Seraf’s HR advisor: team, roles and employee onboarding

Most businesses have no human resources department. The owner hires, onboards, sorts out schedules and senses, often too late, that an employee is checking out. The HR advisor brings a regular look at these questions, without claiming to replace a professional. Its mission covers team capacity, hiring, onboarding, performance and organizational change.

It aims for three outcomes: a clear view of the team’s capacity, onboarding that is ready before each person arrives, and change-related risks spotted early. To get there, it watches for four signals:

• a capacity shortfall, when the team is no longer enough for the work it has taken on;
• a delayed onboarding, for example a workstation, an access or a training session that isn’t ready;
• an ambiguous role, when two people think they are doing the same thing, or nobody is taking care of it;
• change fatigue, when new things pile up faster than the team can absorb them.

The HR advisor belongs to the Council’s second ring. It steps in when a significant people signal, a decision, a disagreement or missing information warrants it; it doesn’t comment every single day. On hiring, it can flag that a capacity shortfall persists; the decision to hire is yours, and Serafex doesn’t offer a recruiting service.

The seat relies on the Chief of staff, who follows coordination, and on the Delivery and project operations function, because an overloaded team shows up in the deadlines first. The guide to the COO advisor and project tracking shows this link between capacity and delivery. For a specific question, the Council also includes specialist advisors in areas such as organizational health and culture, change management or executive coaching. None of them makes decisions about your staff.

As with the whole Council, Seraf remains your only point of contact. It presents a recommendation, its reason and a next step. In the morning brief, its recommendations come back to you with the choice to accept, edit, postpone or decline. The HR advisor’s decision rights are limited to flagging a people risk, recommending a follow-up and asking the person responsible for the facts that are missing.

Its three reserved actions are worth reading slowly:

• no employment decision: it decides on no hiring, no dismissal, no salary, no evaluation and no disciplinary measure;
• no communication with staff: it never speaks directly to your employees; if you ask Seraf for a draft message, you review it and confirm sending it;
• no access change: it creates no account, removes no right and changes no role.

Its recommendation goes straight to the human owner. That is deliberate: when it comes to your team, a mistake affects a person, not just a file.

Employee files also contain personal information. The Commission d’accès à l’information (new tab) (in French) points out that only authorized people, for whom this information is necessary to carry out their duties, may have access to it. In Serafex, the right to view HR files is granted person by person. An employee who helps with onboarding doesn’t need to see their colleagues’ files. The complete guide to Law 25 for businesses brings all these obligations together.

Serafex is built for several users in the same business. In Settings, under My business, the Users and access section is where you organize the team. Each person gets:

• a role in the space: Owner, Administrator, Manager or Employee;
• a profile presented by Seraf, such as Leadership, Marketing, Finance, Human resources, Manager or Employee, so that Seraf adapts what it puts forward;
• one or more functions, for example Operations, Sales or Production;
• the services they can see and specific rights, such as viewing invoices, approving payments, organizing their teams or viewing HR files.

For now, only the business’s main account can invite new members. Messaging is for exchanges between colleagues, and the Calendar keeps meetings, reminders and absences. When your business uses Google Workspace or Microsoft 365, the Users and access section also provides for reading your directory, depending on your account. Any change to access requires explicit confirmation.

The following table illustrates one possible breakdown for the fictional garden centre. It is an example to think with, not a template to copy.

The security of these accesses, especially when an employee leaves, is covered in the guide to the CTO advisor and access security.

The CNESST, on its page about welcoming and integrating staff (new tab) (in French), recommends preparing a welcome and integration plan suited to your business and to the people you hire. It points out that new employees must be informed of their working conditions, their rights in occupational health and safety, and what relates to pay equity: salary, the date of the first pay, schedule, breaks, vacation or probation period. Éducaloi, for its part, specifies that training time required by the employer is work time (new tab) (in French). Finally, an article on Québec.ca about welcoming and integrating new employees (new tab) (in French) advises getting access, codes and software ready in advance, designating a mentor and holding regular follow-up meetings during the first weeks.

Here is a list inspired by these sources, with what Serafex can help prepare:

The HR advisor spots when one of these steps is falling behind. It doesn’t fill in the list for you and doesn’t settle any labour law question. If you are unsure about an obligation, check with the CNESST, Éducaloi or a human resources professional.

This situation is invented to illustrate the role; it doesn’t describe any Serafex client. A garden centre is welcoming two seasonal employees in a week. Two days before they arrive, their accesses aren’t ready, and the yard supervisor thinks the administrative assistant will give the forklift training, while she thinks he will.

The owner’s brief contains an item presented under the HR advisor seat. Seraf sums up two signals: a delayed onboarding and an ambiguous role. Its recommendation: name the person who will do the training today, and block the training time in the calendar before they arrive. The reason: training is part of onboarding, it counts as work time and it can’t be improvised on the first morning. The next step: prepare an onboarding document and two training appointments.

The owner accepts. She designates the yard supervisor as mentor, invites the two new members herself with the Employee role and confirms each access. Seraf prepares a draft welcome note; she corrects it, then confirms sending it. The HR advisor didn’t touch salaries or schedules, and it didn’t address anyone. It made an oversight visible before it turned into a botched first day.

Let’s talk about your team and how Seraf can prepare onboarding with you.