The people-operations checklist a restaurant owner can review each month

A monthly HR review only survives if it can be finished. Anything longer than half an hour gets skipped in month two, and a checklist that is skipped is worse than no checklist because it produces a false sense that something is being watched.

Five items. Each one is a question that only surfaces a problem if somebody deliberately looks — which is the entire justification for doing it monthly rather than waiting for something to go wrong.

1. Incomplete files from the last hiring wave

Pull every hire since the last review. For each, four questions:

• Is the I-9 complete, with Section 2 done and dated?
• Are both federal and state withholding certificates present?
• Is there a signed handbook acknowledgement, and for which version?
• Are role certifications on file, with expiry dates recorded?

Anything missing gets chased this week, while the person is still employed and reachable. The full sequence is in the onboarding checklist.

2. Payroll exceptions, and what caused them

Not whether payroll ran. It ran. The question is what needed correcting and why.

• How many corrections or off-cycle runs happened this month?
• What caused each one — late timecards, a missed rate change, a hire entered after the fact?
• Is the same cause appearing for the third month running? If so, that is a process problem, and correcting it repeatedly is not fixing it.
• Did every tipped employee clear the tip-credit check in every period?

A correction log with one recurring cause is the most useful diagnostic in this entire checklist. See the payroll approval checklist for the cycle-level version.

3. Open positions against the schedule you are actually running

• Which roles are you covering with overtime rather than with a hire? That is a real cost, and it is usually invisible because it never appears as a vacancy.
• Which shifts consistently need a manager to fill in? That is a scheduling gap dressed up as a staffing gap.
• Are you about to enter a seasonal ramp with hiring not yet started?
• Has headcount crossed a threshold that changes an obligation? Several Massachusetts entitlements turn on employee count — see Massachusetts payroll basics.

4. Policy drift

Pick two or three policies and ask a manager who works the floor whether that is what actually happens. Rotate which ones you pick, so over a year you cover the handbook.

• Are breaks taken the way the handbook describes?
• Are shift swaps going through the stated approval?
• Is the tip pool being distributed the way the written policy says?
• Are disciplinary conversations being documented at the time?

Each gap you find is a decision: change the document or change the practice. The handbook guide covers why leaving them out of step is the expensive option.

5. Documentation behind anything pending

For every situation currently live — a performance issue, a complaint, an accommodation request, a dispute:

• Is there contemporaneous documentation, written at the time?
• Is it factual — dates, what was said, who was present?
• Is it consistent with how similar situations have been handled?
• Is there anything here that should already be with counsel?

The last question is the one worth being decisive about. Escalating early costs a conversation. Escalating late costs considerably more.

Making it stick

Put it on the same day each month — a slow Tuesday, not a Monday. Write down what you found, even when the answer is “nothing”, because the value compounds only if you can compare months. And do it before payroll rather than after, so anything you find can be fixed in the current cycle rather than corrected in the next one.

If this list keeps being skipped, that is useful information rather than a personal failing. It means the work has no owner — which is the specific problem HR administration exists to solve.