When a church hires an employee, it enters into the world of personnel management. Hiring, keeping, and firing staff requires a vast amount of labor law knowledge plus good management practices in order to provide a legal and healthy work environment.
At some point, a growing church will need to assign the personnel duties to someone. In smaller churches is typically the Personnel Committee while in larger churches it is given to a paid employee as part of their responsibilities. Only in very large churches is there an employee whose sole job is HR.
If you don’t have these assigned to someone, your church will have problems in this area. Be intentional and ensure someone is responsible for HR. Personnel problems are easily prevented but they can become very difficult (in time and money) when they become a grievance. Someone needs to be available to listen impartially to employees and help them work through professional difficulties. Too often it is presumed that the pastor will handle these matters but very few pastors are trained in personnel. Instead, rely on someone who is knowledge in this area of the law.
The next post will have a partial description of the HR responsibilities which should be assigned to someone in the church.
Lead On!