Your human resources practices must change rapidly to keep up with the 21st century reality that businesses can meet many of their staffing needs through flexible workforce arrangements. For example, a business owner can outsource labor to domestic and foreign workers through online labor marketplaces. It is important for small businesses to practice good communication so they can keep their widely distributed workforce apace with their organizational needs.

Employee Inquiries

In a small business, employees will have questions about their wages, working conditions, benefits and other aspects of employment. They will need a person who can handle their HR questions to be available. You can delegate the routing of employee inquiries to a central HR person. If you are not creating an HR function, you can delegate this authority to supervisors, but they may lack HR knowledge.

Policies and Procedures

Your employees also need access to HR policies and procedures that affect their position. A good example of HR communication is using a centralized company website, a bulletin board, a policies and procedures binder or another filing system to organize employment policies and procedures. An HR contact may answer some low-level questions for employees on these rules, but you must make high-level HR decisions or delegate them to a manager. Prepare to communicate why policies exist and how they impact employees. Your workers should understand how you make personnel decisions, including hiring, firing, performance evaluation and advancement.

Change Management

From time to time, you will decide to change your company's HR policies and procedures and major operating strategies. For example, you might switch to a new inventory management system and rely on your HR person to help manage the change process. This is the job of a mid-level HR expert. A typical approach is outlining the change process and the timeline for each stage of changes. Employees should be led step-by-step through any change process, and they need time to adjust to new ways of working so they will remain successful in their jobs.

Performance Feedback

On the performance side, employees need feedback regularly on their work. They will benefit from your creation of a standardized feedback model. You might create a written or electronic form that can be used by you and your managers whenever you are observing and providing feedback to employees. Whatever system you use should be consistent and devoid of any obvious sources of bias. Employees can respect a communication system that appears fair to everyone and offers them legitimate feedback so they can improve.