I hope you’ve all had a fabulous quarter! Of course, we’re now at the “pointy end” of the year, when strong results leading into the new year are crucial, and the pressure is on.

The end of the year is also likely to finally bring about change that will affect many businesses, by which I mean the Government’s changes to the 90-day trial period.

This law change has been talked about for quite some time now, but all the indicators show that the Bill will be passed very soon.

So what does this mean to us as employers?

Although early indications were that this change would affect all businesses, it seems that the 90-day trial will be abolished for businesses with more than 20 employees.

This means that internal company HR policies will need to be modified accordingly – and with due diligence – to prevent an onslaught of unjustified dismissal claims and the like.

Once again a robust process will need to be adhered to in order to fulfil the requirements of the legislation.

I strongly recommend if you are a business without a solid HR process that you bring in an advisor to ensure you know exactly what is required of you.

I’m happy to provide advice as to excellent service providers in this area.

Now of course, we could eliminate the worry when it comes to this law change by ensuring we never have to go through a performance management or termination process!

However, as all employers know, our biggest challenge is finding and retaining excellent staff.

It goes without saying that people are the backbone of our businesses – not flash mission statements, fancy premises or even what we sell.

But we’re human beings, we make mistakes, and we’re never going to make the right decision around people 100% of the time.

The key to ensuring your recruitment risk is minimised lies in the following:

Make sure you know EXACTLY what your business needs in terms of the role you are recruiting.

For sales people, what percentage of the role is new business versus existing? How important is product knowledge versus “fit”? Would it be prudent to gain input from key customers?

Never hire the best of a bad bunch.

If you have an internal policy requiring you to place your own advertising, but find you are not fully convinced you have the right person, don’t recruit them! So this doesn’t sound completely convenient from an external agency point of view, the same goes if you are using a recruiter – if you don’t feel you have the right person, don’t hire. The cost of bringing the wrong person into your business is way higher than spending more time uncovering the right recruit.

Consider personality profiling.

This is valuable to not only measure staff (profile your top performers to gauge common denominators for example), but also for yourself if you are in a leadership position. People often don’t perform because of the wrong environment and not necessarily because they don’t have the ability to deliver results.

It’s crucial to have regular reviews with new employees.

This is particularly important in the first three months (even more so when the law changes – but this is a must regardless).

My team is diligent in their follow-up with our clients and candidates during this timeframe as this is the time when both parties will be deciding whether or not the employment relationship is going to work.

We can identify and help resolve any potential issues, ensuring the success of the placement.

If you don’t work with a recruiter yourself, be ready to get tougher on yourself to ensure you don’t miss this!

Not only can you prevent a great person potentially leaving your business during this settling-in period, but you can also ensure you’re not in the firing line should an employee take action against you if you do need to let them go.

It takes time, effort and diligence, but you cannot afford to get it wrong.

In a nutshell, the recruitment, retention and managing of our humans is an absolute minefield therefore you must consider what changes you’re going to need to make to your process now.

I welcome you to contact me to discuss ways to make this process more palatable and to mitigate risk for your business.

The importance of this should not be underestimated.