With December already upon us, now is the time to ensure that your HR is in order for the end of the year. From preparing your payroll ahead of time, to regulation and law changes, to checking that all staff appraisals and performance reviews are complete, anyone responsible for HR has a lot on their plates in December!
That’s why we’ve created this HR end-of-year checklist – so that nothing is missed in this action-packed season.
Read on for what steps you should take now to ensure a smooth segue into 2025.
1. Ensure End-of-Year Leave Requests have been Submitted
Remind all employees to submit their Time Off / Vacation requests for this period.
When approving leave requests, check that you will have enough staff to cover workload requirements over the year-end period. You may have your HR system setup so that line managers can approve leave requests, but at this time of year, it might be a good idea to do a sense-check of this.
2. Check that Leave / Time-Off Allowances are Setup for the New Year
Ensure proper end-of-year Vacation Time / Time Off carryover is set up – both in your payroll system and HR software. Depending on your leave policy, you may also need to pay-out employees for any accrued PTO at year-end.
For HR Partner users, please see our video specifically recorded for Preparing Your Time Off and Leave for the New Year.
Or if you’re still managing leave manually, HR Partner gives you an easy way to do this. See how you can manage time off and leave requests, approvals and accruals with ease – check out HR Partner now.
3. Prepare Payroll Ahead of Time
Schedule and issue holiday bonuses to hit your final 2024 payroll run, if applicable.
Next, get organized and prepare for the first payroll run of the new year. Then, confirm the new year payroll schedule and share that with the employees, along with the payroll dates, so that they are clear on when they will be paid over this period.
4. Plan for Recruitment Needs
Encourage each department to determine their staffing needs and requests for the new year. This could be in a formal planning session, but it also could be via a quick conversation with each department head to help with HR Planning.
If you have new team members starting over the end-of-year period, confirm start-dates and set up their onboarding schedules.
For HR Partner users, you can send out Onboarding Checklists which cover both the tasks the new-starters need to complete, as well as internal administrative tasks associated with a new employee starting.
5. Check Any Regulation or Law Changes
To remain compliant, it’s important to stay on top of any legal changes that will affect the end of 2024 or the beginning of 2025. Check your state and local laws for any relevant changes to compliance, student loan repayments, or new regulations that might affect your company
6. Review your Contracts and Policies
In particular, make sure that the following are up to date:
- Contracts of employment
- Holiday / Vacation policies
- Sickness & compassionate leave
- Maternity and paternity leave policies
- Bullying and discrimination policies
- Performance Management and Termination processes
- Attendance and personal conduct policies
- Social media policies
HR Partner has some downloadable HR policies and templates here.
7. Check your Training Plan and Schedule any Training now
Have your staff fulfilled their training objectives for this year? Allocate funds and resources now for staff training in 2025, so that staff are clear on what’s available to them for the next twelve months. Then, schedule your 2025 training program – such as management, harassment, or training specific to your industry.
8. Check all Staff Appraisals / Performance Reviews are Complete
Perform annual performance reviews and check that all employee reviews are complete.
Importantly, before the end of the year, make sure that every staff member has had an appraisal and a development plan has been reviewed by their manager. Ensure that goals are set for 2025 and that any concerns or issues, from both sides, have been discussed.
Performance review software can help you to manage this process. HR Partner includes an entire Performance Review and Goal Setting function. Or, if you’re not using an HR system yet, you can access free Performance Review templates here.
9. Ensure all Employee Records are Up-to-Date
Additionally, year end is also a great time to remind employees to update their information in your HR database (address, emergency contact, phone number, personal email, etc.) Empower employees to manage their own information, request time-off, access the employee directory by using the Self-Service Employee Portal with your HR Software.
Or if you really want to make sure employees check and enter certain information, you can include this on an End-of-Year Checklist.
10. End-of-Year Celebration Scheduled and Planned
Has the end-of-year celebration been scheduled and planned? If not, get onto this immediately as venues book out quickly. If each department has their own team year-end celebration, ensure that each manager has organized this and invited their team to it. Finally, once the celebrations have been held, encourage managers to send photos of the events to you, so that these can be posted to your company’s social media platforms.
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Of course, there’s always more you can do but these ten end-of-year HR tasks should be more than enough. We hope that this checklist helps you finish this year strong and paves the way for a brilliant new year ahead!
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Does your company use an HR system you love? Are you running a team of 20-500 people? HR Partner helps you streamline your HR Processes and get all your employee information in one place. It includes everything small and medium businesses need to manage HR records and processes. Book a demo today, so that you can begin 2025 as you mean to go on.
