"In your opinion, what does the HR department do?” Is one of the first questions we ask during stakeholder interviews when conducting HR audits. Business leaders come to Helios HR for a variety of reasons: when they are establishing HR for the first time, believe they may need a change in their HR department, or after they've experienced rapid growth. With HR audits, we look at the effectiveness of the HR department including best practices and compliance.

There are some questions out there I can answer on the spot. For instance, Why are light bulbs to blame for your terrible sleep habits? Well, it could be that your suprachiasmatic nucleus is no longer able to differentiate between daytime and nighttime, so it doesn’t know when you should sleep. (This is a real thing!) Another one I know: Who has the cutest dogs in the world? Literally the easiest question ever – that would be me, of course! Others, though, are a little more difficult.

With spring in the air, the habit of spring cleaning often stretches beyond scrubbing the kitchen and perfecting the landscape around your house to streamlining and organizing your work life as well. Perhaps you’ve taken a step back and looked at your HR department and thought to yourself “there’s got to be a better way to do this.” Maybe you’re anticipating growth within your organization, and you know that with more employees comes the need for enhanced processes and compliance requirements. Engaging with a third party human capital consulting firm to conduct an HR audit may be just what you need to hit the ground running with your HR spring cleaning!

As an senior HR leader, I have had the opportunity to work for organizations that went through Mergers and Acquisitions on multiple occasions. The biggest takeaway I have learned from all of these experiences was the value of communicating with the employees before, during, and after an acquisition to help manage their expectations. Of course if you are a publicly held company, any communication prior to the acquisition cannot be shared with your workforce. However, ensuring you have a communication strategy developed and ready to launch when the news is broadcasted will help pave the way for a smooth transition. Let’s start by constructing a communication plan.

Onboarding: 1 Day Vs. 90 Days Effectively onboarding employees can go a long way in ensuring they become productive, engaged employees. Although the focus is finally shifting to enriching onboarding programs, there are still many companies that believe onboarding consists of having the new hire complete the required paperwork and turning them over to their supervisor to start their job. Unfortunately, I’ve been through new hire experiences like that, so I know firsthand how lost and unimportant I felt as a result.

Though international work experience has definite benefits for both employees and the businesses they support, the cost of a failed assignment cannot be ignored. Depending on the assignment package and location, some international assignments can cost a company three to four times the base salary. Failure can come in many forms: