HR is commonly regarded as necessary for hiring, firing and all the paperwork in between but it is not really seen as an important area like sales for instance, which is seen as requiring great focus and resources.

In reality, though the HR department and human resources as a practice is indeed, it is now one of the most critical aspect of any business. Why? Because for you to survive and grow your business ahead of competitors you need to find, retain and motivate the best employees.

With this in mind, below you will find four fundamental principles of HR for small businesses to help you get your most crucial department functioning as best it can.

1. Hire slowly

Whether using a recruitment company or not, one of the biggest mistakes any business makes is to hire new employees too quickly, often leading to a company not employing the best talent available. It is usually the case as managers are too quick to make decisions on hiring and view it as a secondary task.

The results of this are disastrous as the business in many cases will go through the expense of hiring, training and losing/firing an employee because the wrong candidate was hired.

Companies like Google and Facebook pride themselves of how long they spend on recruitment and how in many cases they’ve rejected candidates competitors would later accept. They often carry out up to 9 interviews to find the right candidate to employ. So, remember to hire slowly and avoid the costly headaches of hiring the wrong candidate and gain the extreme benefits of hiring the right candidate.

2. Use technology

As we move into an era of unprecedented technological change, businesses have been slow to adopt technology in the HR space, despite its abundance. You can now get paid and free HR software that can quickly make the processes of recruiting, managing and motivating employees much faster and more successful.

3. Make everyone accountable

One of the most dangerous things a business can do is create a culture where no one is accountable; this can lead to costly mistakes and an overall loss of standards and quality across your business’ products or services.

To avoid this disastrous situation from the start, you need to create a culture where everyone is responsible individually and as a team. You can start to do this by being clear from the start on your expectations of new employees and what they can expect from you. You can continue to build this culture by giving employees more responsibility and rewarding those who choose to take on more responsibility, even those who make honest mistakes in the process.

4. Encourage innovation

3M is one the largest manufacturing companies the world, they’re most famous for their post notes, what you probably didn’t know is that the post note was invented by an industrial employee. The point is that innovation often comes from within your company and that a new product, service or process will most likely come from your employees if you create a culture of innovation.

To start creating this culture, you will want to have an open door policy of ideas, encourage employees to develop and test their solutions, and provide resources to back those who come up with innovative projects.

It is not rocket science, but it is HR

Taking HR seriously and working on how you improve your business’ HR function is one of your primary responsibilities as a founder, business owner, manager or entrepreneur. Developing your team, your company or your department from a personnel perspective should be a clear strategic focus moving forward.