HR checklist: 10 essential steps for startups to succeed

What does it mean? 

Organisation is key when you start dealing with HR for startups, and that’s why you should always keep someone accountable. 

At Charlie, the early days were very up in the air in terms of HR accountability – HR was often left to the side, resulting in delays for team members and potential legal risks. 
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When I joined, I was first responsible for marketing, but being in a startup allowed me to realise I was much more passionate about HR and Operations.  

Of course, in the beginning, I was only doing HR part-time (the rest of the time was dedicated to marketing) – and remember, I didn’t have an HR background. 

‍Maybe it will be the same for your business – just ensure that the person responsible for HR knows they are – it can even be you, as long as you fully take on that responsibility.

A few tips to understand how to pick the right person: 

Having someone responsible for HR is one item ticked off your checklist, but the next thing you need to do is make sure this person and your team have the tools in hand to perform well in their job. 

Doing this requires understanding what the best HR software for small businesses is and how it can help your day-to-day admin tasks. 

Here’s a list of benefits your HR software should cover when you’re starting out, and when you’re less than 250 people in your company: 

• Helps you get rid of spreadsheets – they may be everywhere in the early days, but don’t make your job easier; HR software automates everything from employee records to time off management so you can smoothly get on with other tasks. 
• Takes the faff out of admin – no need to jump between email threads, spreadsheets and files. Everything can be handled on one platform. 
• Ensures you stay compliant – to have all your employee's information securely stored in one place and to be able to update it at any time (and comply with employee data regulations)

These are the three core aspects you should look out for when picking HR software, but if you’re not sure where to start to automate these tasks, we got it all figured out for you – start a free 14-day trial with CharlieHR today.

The third item you shouldn’t miss out on is setting the right HR policies for your business. This is pretty much an HR basic for any small business, and it will help you comply with the law. 

As a reminder, here are the three mandatory HR policies UK businesses must have:

That’s if you have more than five employees – bear in mind, however, that if you disregard any of those, you could get fined or taken to court, which would have serious consequences for your business. 

HR policies are also a great way to set clear regulations when it comes to what your team members can and can’t do – that means you don’t leave any room for interpretation and everyone is aware of your HR processes. 

Whilst other HR policies are not mandatory, they will come in handy for you and your team, especially because you have a legal obligation to provide some of them such as parental leave or holidays. At Charlie, for example, we have a few HR policies that we built from scratch: 

Complying with UK employment law can encapsulate a lot of factors – including the HR policies we mentioned earlier. 

Here are the main items you should tick off your checklist when it comes to compliance:

That’s a long list, and there are many more items to cover– perhaps book a call with one of our HR experts to ensure you stay in line with employment laws. 

One aspect that many don’t mention when it comes to your HR checklist is how seamlessly you need your onboarding to follow your recruiting process. 

Once your new employee has signed their contract, you want to be as quick as possible when it comes to onboarding them. 

That starts by getting a few things in motion before they start: 

Once that’s all done and your new hire’s first day is approaching, here’s what should follow: 

Many employers tend to forget about the necessity of making everything remotely accessible – especially these days. 

So you may not be a hybrid or remote company (and that’s absolutely fine), but setting the onboarding process in motion, for example, without getting the new hire in the office is essential. 

And if you’re a remote company, even more so. Here are the items to set up on your HR software if that’s the case:

Some extras to think about as well: 

Maybe that doesn’t seem like a priority right now, but trust me, thinking about progression at the beginning of your HR checklist will save you a lot of headaches further down the line. 

‍There are a few benefits to providing progression for your team members: 

• Putting business and employee development at the same level of priority for your team
• Ensuring everyone shares the same vision for success
• Retaining your team members by putting an emphasis on their growth 

In practice, however, it can be difficult when you’ve got no experience setting this up and that’s why it’s often left behind. So here are some steps you can follow: 

This may come as a shock to some of you, but benefits really matter to your team, and they don’t always mean more money.

This is good, because small businesses can’t really afford what bigger companies can offer – this is something team members are aware of, so you need to understand they will seek different types of advantages. 

That’s where you need to be aware of new expectations people have from work. At Charlie, for example, we have a myriad of benefits that don’t always incur a direct cost. Here’s how you can think outside the box: 

There are tons of options you can go for, so remember to make it specific to your own small business or startup. 

Being compliant sets you off for a great start, but employment laws have a tendency to change every year, and that means you have to keep on top of it. 

So what does that mean in practice? 

Again, the person responsible for HR at your business – that may mean you – needs to ensure all these changes are implemented. 

‍But it can be difficult to keep track of or to action these changes yourself, especially with no HR experience, so maybe an alternative to this is to get HR support for small businesses. 

This will allow you to get an HR expert for ad-hoc necessities such as an HR audit, but also to have the knowledge you seek in every aspect of HR, without the need for a full-time CIPD-qualified hire. 

Here are some examples of what the HR audit checklist our HR advisors created can take you through: 

• Review of your employment contracts 
• Adjustments of your company handbook and HR policies 
• Review of your Health and Safety procedures
• Evaluation of your practices and processes 
• Discussions around your main HR indicators and what you want to change (DE&I, recruiting, etc.) 

As an extra, I asked our CEO Ben Gateley how he thought we managed to cross all these items off our HR checklist over the years.

Here are the three top tips he shared:

• Stay open to change and don’t simply assume things will always stay the same
• Consult with your team to understand what they need from your business 
• Don’t ignore HR, it’s an integrative part of your business that really matters