There may come a time during your business journey that you go from being an one person operation and take the step to becoming an employer. It doesn’t matter if you are hiring one person, ten, twenty or more, you now have responsibilities to those employees that you need to be aware of. There is a lot to it, but I wanted to highlight to you four of the main ones to help you on your way to making that transition to becoming an employer.

 

Duty of care

As soon as that step has been talking and someone has become an employee of your business, you then now have a duty of care to ensure that they are safe and secure on the workplace and during working hours. It can be simple things such as ensuring they have a decent area to work in and perform their duties, temperature being right and a facility to make drinks and go to the restroom. You also need to think about the bigger things such as security and protection against things like fire. This is when a fire sensor and security system could do this for you with ease. Having a health and safety policy in place should ensure that you risk assess and cover the bases of duty of care.

 

Contract of employment

One thing you have to get right from the word go is the contract of employment. This is your agreement between you as the employer and them as the employee. It outlines everything you have discussed, from employee benefits and entitlements to duties and what you expect of them. Having a signed contract from you and them binds you together and also covers you against malpractice and wrong doing. Meaning that should there ever be a breach of contract you are covered to take all necessary action. But again as an employee they also have the power to take control should you breach their contract of employment. l

 

Rest periods

It can be hard to not cross any lines when you become an employer. One of them might be the level of work that you expect. However, you have a responsibility to enable an employee to take a suitable amount of rest throughout the day which can mean breaks away from their desk, their duties and the computer screen. You may work every hour, but you can’t expect your employees to do the same. Ensuring you give them ample time to rest as well as suitable time to complete work deadlines will ensure that you are playing by the rules

 

The pay

Finally, you have the responsibility of ensuring that your employees get paid on time and directly. Including any promised commissions or bonuses that from part of their contract and agreed targets. Of course, pay can often be seen as the biggest incentive to work on the first place, so you need to ensure you get this right first time.

 

I hope that these tips help you when it comes to hiring staff and becoming an employer.