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When starting a business, the legalities and practicalities of a business are often overlooked in favour of developing products and services, and deciding how to attract clients. However, if the legal aspects of the business aren’t set up optimally at the start, they can cause real problems further down the line. Think of it as building your business on a foundation of sand. However, getting overly distracted with legalities before you’ve even made a single sale on the other hand may mean you don’t start growing your business at all. So balance is required.
With all that in mind, let’s run through some ways you can help ensure legal issues with recruiting and keeping employees are avoided before they even begin.
Bringing People on Board the Right Way
A contract of employment is 100% necessary. You can try to cut corners here if you choose, but if that employee becomes disgruntled for any reason, you could end up in court with nothing to back you up. Plus of course, not having a contract may make the employee feel far more insecure about the role and therefore perhaps far less likely to take on the job.
So an employment contract should specify such things as hours of work, salary, holidays, how sick leave is handled, and other aspects of day to day working life.
Be Clear About Your Policies
Without clear (and legal) policies, you’ll be running vital aspects of your business by the seat of your pants! It’s understandable with a startup business that things get a little crazy and that growing the business comes before making sure all your t’s are crossed and i’s are dotted, but you need some sort of structure in place when making employee decisions, otherwise inconsistent policies can cause problems and even resentment with employees.
And certainly consider HR software like http://www.xcdhr.com/ to make many aspects of this work much easier, and to help take much of the guess work out of the process.
Decide How and When to Train Your Staff
You could just let your staff members figure things out 100% on the job, but more structured training can pass along company culture, builds rapport between employees, makes your employees more valuable to you, and makes them feel appreciated and positive about the work they’re doing.
Clear Compensation Policies
You may well want to make very clear exactly what compensation the employee receives, including mentioning whether overtime is paid or not, perhaps even structuring pay rises. But one thing that’s very important is if there’s shares involved, specifying exactly how their value is calculated and how they can be sold.
If the business is publicly traded, the valuing of shares is straightforward and apart from golden handcuffs or any restrictions like that, selling them is easy. But with a private business, valuing those shares, and who they’re sold to, can complicate things significantly, so clearly documenting all this is highly beneficial.
So this is a brief overview of vital things to keep in mind when starting a new business and how to lay the ground work when it comes to successfully hiring and managing staff.
