60+ Essential HR Processes for All Human Resource Teams (Free!)

60+ Essential HR Processes for All Human Resource Teams (Free!) process.st/hr-processes November 15, 2019

Thom James Carter November 15, 2019

The 5+ million people who work in HR in the United States have their work cut out for them.

From hiring great-fitting talent and helping with their onboarding, to monitoring employee performance and even resolving any employee conflicts, there’s a lot of ground for HR teams to cover – and in such a short amount of time.

Imagine if there was a way for HR teams – not only in the U.S., but around the globe – to time-save, cost-save, and laborsave, and take control of their recurring tasks like never before…

Wouldn’t that be a dream?

At Process Street, we rather like turning dreams into reality.

That’s why we’ve hand-picked our most effective, most useful HR processes from our extensive library and are presenting it in this ultimate HR process pack.

Think of it as your one-stop-shop for all the human resource processes you’ll ever need.

Read through the following sections to learn how to revolutionize your HR department, on top of getting your hands on over 60 (yes, 60+) free process templates: Now, let’s stop dilly-dallying and get to it!

Why use templates and checklists for HR processes?

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Checklists help people tremendously.

Checklists help businesses tremendously.

Checklists help reduce risk by a tremendous percentage.

Now, the above three statements may initially appear as hyperbolic, but they’re void of exaggeration.

A simple checklist can have a massive impact, despite it not exactly being some new, groundbreaking, awe-inspiring invention.

As Atul Gawande, the surgeon and author of The Checklist Manifesto: How to Get Things Right, states:

“We don’t like checklists. They can be painstaking. They’re not much fun. But I don’t think the issue here is mere laziness.

There’s something deeper, more visceral going on when people walk away not only from saving lives but from making money.

It somehow feels beneath us to use a checklist, an embarrassment. It runs counter to deeply held beliefs about how the truly great among us — those we aspire to be — handle situations of high stakes and complexity.” – Atul Gawande, The Checklist Manifesto: How to Get Things Right But checklists are powerful things.

In The Checklist Manifesto: How to Get Things Right, Gawande takes us back to Michiganian hospitals in 2006.

Why? Because a project called the Keystone Initiative introduced checklists to the doctors and nurses working in I.C.U.s in the state of Michigan.

After only three months of the hospital staff using checklists for each procedure, a dramatic change happened.

The results – which you can see below – are pretty astounding.

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“Within the first three months of the project, the infection rate in Michigan’s I.C.U.s decreased by sixty-six percent. The typical I.C.U. — including the ones at Sinai-Grace Hospital — cut its quarterly infection rate to zero.

Michigan’s infection rates fell so low that its average I.C.U. outperformed ninety percent of I.C.U.s nationwide.

In the Keystone Initiative’s first eighteen months, the hospitals saved an estimated $175,000,000 in costs and more than 1,500 lives. The successes have been sustained for almost four years — all because of a stupid little checklist.” – Atul Gawande, The Checklist Manifesto: How to Get Things Right Although those impressive figures may have caught your eye, this may be the point where you’re thinking “But I’m not a doctor – I’m an HR manager!”

Sure, you may not be helping people in the operating theater, but what you do is extremely human-focused.

After all, you’re a part of your organization’s human resources department.

You’re making sure people are mentally, emotionally, and socially content while at work, and that the human-side of the business is running smoothly.

No matter if you’re hiring new employees, resolving conflict between current employees, or facilitating performance reviews, every single action your department takes impacts somebody else.

So when we said “people who work in HR have their work cut out for them” at the beginning of this post, we meant it. And considering that a lack of oversight, human error, and mistakes can severely impact your organization both financially and at a human-level, your department needs their HR processes and procedures to be professional, efficient, and effective at all times.

If you’re thinking “Is this even possible?”, it is.

It’s 100% possible.

Introducing Process Street’s superpowered checklists.

With Process Street, you can document your integral, recurring processes via templates. You – or others – can then launch an unlimited amount of checklists from those templates, enabling great work to be done consistently.

Specifically, Process Street’s checklists will help your HR department to: Document your processes and procedures quickly (in a matter of seconds, in fact!)

Streamline your workflows so you complete tasks faster.

Collaborate with teammates, employees from other departments, and guests easily.

Capture important data, be it a job candidate’s name, email, link to their portfolio, or their CV file.

Integrate with over 1,000 other apps with process automation thanks to Zapier.

Ensure important steps in a process are never skipped or missed. Ever.

Now that you’ve learned why you and your team should be using checklists, it’s time to delve into the goldmine that is our collection of HR templates.

Utilize our human resources best practice templates

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As promised, below you’ll find over 60 HR templates created by Process Street’s content team.

All of these templates have been meticulously and painstakingly made, incorporating human resource best practices and business best practices alike, meaning you don’t have to worry about these templates being up-to-scratch.

Because they absolutely are.

Seeing as there’s a lot of templates to go through, we’ve divided our HR template collection into 7 separate sections, so you can find what you’re looking for immediately.

The first section contains pre-hiring processes, so all the templates you need to write knock-out job descriptions.

In the second you’ll find a plethora of hiring processes that will help you hire leading talent.

Once new employees have been hired, the third section provides you with onboarding processes, so you can give those new employees the best possible start.

The fourth section has four different performance processes for facilitating employee performance reviews.

As for the fifth section, you’ll come across essential workplace processes that will help you manage the people of your organization masterfully.

The sixth section is all to do with diversity processes, so if your organization wants to improve internal diversity and inclusion efforts, these templates are the perfect accompaniment.

The seventh and final section for aptitude processes contains a varied range of aptitude tests that provide insight into a candidate’s – or an employee’s – personality, behavior, feelings, thoughts, and overall character.

Now that you know which section is which, it’s time to take a look at them yourself!

Human resource processes #1: Pre-hiring processes Ah, the hiring process.

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It’s a staple for all businesses no matter if they’re big or small, working remotely or in an office, a medium-sized restaurant that regularly recruits chefs or the SaaS company that built an app to deliver food from the kitchen to a hungry person’s home.

It’s also one of the most critical processes to get right from the get-go.

Specifically, this means writing job descriptions that are appropriate, truthful, and clear, so the right talent is attracted.

Interestingly, 72% of hiring managers believe they provide clear job descriptions when putting out an ad.

But candidates say otherwise.

Only 36% of candidates believe that job descriptions are clear.

Suffice to say, there’s a discrepancy.

To solve this discrepancy and attract top-tier talent who’ll be a good fit, use Process Street’s extensive collection of stellar job description templates.

Using these templates will ensure you include important details, such as: From writing job descriptions for graphic designers to fellow HR managers, IT managers to software developers, these templates will guide you every step of the way.

Here’s to representing your business properly, and being rewarded with applications from A+ candidates.

Job description template Accountant job description template

Click here to get the account job description template.

Copywriter job description template

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Click here to get the copywriter job description template.

Customer service manager job description template

Click here to get the customer service manager job description template.

Customer service representative job description template

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Click here to get the customer service representative job description template.

Editor job description template

Click here to get the editor job description template.

Graphic designer job description template

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Click here to get the graphic designer job description template.

HR manager job description template

Click here to get the HR manager job description template.

IT manager job description template

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Click here to get the IT manager job description template.

Marketing manager job description template

Click here to get the marketing manager job description template.

Receptionist job description template

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Click here to get the receptionist job description template.

Sales manager job description template

Click here to get the sales manager job description template.

Software developer job description template

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Click here to get the software developer job description template.

Web designer job description template

Click here to get the web designer job description template.

Web developer job description template

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Click here to get the web developer job description template.

Human resource processes #2: Hiring processes Once the job description has been written, your team is off to a great start.

But it’s only that – a start.

There’s still the rest of the hiring process to go!

This means: It’s a rather long process that takes, on average, 27 working days for a company to acquire a new hire.

Needless to say, there are far too many points at which the whole process could go horribly wrong.

From a lack of internal communication to not enough communication with the candidates, missing interview dates and not conducting appropriate background checks, the possibilities for human error and general disorganization to creep in are endless.

Don’t let your hiring process suffer from the avoidable.

Streamline the entire hiring process with one of our many hiring process templates!

The following templates will enable you to hire quality candidates without the stress and upheaval that’s typically associated with hiring.

All of these templates differ, so make sure to take a look at all of the templates to find the one that aligns best.

Recruitment process checklist Diversity hiring process

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Click here to get the diversity hiring process template.

Ray Dalio’s hiring process

Click here to get Ray Dalio’s hiring process with questions template.

Ari Meisel’s how to streamline the hiring process guide

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Click here to get Ari Meisel’s how to streamline the hiring process guide.

The ultimate guide to hiring an intern

Click here to get the ultimate guide to hiring an intern template.

HR interview process with questions

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Click here to get the HR interview process with questions template.

Customer service interview process with questions

Click here to get the customer service interview process with questions template.

Sales interview process with questions

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Click here to get the sales interview process with questions template.

Project manager interview process with questions

Click here to get the project manager interview process with questions template.

Web developer interview process with questions

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Click here to get the web developer interview process with questions template.

Employee background checklist

Click here to get the employee background checklist.

Human resources pre-employment screening

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Click here to get the human resources pre-employment screening template.

Job application form

Click here to get the job application form template.

Human resource processes #3: Onboarding processes Two questions for you: 1. How well does your organization onboard employees?

2. Do you think your employees would rate your organization’s onboarding process as successful?

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Research by Gallup shows that an abysmally low number – only 12% – of employees strongly agree that their organization onboard new employees well. Flipping those numbers around, that means 88% believe they could’ve been onboarded better.

If your response wasn’t an immediate “Yes, we do onboard well” when I asked you those earlier questions, it’s safe to say your onboarding process needs work.

Considering that a negative onboarding experience causes new hires to look for other opportunities by 2x, and that 54% of companies with proper onboarding programs reported higher employee engagement, going about the onboarding process correctly is crucial.

It helps employees understand the ins and outs of their new company, introduces them to their role and their new teammates, and provides essential training for the role itself. All of which preps the candidate in question for success.

Who wouldn’t want that?

Below you’ll find 6 different onboarding templates. From those in the culinary business to the retail sector, and from call center workers to start-up developers, these templates will help HR teams across the globe to onboard for a range of roles. Plus, there’s a general employee onboarding checklist that all organizations can make substantial use of.

With a digital, cloud-based checklist to guide you, going about onboarding properly has never been easier.

General employee onboarding checklist Call center employee onboarding checklist

Click here to get the call center employee onboarding checklist.

Retail employee onboarding checklist

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Click here to get the retail employee onboarding checklist.

Restaurant employee onboarding checklist

Click here to get the restaurant employee onboarding checklist.

Developer onboarding checklist for startups

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Click here to get the developer onboarding checklist for startups.

Salesperson onboarding checklist for startups

Click here to get the salesperson onboarding checklist for startups.

Human resource processes #4: Performance processes No matter if your company calls them performance appraisals, performance reviews, or employee reviews, facilitating performance appraisals is a staple for HR teams everywhere.

After all, performance appraisals and reviews provide insight into how an employee is benefiting the company they work for, while simultaneously informing the employee of what they’re excelling at, what they could do better in the future, and where they should focus their energies next.

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There’s a huge amount of good that can come from well-organized reviews — which is exactly why there are a plethora of performance-related templates for you to jump in and use.

Do bear in mind that, to coincide with contemporary performance appraisal best practices, the templates below have been built for frequent use.

By “frequent use”, we mean not annually.

This is for good reason.

Officevibe‘s research tells us that 96% of employees believe that regular feedback is a good thing. To boot, 82% appreciate constant feedback, no matter whether it’s negative or positive feedback.

The feeling regarding consistent feedback is mutual, too.

Findings from a Globoforce and SHRM survey have shown that 45% of HR leaders do not think annual performance reviews are an accurate way of reviewing an employee’s work.

As Eric Mosley, the CEO of Globoforce (now rebranded as Workhuman), says regarding the survey’s findings:

“Performance management has long been viewed as the underlying way this is done. Yet, as this latest survey shows, the lack of ongoing feedback continues to be its missing ingredient.” – Eric Mosley, SHRM/Globoforce Survey Reveals Growing Impact of Recognition Programs on Performance Management From both an HR point of view and an employee POV, annual reviews just aren’t cutting it.

That’s why no matter if you want to check-in every two weeks, every month, every quarter, or biyearly, these templates will help you provide your employees with thorough, well-considered reviews. Every. Single. Time.

Employee performance review Self-evaluation performance review template

Click here to get the self-evaluation performance review template.

Performance review template 22/35

Click here to get the performance review template.

Customer service performance review

Click here to get the customer service performance review.

Performance management template

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Click here to get the performance management review template.

Human resource processes #5: Workplace processes When talking about the workplace we’re referring to a physical location – the office.

The office is where teams do great work day in, day out, but it’s also where the average person spends 1/3 of their life – that’s over 90,000 hours in total.

Considering that humans are complicated creatures, it’s safe to assume, at some point during those 90,000 hours, our emotions will get the better of us.

After all, work can be stressful, trying, and taxing at times.

That’s why one of HR’s main responsibilities is to resolve any conflicts, disagreements, feuds, and complaints that crop up on a human-level. But as all HR team members know, this is easier said than done.

We understand those pain-points.

That’s why we created the following 8 templates – to help HR teams of all sizes reduce friction, resolve problems, and establish harmony efficiently and effectively. If issues can’t be worked out, there’s an employee discipline checklist and an employee termination checklist, ensuring you and your team go about handling these situations appropriately.

Additionally, you’ll also find templates that’ll keep your office building’s well-being in check, too!

Here’s to having a happy, healthy workplace. In all senses of the word.

Office safety inspection checklist

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Click here to get the office safety inspection checklist.

Office risk assessment checklist

Click here to get the office risk assessment checklist.

Office conflict resolution checklist

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Click here to get the office conflict resolution checklist.

Employee relations checklist

Click here to get the employee relations checklist.

Employee complaint procedure

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Click here to get the employee complaint procedure template.

Employee discipline checklist

Click here to get the employee discipline checklist.

Employee termination checklist

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Click here to get the employee termination checklist.

Records disposal checklist

Click here to get the records disposal checklist.

Holiday leave application

Human resource processes #6: Diversity processes Blue-sky thinking. Disruption. Touch base. These are all business buzzwords.

What isn’t a buzzword, however, is diversity.

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Diversity has been at the forefront of many HR teams’ efforts, from establishing ERGs to making sure there’s fair representation across the board.

But just because HR teams are aware of diversity and diversity-related initiatives and are trying to make changes, that doesn’t mean they’re going about it successfully.

Many HR teams find D&I (diversity and inclusion) a rather tricky thing to facilitate.

It needn’t be.

That’s why we’ve created 8 solid D&I templates for your HR team to make immediate use of – 2 of which can be found in the hiring processes section and the workplace processes section respectively, and 6 more you’ll find below.

These templates include a diversity-minded hiring process, a guide to start eliminating our unconscious biases, a diversity training template, a diversity questions survey so you can collect integral data regarding how diverse your team is, on top of other super-useful, super-effective templates.

Plus, by managing diversity properly and facilitating real change, your organization can gain advantages such as: To ruminate on the last point, McKinsey’s report Why diversity matters tells us that:

“Companies in the top quartile for gender diversity are 15 percent more likely to have financial returns above their respective national industry medians.” – McKinsey, Why diversity matters That financial boost is from gender diversity alone, meaning if an organization prioritizes overall diversity – people from different ethnic backgrounds, cultural backgrounds, and ages, among other attributes – additional positives will surely follow.

For HR teams wanting to ensure their organization thrives socially, culturally, and financially, add the below diversity in the workplace templates to your organization’s Process Street account now.

Diversity questions survey Code of conduct policy adherence process

Click here to get the code of conduct policy adherence process.

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Unconscious bias training guide

Click here to get the unconscious bias training guide.

Diversity training process

Click here to get the diversity training process.

Diversity management monthly audit

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Click here to get the diversity management monthly audit template.

Diversity initiatives quarterly improvement process

Click here to get the diversity initiatives quarterly improvement process.

Human resource processes #7: Aptitude tests Talent.

The world is chock full of it.

But no matter if your team is based in a physical office or spread out as part of a virtual team, when hiring a new candidate you want to ensure the talent you choose is a good fit.

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It’s often hard — sometimes extremely so — to whittle down the longlist to a shortlist, a shortlist to the final choice.

This is where aptitude tests come into play.

Aptitude, personality, and psychometric tests help the HR team (and departmental managers) gain insight into a potential employee’s interests, ideas, feelings, values, behavior, and personality.

Considering the new employee needs to mesh well with the team’s preexisting personalities, these tests are pretty darn useful for gaining an inkling into the person in question.

This is why 80% of Fortune 500 companies utilize aptitude tests as part of the hiring process — specifically, as a screening mechanism.

If you feel uneasy about introducing aptitude tests into your hiring strategy, these aptitude test templates can still be used in a plethora of ways.

In fact, the ways you can incorporate them are limitless.

To help you out, here are a few ideas.

The results from the Myers-Briggs Jungian personality test template could be a great way for a team to learn about a new team member. Or, it could be used by the whole team as part of an icebreaker at the beginning of a meeting.

Meanwhile, the leadership tools test template assesses the user’s leadership potential, making it an incredibly useful asset when interviewing for leadership roles.

The brilliance of these templates, all of which have been created by Process Street’s Oliver Peterson, is that they all have a basic structure, but there’s also enough leeway so you can edit the aptitude test to your liking. This means you can be 100% comfortable with the aptitude tests you deploy.

Are you a proactive person? A do-er? If so, read our aptitude test article to get the tests fully-working and then dive straight in!

Myers-Briggs style Jungian personality test template IQ test (structure template)

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Click here to get the IQ test (structure template).

DISC assessment (structure template)

Click here to get the DISC assessment (structure template).

Leadership tools test (structure template)

Click here to get the leadership tools test (structure template).

Holland codes test (structure template)

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Click here to get the holland codes test (structure template).

Big five personality test (structure template)

Click here to get the big five personality test (structure template).

Create your own HR processes with Process Street today!

There you have it. More than 60 of Process Street’s HR-related processes to truly bolster your HR team.

We’re sure you’ve managed to uncover several ready-made templates that’ll complement your current processes and practices incredibly well. But we also understand that, sometimes, you want to make your own processes from scratch.

After all, each business is different, therefore each process differs too.

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To help you in your journey of creating stellar, tailor-made templates, let me introduce Process Street’s incredible features that transform checklists into superpowered checklists.

The features are as follows: 1. Stop tasks. With stop tasks, you can ensure important tasks are never skipped, and that checklists are completed exactly as you intended. You’ll want to add stop tasks to integral tasks, especially tasks that have form fields attached.

2. Dynamic due dates. Time is of the essence, and there are certain tasks in a checklist that should be completed quickly. Use the dynamic due dates feature to not only ensure that the tasks at hand get done, but they get done stat.

3. Task assignments. It’s all in the name with task assignments – you can assign users and groups to tasks so they can go in and do what’s required of them. Plus, they’ll get an email notification whenever they’ve been assigned to something!

4. Role assignments. Think of role assignments as a close cousin of task assignments. You’re still assigning people to tasks, but you’re instead assigning team roles – these could range from the HR managers to customer success managers.

5. Task permissions. Sometimes a checklist – such as a hiring process checklist – has multiple eyes on it. With the nifty tasks permissions feature, you can restrict certain tasks from view. From an HR-perspective, this is something of a godsend if job applicants are filling information in one or two of the hiring process’ tasks, but you don’t want them to see the rest of the checklist.

6. Conditional logic. With conditional logic, you can have intelligent and dynamic checklists that adapt to your immediate needs. This is a perfect feature for when you need a checklist to show or hide certain tasks automatically.

To boot, there’s also our upcoming approvals feature!

With approval tasks – which are separate from normal tasks – managers and other decision-makers can approve or reject high-priority items, making processes even more streamlined.

For a walkthrough of some of these features and how you can use them inside our BPM software yourself, watch this informative webinar led by our very own Blake Bailey: Once you’re ready to dive in, log into your account (or sign up here if you haven’t already!) and get creating amazing templates which your HR teammates, cross-departmental colleagues, and guests can launch checklists from.

Additional Process Street resources for ahead-of-the-curve HR teams At Process Street, we’ve written a fair (read: substantial) amount of content that’s useful for human resource teams everywhere.

What can we say?

We know how crucial HR teams are – and how important it is for them to excel.

That’s why, on top of the aforementioned templates, we’ve also included this list – with easy-to-click links – so you can read the posts for yourself: With that, we conclude our massive round-up of HR-related templates and blog posts!

We can’t wait to see your HR department come on leaps and bounds with all these free resources.

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