HR essentials, what employers need to know.
It’s Kath here from Compass Business Support. Today I’m joined by Paulette McCormack from Fresh HR Insights. This is the very first of a series of videos that we’re going to be doing for you all about HR essentials, what employers need to know.
Anyone who’s employing a team or thinking about employing a team in the future, this series is necessarily for you to know.
It is a great the way we’ve structured it, too. So, we’re going from when you’re bringing people on board, or thinking about it, right through to the separation process and everything in between. So you mustn’t miss any of these 10 step processes. These are all booked in as per the below so make sure you add to your diary. We will be setting up events to so you can get ready to see the video’s go up and watch out for the lives.
- Policies and Procedures – Do I need them and if so which ones (24th April)
- Recruitment and Selection – The raw deal when finding your star (22nd May)
- Probation Periods – Letting go can be easier than holding on (26th June)
- Induction – Setting New Employees up for long term success (24th July)
- Absence Management – When employees are missing in action (28th August)
- Disciplinary Process – When things dont go right (25th September)
- Effective Communication – Talk to me I am listening (23rd October)
- Ending Employment – Its time to say goodbye the right way (20th November)
- Small Business HR Rescue – Summing it al up for success (10th December)
Todays topic , this is all about before you take on an employee. We’ve got some questions to ask today, Now, the first thing, this is all about before you take an employee onboard.
Question ONE: How do you know when you’re ready to start taking on an employee? When you’re ready to take on a new team member?
Answer: The main thing is you’ve got to make sure you’re financially ready to bring on a person onboard. So what I do suggest to the small business owners is to actually think about how much they’re going to pay them. Obviously make sure it’s within the award as well, that’s always important. Then to put that money aside for a period of three months.
If you put it into a high interest savings account and save it all up. If you can afford to pay that every single week for three months then I’ll say you’ll be financially able to employ someone. There’s nothing worse than bringing someone onboard and finding out that you cannot pay them.
You don’t want to do that. You know, if you get to the three months and find that maybe it’s not the right thing, because you’ve had to think about it as well, then you’ve got a little to lose
Because once you bring someone onboard, and it’s what we’ll go into as well through the series and it’s certainly one of the freebies that you’ll be getting today. Shhh. It’s a freebie. It’s in there as well, depending what kind of employee you’re going to bring onboard. If it’s occasional then you’ve got a bit of more flexibility. But if you’re a permanent patch on a permanent full time, you’ve got a notice period to pay as well.
So you want to make sure that you can afford that. That you’ve actually got the funds saved up. You don’t want to back yourself into a corner, that’s for sure.
Question TWO: Second question is where do you start?
When you’re looking at what kind of person to bring in where do you start. Start looking at what you’re doing as a job, and start mapping it out. Then start mapping out someone else do? When you bring a person onboard as a small business owner it’s tempting to carry on wanting to manage the whole process and not letting go. So, it’s starting to map out the letting go process because there’s no point bringing an employee onboard and becoming that helicopter.
Nobody likes a micromanager. And I think most small business owners can be … They’re fairly guilty of that. Wanting to control everything that goes on in the business.
So this is a really great point that making sure that you’ve got a whole list of things that you either don’t want to do, or you don’t like doing, that you can actually delegate to a new employee.
Because you want to be working on your business and no longer in your business. That’s why you’re going to bring on an employee. So, you need to make sure you have the work for them to do. Because you’re soon going to get pretty annoyed if you’re paying a wage and they’re sitting there doing nothing. You’d be lying if you said, “No, I won’t.”
Question THREE: So the third question I’ve got for you today, which type of employee would suit me best?
This comes down to what business you’re running and what your needs are. So, in the three-month period mentioned above you’d be working that out. The role and everything. Now, if your business is fluctuating where some weeks it’s busy and some weeks it’s quiet I would recommend you look at getting a casual. The casual employee doesn’t have set hours. But each day is end to day contract. Then they start again the next time you have them in.
So, one week you might need them three days, the next week you might need them four days. Next week you might only need them one. So you’ve got that flexibility.
Where for the permanent part-time person or a permanent full-time they have consistent hours. You’d have to pay them even if there’s no work. So that’s why a casual is so much better.
Now, there is a causal conversion in the pipeline coming across all the awards and some already have this, so you need to be mindful of that. But that doesn’t actually apply to an irregular casual. So someone whose hours are all over the place. So you don’t need to worry about it too much if you’ve got an irregular casual. Only if you’ve got a systematic, or regular casual where the hours are pretty predictable. And it’s something I can help you with anyway.
Absolutely. And does that vary across different awards as well, that casual ruling?
It does. Yes. Some of the awards already have it in. So, there’ll be in construction industry, that tends to have them in it. So be mindful of that. But when you’re looking at the retail, or the clerical award then it’s certainly not in there at the moment. But it’s something I can help people with.
That’s the great thing about this video series, too. Is that you’ve always got that expert here to help you. So, Paulette’s always on hand to be able to answer questions. An adviser in the right direction.
So, I think that’s all the questions we’ve got for our very first video. I hope this has been really helpful to you guys. And that you are going get great value from this. Not only today but also the rest of the series that we’ve got.
Did you want to talk a little bit about your giveaways today?
GIVEAWAYS
FRESH HR INSIGHTS We have got an amazing giveaway. What I’ve actually done is I’ve done a fact sheet for you. It’s actually turned into be a fact booklet. I’m also a University teacher so I tend to play in the academic space a lot as well. And I can’t help myself but to give a lot of information. Just can’t stop.
So, I’ve actually put a lot in there as well. There’s also a free checklist for you to go in and have a look at what employer-employee relationship is. And what different categories of employees that you can have as well. So, if you’ll follow the link we’re going to put at the bottom here there all downloadable. They’re all free. They’re all available to you no strings attached.
Excellent. That sounds like it’s got lots of great information in there. That’s wonderful.
Fabulous. I’ve actually got a one page business plan in there for you as well, which is free and also comes with an instructional video. And is also a systems health check. So just a general review of all the business systems that you’ve got in your business currently. And what you might need to implement.
ANOTHER SUPER DEAL We have a new start up process, which includes your contract of employments as well. Which are really important to have those in place. But also making sure you capture the key information you need and actually start the employer-employee relationship on the right foot. So, a 25% discount of our package. All you need to do is to send us an email today and put in the code, KBPM2018
And we look forward to seeing you on the next video. Take care.
