So you are thinking of taking on an employee for the first time? Well first things first, there are some big considerations that you have to think of. Drawing up a job description before you start recruiting can be a good idea, so that you know exactly what qualities you are looking for when interviewing candidates.
Salary, holiday and other benefits will also be an important consideration to anyone applying for the job, so expect it to come up in the job interview if you haven’t advertised it already.
Obviously the minimum wage is a figure you can get from the Gov.uk website (8.21 per hour for over 25’s at the time of writing) , but minimum wage isn’t always likely to attract the best talent. It can be a good idea to use bench marked data for your industry in order to decided on salary, holiday, sick pay and parental pay (maternity and paternity). People don’t tend to stay with one employer out of loyalty now, due to low job security, so a nice work environment and realising staff achievement is a must. You can even consider things like flexible working or other employee benefits if appropriate.
When it comes to looking at CV’s and interviewing candidates, don’t forget that under the Equality Act 2010, it is illegal discriminate against any employee or prospective employee on the grounds of sex, gender identity, race, disability, religious beliefs, sexual orientation, age, marital status or pregnancy or maternity status.
Once you have selected your new employee it is time to create a contract of employment, and this is a must as it can be used in case of disagreements later on. If you need HR advice in making the contract, I would reccommend HR Department or Peninsula as we have existing clients that use these two companies and are very happy with them.
Contract done, it is time to make sure you are registered as an employer, that you know your duties in regards to pensions under auto enrolment, and you know what software you will use to run payroll. HMRC offer a free software for companies with less than 10 employees, but it has a lot of limitations, and you can not produce payslips with this, so these would have to be done manually. There are a lot of cheap solutions on the market now to run payroll, and many cloud accounting software have their own version. The other alternative is to contract a Bookkeeper or Accountant to run your payroll on your behalf.
So that is it, make sure your employee is settled in, they know what they are expected to do, and you know what they expect of you, and that’s it, you are an employer.