How Can We Strengthen Our HR Department for Future Audits in the Garments Industry?

Strengthening Our HR Department for Future Audits

I am working as an HR Executive in the modern garments industry. It's a 100% export unit and fully compliant with legal standards. Our company started just one year ago, and we recently passed a buyer audit successfully.

Currently, our main focus is on P.F, ESI, payroll, workers' grievances, and other related matters. Our compliance department functions separately, and the welfare officer works independently. Unfortunately, there seems to be a lack of mutual understanding among us, as everyone operates independently.

This is the current status of our HR department. Although we have nine staff members in HR, they are all freshers. We need to enhance our HR functions to prepare for upcoming buyer audits.

We seek advice on how to strengthen our HR department and what further steps to implement to become a more professional team. A detailed workflow chart of HR activities from gate to all functions, including labor welfare and staff welfare, would be greatly appreciated.

We are based in Tamil Nadu with an employee strength of 2,000.

Thanks & Regards,

P. Ponmurugapandiyan

Your question needs a detailed explanation. As the above reply explains, sometimes you need a very senior person to establish HR systems in your organization. Considering the employee strength of your organization, it is quite significant and requires a professional approach to handling compliance audits, which is mandatory. You cannot handle such audits effectively without proper teamwork among key members like LWO & HR executives, etc.

Steps to Strengthen HR Systems

As a first step, you need to collect or define job descriptions for all your team members. Based on their roles, you have to establish a reporting relationship/organizational chart to streamline the activities. HR and compliance are closely connected and must work as a team to address social compliance audits.

If you need further clarification, please feel free to contact me for offline discussions.