In order to grow your business in the next year, you may need a spare pair of hands. But the idea of hiring someone can be intimidating, especially if you’ve been running your business on your own for a while. You’re not just handing off responsibility for your business — you’re also taking responsibility for tasks like making sure your employee gets paid on a regular basis. These questions will help you make sure that you cover all your bases before you start interviewing applicants.
- How are you going to handle payroll and other human resources tasks? As an entrepreneur, your time is at a premium. Making sure administrative tasks are completed may not be your highest priority — in fact, that may explain why you’re hiring someone. There are a variety of options for payroll, like having your CPA handle it or using a payroll service. You may not be offering benefits to your employees, but you’re still required to handle payroll taxes and Social Security.
- What will your employee do? You may have a general job description in mind, but it’s worth going through and figuring out the tasks you would assign your new hire, as well as how long they’ll take. You may find that you need a part-time employee, rather than a full-time worker, or you may find that you actually have a series of projects in mind, rather than on-going responsibilities. In that case, bringing in a contractor, a temp or a freelancer on an as-needed basis may be a better deal for you.
- How do you plan to communicate with your employee? There are a number of communication issues that can come up when you add a new member to your team. If you’re out of the office on a regular basis, it’s best to address that fact before you actually hire someone who you need to train and assign tasks to. If you have a partner in your business or another employee in place, it’s also important to address what the chain of command looks like in your business.
- How will you reward your employee? You can get a decent idea of what’s considered market rates for the type of employee you need by looking at help wanted ads. But you may not be able to offer the type of benefits that big corporations can. While you don’t have to offer much beyond a pay check upfront, it’s worth considering in advance what you’re willing to negotiate and whether you want to do something like get health insurance for your employee down the road.
- Have you read up on the process of hiring a new employee? There is plenty of bureaucracy that goes along with hiring your first employee, from getting workers’ compensation insurance, registering with your state’s new hire reporting program and verifying employees’ eligibility to work. Depending on the state your business operates in, there may be additional legal steps required by law before you can actually hire your first employee.
