Sound human resources management starts with its ability to align with how the company already works. I firmly believe you don't fix what isn't broken, so I anchor every mandate to the practices that already work.
A mandate with a scope, a timeline and a deliverable. A project suits a one-time, clearly bounded need. It might be building a salary structure, running the pay equity exercise, writing an employee handbook, setting up a performance review program, rebuilding a staffing process, and so on. The mandate opens with a scoping meeting, continues through the analysis and drafting work, and ends with the handover of the documents and a transfer session with your managers.
Fees for each project are set in advance in a service offer. Part of those fees is often eligible for a Services Québec grant, under the Concertation pour l'emploi measure.
Ongoing support suits you if you don't have the volume to justify a full-time position, but your files still need to be looked after.
In practice, it is a block of hours each month, sized to your headcount and open to revision. It covers day-to-day HR: hiring and departures, classifying a new position, updating policies, compliance questions, or supporting a manager through a difficult file.
It is the format built for companies with no internal HR resource, and no way to justify a permanent position.
Salaries, bonuses, vacation, free parking, extra statutory holidays… Compensation gets complicated fast. Yet it is still decided case by case far too often. Faced with that complexity, a salary structure backed by a compensation policy, even a simple one, puts it all back in order and saves you money.
A good evaluation system is one that managers actually use and employees understand. The rest costs time and produces nothing.
A training session is worth only what is left of it three months later. So we start from what is actually missing rather than from a catalogue, and compliance with Quebec's Act to promote workforce skills development and recognition follows without a last-minute scramble to rebuild the record.
A good policy is understood on first reading and gives everyone the same answer. A good internal process does the same for your managers, by setting who does what, in what order and with which document, from hiring through to the end of employment.
I start by understanding what is happening on the ground, I come back with an honest report, even when it makes for uncomfortable reading, and the action plan follows the observations rather than the hopes.
A bad hire is expensive, and a bad placement often costs more still, because it takes longer to show. So the point isn't only to fill the role, it's for the person to still be there a year from now.
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