September 12, 2007 | Posted By Diane Pfadenhauer | print this article

Small Firms Tend to Underuse HR

This survey shows a troubling statistic among small and midsized businesses - that they tend to underutilize HR departments.  Specifically:

  • smaller companies consider their HR departments as a separate arm of their business rather than integrating the functions into their day-to-day operations.
  • while survey respondents said finding and recruiting talent was their biggest HR challenge, less than 33 percent employed a HR director.
  • Among other findings, less than 10 percent of respondents listed training, performance management and compensation planning as their biggest HR challenges, and no respondents cited HR compliance as an area for improvement.
  • finding and retaining people was a top concern, while employee management, coaching and leadership development were critical.
OK, so the survey was a small local survey done by an HR consulting company, and we don't know what they mean by "small."  But, the way I see it, particularly here on Long Island, where we have a lot of small (under 150 employees) privately held company's I hear these concerns all the time.  They typically lack the resources to hire someone at a strategic level or someone who is on staff is typically junior and has difficulty making inroads in these areas.