How do I take on a new staff member?
Can I take on a new staff member?
Taking on a new staff member is something to celebrate. It is something that will help you slowly start to get more time to yourself. Whatever their role is going to be, it will give you more time to work on your business and more time to enjoy your life outside of work. It is a step on building the business that will give freedom to enjoy your life and have freedom.
There is a process that you need to commit to before taking on a new staff member. It is a commitment that you are making to your new employee and to your business. Their wages, taxes and pension will need to be paid each month and also a commitment that you have work that they can be doing.
Do you need to take on new staff?
You need to first ask yourself do you actually need to take on the new staff member? You need to have in mind a role that they will do for your business. Are they going to be doing creative work or are they helping with the admin part of your business? You need to write up a description of the job that they will be doing and have a process that you will follow to get them working with you and your other employees.
If they are doing creative work you need to make sure that you have work for them to do and that they will be a good fit to work with your employees and also the customers that you serve. You need to consider if you are going to be taking on more work in future and if you will need more help than what you already have.
Can you afford to take on a new staff member?
Once you have decided that you need to take on a new employee you will need to make sure that you can afford to pay them. This is not only their wages, taxes, national insurance and pension. But it may also mean increases to the other expenses in your business.
You will need to make sure that you have updated your cashflow forecasts to take account of the increase wages of the new employee and costs for pensions and taxes due. That also any costs that you need to pay for such as new equipment and software licences are also included.
Do you have a process to take on the new staff?
You need to make sure that everything that you do in your business that you have a process set up that you are going to follow. Taking on staff is no different, you need to have a process in mind that you are going to follow.
The first one is how will you advertise the job that you have? Will you do the advertising yourself or will you use a recruitment agency? Using a recruitment agency will certainly make the process easier, they will interview and screen the candidates before they send the candidates on to you to select the ones you want to interview.
There are costs in dealing with a recruitment agency. You may wish to consider this along with other options that you have. You may want to advertise the vacancy yourself or you may look to your existing network of contacts to recruit somebody.
Taking a new employee from your existing contacts is always going to be easier. You know what their work will be like, you know their personality and whether or not they will fit in to your team.
The choice that you make for the new employee is going to be one that requires a lot of thought. How will you make the choice for the employee that you will take on? There are many things that need to be considered the cost, experience, personality and if they will be a good fit for your company.
Will they fit in to your culture?
A lot of this will come down to the culture in your business. They will need to be able to fit in with the culture that you have inside your office. They need to be able to work in your office environment, be able to get on with you and your employees and the way that you work.
This may be a question that you will need help from one of your employees. They will know better than you if they will fit in to your office, if they will get on with your other members of staff and if they will get on with your customers. Involving your employees will give you a different perspective on your decision. They will be working with them all day, you need them to feel happy with the choice that you make so you may wish to involve one of them in the interview process.
How do you choose the right employee?
The process that we follow is that I would do the initial interview with the candidate and then when we call the candidate for the second interview I would do it along with our office manager. The first interview I would want to make sure that they can actually do the work that we want them to do. If they can’t there is no point going any further.
The second interview would be to make sure that we are both certain that they would fit in to our team and that they would be a good fit for us. This is a joint decision that we make as a group. We make it as a team because I want my employees to be comfortable working with the new staff member.
They need to be able to work with them and they have to fit in. I don’t want to break the culture that we have and happy environment that we work in. it has to work for the business and also our existing employees when we take on a new employee.
What do you do when they start working for you?
You will need to spend time with the new employee to train them, introduce them to you employees and customers. You should have a process that you follow for this. You need to make sure that they can use and are familiar with the software and systems that you use in your business.
Do you have an induction program for new employees or do you have anything in mind that you do when a new employee starts?
When we take on a new employee we have a process.
We make sure that they are set up on all our systems. We use a hosted desktop that is set up and we make sure that they have licences for any software that we use.
We make sure that they can use any of the software we use in our business. If they are lacking anything we make sure that they do the training and certifications.
We then introduce them to our clients to make sure that they are aware that they will be dealing with their work and that they can contact them should they have any queries.
They will then undergo a training period of them actually doing the work under our guidance. We would let them do clients work but it would be reviewed every day and we would have daily meetings with them to discuss any problems that they have. Of course if they have any queries through the day we can help them.
After a few weeks and when we feel that they are ready we would solely reduce the meetings each day until they are part of our weekly huddles on Monday and Wednesdays.
Our approach is very simple and we want to get them up to doing work as soon as we can. We also feel that as soon as they are part of our weekly meetings that they feel more part of our team and that any issues or problems that they have can be dealt with in these meetings.
What to do next?
If you need more help in deciding how and if you can take on a new member of staff please arrange a call and we can discuss your options.