When you think of HR or HR consultancy services, your opinion may be influenced by many pieces of popular media. There is no denying the fact that HR is crucial to any business. It is key for ensuring the ‘human’ part of your business is working properly and protected.
Businesses often outsource their HR services as their resources are too stretched internally, or they simply need more experienced support. Guardian Support, a national HR consultancy service, can help in key ways to combat poor mental health and wellbeing in the workplace.
What is HR and a HR Consultancy Service?
To understand how we do this, the broad term of HR and its role in the business should be better understood. A wide range of skills are used in the process of HR consultancy teams. Some other names given to HR or HR management are “personnel management” or “talent management”. These terms highlight the key responsibilities of a HR team or a HR consultancy service. At Guardian Support, we deal with a valuable resource: the employees!
Therefore, if our focus is on “human capital”, we focus on people and talent. We try our best to ensure that employees do the best at their jobs by providing the right work environment and tools to achieve this. HR teams focus on a few key areas,
- Recruiting and staffing
- Compensation and benefits
- Training and learning
- Business – employee relations
- Organisational development
It is usually associated with the initial point, recruitment. Your businesses HR team is essential for a company finding, screening, recruiting and training job applicants. It gives a company a competitive edge when recruiting smart. With employee turnover costs being as high as twice the annual salary of the position, efficient hiring of candidates or keeping them happy is more important than ever.
What Does a HR Consultancy Service Do?
So what is the difference between having an in-house HR team and outsourcing to a HR consultancy service?
More and more businesses are choosing to outsource HR and move away from traditional approaches because using a consultancy service can help you get maximum access to expertise in HR at better costs.
Both an in-house HR team and an HR consultant don’t necessarily have to be mutually exclusive. A consultant can benefit an existing HR team, helping them during a crunch period such as a period of time where there is major growth in personnel. Recruiting the best in HR is as difficult as recruiting for any position as mentioned before, so using a consultant for busy periods makes a lot of sense for some businesses.
Mental health in the Workplace and How HR Consultancy Services Can Help
With more and more businesses coming under fire for toxic work environments, looking at mental health in the workplace is more important than ever. Mental health and diagnosis is becoming more and more accepted after a period of taboo and social stigma but will still often go undiagnosed due to these fears of discrimination. The Mental Health Foundation’s reports show that 1 in 6.8 people are experiencing mental health problems at work, that 12.7% of all sickness or absences at work are attributed to mental health and better support for mental health can save UK businesses up to £8 billion per year.
This gives any business a massive financial, as well as ethical, reason to invest in the best mental health support. This means there is a massive chance your employees will be working with health problems, therefore affecting their performance or missing work due to mental illness. Introducing an array of forms of preventative measures in the workplace can help prevent this. Cutting costs in these areas can cost you massively in the long run. Here is how HR consultancy services can help.
HR Consultancy Services Have Connections to the Experts
The best way to look at mental health is obviously with the experts in the field. With a common misunderstanding of mental health widely lacking in the public, discrimination and unfair treatment can easily occur. The traditional term “man up” is the most obvious and glaring example of why mental health is rife amongst young men. Bringing in experts at work to help educate people to identify symptoms in co-workers or even themselves, as well as being better equipped to communicate with those who have mental health.
Ways to do this are expert-led workshops or classes. This is a great way to engage all members of the team. HR consultancy services from provide these workshops or classes as well as interactive training. This helps foster positive relationships and encourage open dialogue with employees and management.
HR Consultancy Services Include Drafting Policy
Encouraging an open dialogue is important but having health policy protecting those with mental health is essential. Having a clear mental health policy in place allows there to be no ambiguity, therefore encouraging this open dialogue. HR staff have a duty to make this explicitly clear so that potential employees don’t hide a mental health problem through fear of discrimination. This can start even before a potential employee even applies, by setting up an inclusive recruitment stage. Having adjustments for disabilities or mental health as well as offering the ability to adjust work schedules.
Weight Loss Initiatives and Other Wellness HR Consultancy Services
Mental health and your physical wellness are very intrinsically linked. Being overweight, due to social stigma, has a variety of psychological consequences such as lowered self-esteem and anxiety. There is often a loss of energy and joy for life. HR consultancy services can provide a range of different incentives and events to encourage your employees to lose weight and maintain their health. Introducing training on exercise and food preparation, on-site yoga and aerobics can really help your employees take control of all aspects of their health.
If your business needs HR support where you can speak directly to a dedicated HR consultant over the phone, a visit to your workplace to suggest improvements, weekly emails with HR tips and advice or support with every aspect of recruitment and onboarding then book a free consultation with us today on 0845 2626 260
