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The HR Audit: 6 Things That Put Businesses at Risk

It’s time for an HR audit. Let’s go down the checklist!

We pulled together the highest-risk items from our full-length “HR Self-Audit” (download it here). In our guide, we refer to these points on the human resources audit as “red stars”: pieces of compliance, labor law, and general human resources practice that are must-follows for any small business owner or manager putting together a human resources audit. This is where you should start if you are trying to get your HR department compliant.

If you are ready to go down the HR checklist, make sure you button these areas up first.

Discipline and Termination

• BEFORE you discipline employees for absence or tardiness, you should be making sure they aren’t protected by law. Their attendance problems might be related to family issues, which could be legally protected. These might include the Family and Medical Leave Act (FMLA), New Parent Leave Act, and Pregnancy Disability Leave (PDL).
  
• Do you administer feedback and discipline equally among your employees? Basically put: However you treat one person, you should be treating everyone. Otherwise, you could face costly discrimination or retaliation claims, even if you never intended to discriminate or retaliate.
  
• Do you have a system to formally document everything? You’ll want to back up things like employee complaints, disciplinary discussions, investigations, decisions, and actions. This can go a long way to protect your company.

Discrimination, Harassment, and Retaliation

• Do you know how to avoid discrimination and retaliation? Any HR audit should include this. There is a long list of protected peoples and characteristics, but all workers are protected from discrimination in some manner, and and retaliation statutes apply to all workers.
  
• You really should have a written policy against harassment, so make one. And California law requires training if you have five or more employees, so you should, too. No matter your company size, though, it’s smart to have a written and enforced anti-harassment policy and training—and absolutely foundational if you want to win a lawsuit.
  
• Do you do everything you reasonably can to prevent and stop harassment? You can and should:
  • post required notices
  • maintain written policies in your employee handbook
  • provide training
  • have a complaint system in place
  • document performance issues
  • conduct investigations and
  • take disciplinary actions where they’re needed.

In our 45-plus years of experience, these areas are some of the most critical to address when we go down the HR checklist. But there is so much more to make sure your human resources efforts are compliant! Make sure to check out the full HR Self-Audit, along with our other employer guides.

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