Safeguarding responsibilities for HR managers

To do safeguarding well takes a whole organisation. As a human resources (HR) director or manager, you and your team must play a leading role in establishing safeguarding throughout the organisations through its work in several areas.

• Strategy and policy development.
• Promoting a safeguarding culture.
• Supporting and monitoring internal and external reporting processes.
• Recruiting staff, volunteers and trustees.

An HR strategy should set out the organisation’s approach to recruiting, managing and developing individuals and an overall approach to workplace culture.

To deliver safeguarding well, you should include in your strategy:

• activities and policies that promote safety and wellbeing
• a workforce plan which clearly identifies roles that work with children and/or adults at risk
• details and provisions of safeguarding training and risk assessments
• staff, volunteer and trustee engagement strategies which also reference safeguarding
• supervision and performance management strategies which include safeguarding in the review frameworks
• policies for responding to, recording and reporting concerns, complaints and allegations of all kinds, including safeguarding.

Safeguarding policies and procedures are essential tools to protect people from harm. However, a number of different policies play a part in making sure you’re running a safer organisation. Whether you create each of these policies separately, or group some of them together, you should make sure you have:

• a safeguarding policy and procedures relating to children and to adults at risk
• reporting procedures relating to children and to adults at risk
• a recruitment and selection policy featuring safer recruitment
• one or more codes of conduct
• an equality and diversity policy
• a bullying and harassment policy
• a whistleblowing policy
• a disciplinary policy
• a grievance policy
• a health and safety policy
• a procurement policy
• policies to suit particular arrangements such as apprenticeships or work experience.

You must make sure:

• policies are publicly available, easy to find and easy to use
• all staff, volunteers and trustees read the policies and sign to confirm they understand them
• policies are reviewed every year, so they’re kept up to date with legislation and you can track whether they’re working or not.

Additional policy guidance

• As a HR manager, you’ll often need to support the designated safeguarding lead through a reporting process. Read more in the responding to concerns section of our guide for designated safeguarding leads.
• Our policies and procedures page contains links to writing guides on safeguarding policies for children and adults.

Excellent policies are only effective when they’re implemented well. To check whether you have the right approach in place you can use the following list of questions.

• Do you respond to all issues quickly and fairly, taking into account the level of risk to others and whether the issue includes harm, abuse or neglect?
• Is there a good relationship between the HR department and the designated safeguarding lead for the organisation?
• Are very serious allegations and concerns immediately reported to the police?
• Do you investigate ‘off the record’ conversations if you think that there could be a safeguarding concern?
• Do you suspend individuals as soon as a potential safeguarding issue is raised?
• Do you use training and support via disciplinary and capability policies to address issues of performance?
• Do you have a good process for storing and sharing information only with relevant people during a safeguarding investigation?
• Do you have counselling support available for individuals during investigations?
• Do you make sure that no NDA or settlement agreement ever prevents you from disclosures of misconduct and reports to regulators such as the Charity Commission?
• Do you combine HR information about grievances, disciplinaries, equality and diversity complaints with the designated safeguarding lead’s information when reporting to trustees?
• Do you use appropriate questions in exit interviews as a way to encourage people to raise any hidden grievances or concerns that relate to safeguarding or harassment?
• Do you make sure any agencies you work with have safeguarding practices and policies that are as robust as your own?

The work the HR department does to create a strong workplace culture is one of the most important elements in keeping people safe.

You should aim to make sure:

• people know they have a right to be safe
• staff and volunteers are comfortable to raise concerns at the earliest possible stage
• staff and volunteers are well trained and have the courage to challenge and act on issues quickly.

Further resources

• Our getting people involved page has good examples of communication methods you can use.
• Our safeguarding for communications and marketing guide has further information on promoting safeguarding to staff and volunteers.
• If you want to undertake a wide range conversation in your organisation about culture changes to improve safeguarding against all types of harm, including sexual exploitation, abuse and sexual harassment, you can use BOND's developing and modelling a positive safeguarding culture: a tool for leaders. Designed mainly for international development organisations but it could be adapted for any organisation.

To do safeguarding well, you need to consider the contracts you have with third parties. You must make sure they’ll help you deliver your commitment to building a safer culture and a safer organisation.

Whether you have a formal procurement policy or not, you must make sure you have clear contractual safeguarding requirements for third parties (freelancers, contractors, suppliers).

The extent of the requirements may vary depending on the role the third party is taking on. For example you may require higher standards from a consultant who is training your staff than from a stationary supplier. However, you should expect all third parties to understand safeguarding and have their own policies and procedures. This can protect your organisation from reputational risk as well as protecting your staff, volunteers and the people you work with from harm.

Safeguarding is particularly important when you are working with agencies that supply personnel. Only use agencies that have robust safer recruitment policies and procedures. Make sure they provide you with up-to-date safeguarding policies and procedures and that they take all the appropriate pre-employment checks that you would.

• Want to know more? Our guide to working in partnership gives ideas for making shared safeguarding arrangements.
• Want to share what you expect in safer recruitment with an agency? Share our safeguarding from interview to exit page with them.
• Using an agency for fundraising? Check out our safeguarding for fundraising managers page.