HR Policies: Best Practices For Start-Ups In India

Start-ups are naturally ridden with myriad concerns associated with growing, stabilising, and expanding their businesses. In the constant rush toward meeting these primary objectives, they often do not have sufficient time or resources to establish HR-related solid standards and strategies that are critical to business success and sustenance.

Even if you have a strong HR team, trying to manage the multi-pronged business needs such as recruitment, onboarding, training, and payroll, among other crucial HR processes. Delegating your HR services to an efficient and experienced HR solutions provider enables handling all these effortlessly while facilitating performance management.

The Significance of Defining the Right HR Policies

In addition to ensuring the expected organisational behaviour and compliance among the employees, laying down business-specific HR policies and industry best practices offer several other benefits.

• HR policies illustrate the unique code of conduct pertaining to your business.
• Setting HR policies helps to create a fair and consistent environment for start-ups.
• Dispute resolution and compliance management become easier when industry best practices are followed in an organization.
• HR policies help tether all the employees together and relieve the management from spending time on dispute resolution.
• Employee loyalty can be maximised while overall employee morale can be improved.
• HR policies help describe a company’s culture and enforce employees to understand and stick to the ethical behaviour expected of them.
• When explained to employees during induction, HR policies and practices in the organization tend to encourage employees to follow them, thus contributing to business success.
• Clearly stated HR policies ensure a focused and coordinated venture toward business success and enable effective performance management.

Key HR Policies for Indian Start-Ups

• Working Hours:

It is a primary HR policy that must be drafted so that it clearly states the working days and timing to the organisational members. It is essential to make these in accordance with the timing and other stipulations as prescribed in the labor laws of India.

• Leave Policy:

The number of leaves allowed, the terms of availing them, and conditions associated with paid and non-paid leaves must be unambiguously stated. This must cover general holidays, sick leave, and other such provisions as well. Labor law compliance and other standards must be adhered to.

• Performance Management & Appraisal:

This is one of the crucial policies that need to be set so that employees are encouraged to improve their performance, communication, and other capabilities. While acting as a reference for appraisal, it must motivate and encourage employees. Employee benefits and other perks must be described.

• Organisational Culture/Code of Conduct:

Newly recruited personnel must be explained explicitly about ethical behaviour and other expected conduct among the team members. The qualities of empathy and respect for one another must be instilled among employees through the enforcement of this policy.

• Joining and Exit Policy:

Start-ups must define their employees’ terms and conditions related to commencement and termination of employment without room for any ambiguity.

• Salary, benefits, and perks:

Business enterprises, especially start-ups, must ensure that their employees understand clearly the compensation, bonus, and other perks with the essential breakup. Having an HR policy that explicitly states payment, promotions, and factors such as insurance is critical.

Factors that Need to be Reflected by HR Policies

As a start-up, you need to consistently ensure that your HR policies reflect your business values, vision, and objectives. HR policies must help to achieve fair performance management and streamline employee development processes. Moreover, they must promote trust among your employees and warrant clarity while encouraging transparency and fair practices in the workplace.

Key Takeaway

Setting the standards and laying down the HR policies are among the most important things for start-ups in the budding stage. Essential aspects such as labor law compliance, employee benefits, and code of conduct must be clearly stated in the HR policies.