve this by asking them to check your thinking.

2). Give a job description and be specific with it:

• Diane says ‘if you don’t know what you expect of people on a day to day basis, how is your employee going to know what to do on a day to day basis’.
• Diane suggests the website acas.org.uk which you can download free templates from.

3). Job descriptions for board members are key:

• This will enable you to have diversity within your board of directors, allowing them to cover all aspects of the company.

4). Take advice and suggestions from your current employees or those leaving:

• Ask what they wish they had known about the job before starting
• Ask what was different to what they had expected

5). Interview in parts:

• Splitting the interview into lots of different activities ensures that the potential employee has a realistic expectation of what the role requires.

6). Be clear about your contracts and get it right first time:

• Are you clear on terms and conditions of employment?
• Do you understand your obligations as an employer? It doesn’t need to be overly complicated as long as it is legally sound.

Miss Macaroon began with only one employee and it has now grown to a company of nine employees a board of directors and special advisors. You can buy some of our premium handmade macaroons to support us providing more training and jobs for long term unemployed young people online here: https://missmacaroon.co.uk/buy-macaroons/branded-macaroon-gifts.html