Your first employee. It’s a milestone for any small business. If you are self-employed in the beginning, hiring and developing employees might not appear to be necessary. However, if you intend to develop or grow your business, you should include hiring at least one employee in your plan. Depending on your business type, the market demands, and your skill set, you might find that you simply cannot do everything on your own. It just might be time to think about hiring your first employee.
An Employee Is An Investment
Hiring an employee is a substantial investment for most companies. Having the right number of employees with the right mix of skills, abilities, and drive, is critical to the success of any company. Hiring employees can add significantly to your overhead. Moreover, the strategic addition of the right employees might not show an immediate financial return, but must be cost-effective for eventual financial success. Unless your need for additional resources is real, you may find yourself facing an uncomfortable downsizing or layoff situation.
Evaluating Your Needs
Hiring permanent employees is one way to fulfill your needs. Consider:
- Reviewing your work processes
- Working with contract freelancers for temporary and/or skill-specific projects
- Hiring temporary workers
If you determine that a permanent employee is the right decision for your business, you’ll need to:
- Determine who you need. The better you understand the position for which you’ll be interviewing, the better you’ll be able to evaluate applications and choose the best candidates.
- Create job descriptions and expectations. Not only will these two tools help you evaluate potential candidates, potential hires will have the information they need to make informed employment decisions. It’s important that both the employer and candidates clearly understand the position and expectations. Otherwise, you might be faced with having hired an employee who isn’t suitable to your position.
Once you’ve made a hiring decision, then it’s time to ensure you have payroll set up, proper tax accounts created, and other legal obligations that need to be met as an employer. Lastly, finding, hiring, training, motivating, coaching, disciplining and developing employees is typically of the highest priority.