If you are managing HR in a small business, you may have heard that AI is going to be a game changer for the age-old issue of time management. You know, getting all the things done when you are a department of one? Or not even an HR person? And as someone who uses AI regularly, I can certainly help. But here's what no one tells you: the real-time drain in small business HR isn't systems. It's people. You're answering PTO questions in Slack, rewriting the same onboarding email for the third time, and now your CEO wants to know why recruiting is so slow even though no one's given you a job description yet. Welcome to HR in a small business. Whether you've signed up for this or just inherited it, you're holding together policies, payroll, PTO, and a hundred people problems a week. If any of that sounds familiar, you are in the right place. This is the HR connection for the ones managing HR without a full department or a full night's sleep. Not sure if your HR is actually on track? Take our free HR readiness assessment and find out what you've got handled and what's about to blow up. That link is in the show notes. Welcome back to the HR connection. This is season two, episode one. I'm your host, Sabrina Baker, and when I first started, this business and was looking for resources on how to manage HR in a small environment, I found no shortage of advice on time management. That is, to manage as an HR department of one, you just needed to manage your time. That was going to fix all your problems. That was how you were going to get all the things done solo. Sure, that's great advice. Time management is important. But what I was missing was the how. So today, I want to break down two quick things that can give you real, real relief. First, we're going to talk about how to use technology to remove the burden of you being the only one with answers. And then, how to train your managers to stop funneling everything through you. Let's start with tech. Quick story. Back when I first started the business, I was handling HR solo for a 60-person team. I got asked the same PTO question three times in one morning. By lunch, I realized it wasn't about better answering, better questions. It was about better systems. I hadn't built anything that let them find the answer on their own. I needed to be able to have something that allowed them to find information. So, I sat down and I thought about what are all of the questions that I get asked on a daily basis. What are those common themes? What are those things that people are always looking for? Here are a few examples, see if any of these resonate with you. First, where's the handbook? How much vacation do I have? Do our benefits cover X? And for many of these questions and more, I built a very simple FAQ document. Very simple, that lived in the self-service portion of our HRIS. Nowadays, I might do this as a chatbot, but that wasn't available then. The key here is going to be to add to the FAQs as you get more common questions, and point people to it every single time they ask a question they can find the answer to. If you continue to do that, they will go there first. So without them even realizing it, you are training them on how to stop coming to you for everything. Next, I sat down and asked, what manual tasks am I doing over and over? Still copying and pasting onboarding emails, still calculating PTO manually, still calculating bonuses with a spreadsheet. Which led me to question if I was using technology to its fullest. Many HRIS systems are not built out properly, or all of the features that you are paying for may not be built out. Even if some of these manual tasks can't be done by your HRIS, you can still build reusable templates or emails that keep you from reinventing the wheel each and every time. So think about those manual tasks and how you can automate them. Let me give you three fast tech wins. You can do one or all three depending upon your needs, your time, and your skill level. The first one is definitely to max out your HRIS. Automate approvals, reminders, self-service tasks, anything that it can do, anything that you've paid for, make sure you are using it. Sometimes it's a very low cost to upgrade, definitely, definitely max out your HRIS system. Number two, let AI do the drafting. This is where AI is a game changer. It is the starting point. Whether it's policies, manager emails, job descriptions, stop starting from scratch, it's time. Let it do the drafting for you. And then the third one is to build a single source of truth, a central place, Google Docs, Notion, Confluence, where people can find answers without pinging you. Oftentimes, these documents exist, but they're all over the place, and no one knows where to find them. Gather all your critical HR docs in one place and point managers and employees there every time they ask you a question. When you do that, when you hold that boundary and point them to the technology, it is going to feel like freedom. The first time that a manager finds a policy or an answer on their own, you are going to be so proud of them. It may make you want to cry because it works. It's so simple, but it works. If you want to go deeper, like building out chatbots or dynamic policy hubs, we have a free download this week that's linked in the show notes that shows you exactly how to do that. Here's the real-time suck though. It's managers who come to you for everything. Not because they're lazy, well, most of the time not because they're lazy, usually it's just habit or they were never taught what the responsible for. We have a lot of homegrown managers inside of small businesses. I once worked with a client where a manager sent nine HR requests in a single day. Stuff like, can you approve this time off? Can you remind so-and-so about their performance review? Can you provide this person feedback? Not one of those things actually required HR involvement, but no one had ever shown them another way. The fix isn't going to be a three-hour training or a 10-hour module LMS. And this one definitely takes time because there is no quick fix. It is about micro changes that change habits, shift habits, over time. So let me give you three that work. The first one is to use one-on-ones as micro trainings. You should have one-on-ones with your managers or have regular meetings with them. Next time they come to that with a question, don't just answer. Explain how they could handle it next time or how they can find the answer and then hold them accountable to doing that. Number two, you can make a manager cheat sheet. This would be a one-pager with basic responsibilities and links, how to approve time off, how to give quick feedback, how to handle low-stakes conflict, things you know they are capable of doing on their own. And then number three, you want to get leadership buy-in. Until your leaders, your senior leaders say people management is everyone's job, managers won't change. They're going to keep defaulting to you. The key here is to hold your boundaries. Make sure they have the tools, the resources, and the training that they need to handle these things and when they have those, hold them accountable to doing it without you. Oh, and if you're saying that sounds great, Sabrina, but I have one or five managers who will always defer to me. We've got a blog post just for you. It's also linked down in the show notes. You are so not alone on this. We know that managers are going to push back, which is why we say it takes time, but you have to hold your boundaries; you have to make sure they have those resources, make sure they have that training, and then help them handle those things on their own. Each time because then that's going to free up your time. It is not a time management problem that you probably have. It is a doing too many things that you don't have to do problem, that can be fixed by leveraging technology and the managers inside your business. So that's it. Quick, quick hit this week about freeing up some time so that you can really focus on other things. Let's talk about what's coming up next. First, if this was helpful, take two seconds to like, subscribe, or follow. It helps get this into the hands of more small business HR leaders who need it. And don't forget to grab that expert download or that blog post. Both of those links are in the show notes. Next week, I am joined by Marie Rolston from the Acacia team, and we're breaking down how to hire with confidence without the 10-round interview circus that small businesses seem to love to put candidates through. You are not going to want to miss it. See you then.