May 17, 2012

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Hiring Costs

The hiring of new employees is inevitable in any business.  Companies open new divisions or are expanding and require more manpower.  A new company needs lots of help in its infancy, and a complete staff may need to be hired.  When making the all important decisions of who will be working for your company, there are many factors to keep in mind.  While you are concentrating on hiring intelligent, loyal, hard-working people to staff your business, you must also take into consideration the cost of hiring extra people.

First and foremost is the salary.  The salary you offer new employees should be commensurate with the experience you require, as well as the experience the employee has.  If you are hiring management, the expense will be even higher.  The old saying, “You get what you pay for” is very true.  If you want to attract highly qualified individuals, you must be willing to meet their salary demands.  You do not always have the luxury of hiring someone on the ground floor so that they can work their way up, gaining the necessary experience along the way.

Another expense to be considered in your hiring costs is the benefit package.  In today’s economy the benefit package can be the big attraction.  While many positions can garner around the same salary from business to business, the benefit package can differ dramatically.  By offering more benefits, or better benefits, you may attract the cream of the crop.  Just remember to budget for those benefits.

You may need to consider the additional cost of training.  New employees need to learn the ropes.  If trained properly the first time, you will save money in the long run.  More employees mean more computers, more work stations, maybe even more bathrooms or a bigger break room.   Remember to keep all of these costs in mind when considering expanding or taking on more employees.

Filed Under: Hiring Tagged With:

Employee Morale

Every good business is a good business because of the people who worked to make it that, from the CEO of the company, down to the janitor who keeps the business looking clean and neat.  Every good boss knows this.  Keeping the employees happy has never been more important.  Disgruntled employees can make for a difficult work place.  On the other hand, happy employees keep a work place happy, and happy work places are considerably more productive than unhappy work places.  During fat times, when the money is flowing it is easy to keep the employees happy.  Employees who are appreciated with monthly or quarterly production bonuses, delivered lunches, or some extra time off feel appreciated.  When an employee feels appreciated, he is more likely to keep production up and the cash flow continues.

It is difficult during a recession to keep the bonuses and free lunches coming.  This may be one of the first things that needs to be trimmed from your budget.  If this is the case, make sure that management are not still continuing to collect fat bonuses while the lesser employees are working hard and not seeing the bonuses.  Let your employees know that you appreciate everything they are doing to keep the business going strong during a recession.  Make sure that management and higher paid employees are proportionately taking the same cuts.  It is not good for the employees to see management padding the expense accounts with lavish lunches and overnight trips to nowhere.  Let your management team know that you appreciate them as well, and that everyone has to give a little across the board.

Find some inexpensive ways to let the employees know that they are appreciated.  Have contests with prizes for good production, positive attitudes or other employee positive situations.  Keep the communication open, giving everyone the opportunity to air grievance, as well as share ideas on how to make it through the recession.

Filed Under: Employee Relationships Tagged With: ,

When To Call For Outside Help

You have a business.  You have a job to do.  You have hired employees who know how to do the work you want.  You have management teams to help the employees do what they are trained to do.  In today’s corporate world, every job in every business has become a specialized field.  You may have a business that retains specialists in many different fields within your company.  When you need that particular area of expertise, you have someone immediately available you can call on for help to get the job done.

Occasionally, more so in certain businesses, you need to call on someone outside of your company for help.  You need to contract someone to come in and perform a service within your business.  Of course, looking within your company is the best way to get things done for your business.  If you have an employee with the expertise that you require, obviously that is the most economical route as well.  However, each individual situation must be looked at to see if the best way is to contract the work out.  The most obvious example would be the construction business.  Not all construction businesses have electricians, plumbers and plasterers on their payroll.   They need to call the experts in these fields, and they pay these experts with the money they have budgeted for that particular service.

You may have an office full of computers and a staff that is well versed in working with them.  However, if a new program is instituted that will help your business, you may have to call in an expert trained in installing and using that program to train your employees.  It may be something your employees can maintain once they know how everything works.

Calling in a contractor when needed is a good way to make sure you have done your job to the best of your ability.

Filed Under: Business Tagged With:

The Management Team

Your business is growing in leaps and bounds.  You need more employees, and one person cannot oversee all of the aspects of your business.  It is time to hire a competent management team.  Obviously you want your high level employees to be completely knowledgeable of your business, as well as be professionals and work well with people and prospective clients.  How will you assemble the perfect management team?

Obviously the first step is to decide exactly how many people you need in management.  Too many chiefs and not enough Indians can have an adverse effect on your business.  Decide how you are going to divide your company responsibilities.  You may need a general manager, someone whom all the department managers can report to.  Hiring a general manager can take a lot of the day to day burden off of you.  This will free up your time so that you can devote your time to keeping in touch with your clients, and basically overseeing your business.  It can be difficult to let go of the reins, but it will be worth it.

Decide exactly how you want to divide up the responsibility.  Perhaps you can create your management team from your employees.  You obviously already trust these people, and they would not be with your company if they were not knowledgeable of the way you want things to be run.  You may need to hire someone outside of the company in order to find the person with the right qualifications to handle groups of your employees in the right way.

The main thing is this is your business.  You get to decide how things are done.  You get to personally choose people to work for your company, from the highest of management to the ground floor entry employee.  You care about your business, and with the right management team, your employees will see that you care and your business will flourish.

Filed Under: Business, Human Resources Tagged With: ,

Perks In A Precarious Economy

Every good boss knows keeping the employees happy can only help your business.  Management is more than aware that unhappy employees do not produce to their potential, and can make the work place a “not so pleasant” place to spend your day.  The employee/management relationship can be one of the best, if management knows what they are doing.  It is difficult to hand out cash bonuses and free lunches in an economy that may not allow it.  You may be working on a shoestring budget, and monetary bonuses are few and far between.

“Necessity is the mother of invention.”  We are in a time where management needs to get creative and find ways to keep the employees happy.  There are lots of little ways to say thank you to the people who make your business run more smoothly.  You should keep in mind that your business would not be where it is if every employee were a guy in a suit, sitting in a meeting, talking about how to make the business more successful.  Without the little guy, the worker bee if you will, your business would not be where it is.  While management is important, and a good management team will keep your employees, as well as the higher ups happy, bonuses and “thank-you” perks should be fair across the board.

If your business is one in which everyone needs to look professional every day, maybe you could allow a “dress-down” day for a profitable week.  Everyone can wear casual clothes, with some restrictions.  If your employees all work on computers, perhaps a wrist rest or new quality headphones for those who are in compliance and going the extra mile.  Of course cash bonuses are always welcome, and they should be awarded when your employees cause your company to have a successful quarter, there are lots of small ways to say thank you, and let your employees know you appreciate what they do.

Filed Under: Business, Human Resources Tagged With: , ,

Dealing with an Employee Resigning

As the owner of a business, one thing you will always have to be ready for is the resignation of an employee, and this includes both long term and short term employees as well. Be it that the employee no longer needs the job, has found another job, is moving, or any of the other many reasons there could be, resignation is something that *will* happen and there is no real way for you to avoid it as a business owner . So when it does, how will you handle it? Do you announce the employees resignation? If so, who do you announce it to? When do you make this announcement? What legal aspects are there with an employee’s resignation? These are just a few of the many things to consider.

Dealing with an Employee Resigning

First and foremost, when an employee comes to you and informs you of his or her resignation, you are going to want to ask for the employee to give you an official written letter of resignation with the final date of employment. This is generally going to be able to protect you from fraudulent unemployment claims, among other things.

Next up is whether or not you are going to allow the employee to complete their work term, or dismiss them immediately. If the employee is valued and/or trusted, then you can benefit greatly by keeping them for the term. You can have them finish up any open projects, document and detail steps and processes for any projects that can’t be wrapped up, and possibly even help to transition another employee into those projects if the original employee cannot reasonably complete them. If the employee is not valued or simply is not needed to finish out the term, then you should politely inform them that they will be paid for the remainder of the time until termination, and that their services are no longer needed.

Filed Under: Business, Employee Relationships, Human Resources Tagged With: , ,

Human Resources: What is Human Resources?

Human Resources: What is Human Resources?

A very common question among business owners and workers relates to what human resources is, and what the purpose of such a position or such a department could possibly be. Human resources is described as the people that operate and staff an organization rather than the people that handle the material or financial resources of the organization. In other words, Human Resources is the department that handles the people aspects of the organization, including the hiring, the firing, the benefits, the vacations, promotions, salaries, resignations and all other aspects of the company and its functions that relate to the employees, workers, contractors and other human individuals.

In some businesses, human resources is essentially a single person that handles all of these basic tasks on a day to day basis. In other larger companies, human resources can be an entire department of people, and there may be a person for each of the different roles. Some companies rely heavily on human resources software, which juggles a lot of the human resources tasks automatically, like payroll, paid time off and other benefits so that the human resources people do not have as much on their plates.

As a business owner, it is essentially up to you to decide how you will handle your human resources tasks. You might hire a single person to handle the bulk of your human resources needs, or you may hire several people and give each one a set list of tasks that they are responsible for. Some businesses rely on human resources software suites while others do much of their human resources work by hand. Ultimately, you need to find the system or setup that is best going to meet your needs in order to truly thrive as a company and to meet the basic needs of your employees on a day to day basis.

Filed Under: Business, Human Resources Tagged With: , ,

Human Resources: Current Compensation Thinking

Human Resources: Current Compensation Thinking

Organizations need to be able to develop a philosophy for compensation and a direction in writing that everyone in the management agrees to. A company that is entrepreneurial and market-driven should have a compensation philosophy that includes a method allowing the business to group similar jobs for broad banding principles. This is because there are only limited opportunities for promotion. This should include a measurement system that is responsible in the ways that it awards variable pay. It is recommended that you put less emphasis on the increase of base pay and place more emphasis on the distribution of gains through bonuses rewarding the actual attainment of goals.

Goal attainments need to awarded not only for individual goal achievement, but also organizational goal achievement. It is believed that this will foster a feeling of teamwork and will eliminate the “lone ranger” type of mentality in workers. The real achievement of goals should b attached to deliverables or outcomes that can be measured and should offer a shared image of what true success looks like. This has nothing to do with simply checking things off of a to do list. As the cost associated with benefits has seen increases, the place for benefits within a total package for compensation has also increased in importance. Shifting costs for some of the benefits to the employees themselves should only be a worst case scenario, and should not be your primary plan when it comes to compensating your employees for their hard work.

Another option that is available to your company is rewards for quality of work life. This is a compensation strategy that you may want to look at, as more and more companies are trending toward it and similar compensation strategies for learning how to garner better, higher quality workers.

Filed Under: Business, Human Resources Tagged With: , , ,

Investigating HR Issues: The Complaining Employee

Investigating HR Issues: The Complaining Employee

If an employee brings up a human resources issue regarding another employee, the human resources department or manager in the company should reassure them that the right actions will be taken accordingly. You should tell the employee that the company is absolutely committed to complying with the law and all of its policies, and that the company will conduct a thorough investigation in order to determine whether or not inappropriate conduct has actually occurred. If improper conduct has in fact occurred, then the conduct is going to be stopped properly, and an appropriate corrective action is going to be taken.

You are going to want to make sure that the complaining employee knows that the human resources interview is designed to obtain a complete and thorough understanding of the situation that has occurred as well as to identify any and all witnesses and evidence that may have some knowledge of whatever incident has occurred. Make sure that the complaining employee knows that his or her name will only be used in the investigative process if absolutely necessary.

It is also important for you to make sure that the employee knows that there will not be any retaliation against him or her for making a complaint in good faith. If you believe that retaliation has occurred or that it may be occurring, then you need to notify management immediately. Otherwise, make sure that the matter is being kept confidential so that the investigation’s integrity is maintained from beginning to end.

Depending on what the nature of the complaint is, the employer may need to consider his or her options for separating the accused employee and the complaining employee, at least during the duration of the human resources investigation. The investigation needs to be kept quiet and confidential until both parties are talked to, and a conclusion is arrived at.

Filed Under: Employee Relationships, Human Resources Tagged With: , , ,

Investigating HR Issues: The Accused Employee

Investigating HR Issues: The Accused Employee

If an employee brings up a human resources issue regarding another employee, the human resources department or manager in the company should reassure them that the right actions will be taken accordingly. What you tell the accused employee is going to differ from what you tell the complaining employee. You should tell the accused employee that you are investigating a complaint relating to alleged inappropriate conduct and that he or she is involved. Informed the respondent for each allegation using sufficient enough detail that they can make a full response.

Make sure that the accused employee understands that the purpose behind the interview is to obtain a complete, accurate and thorough understanding of the situation that has occurred, as well as to identify any and all witnesses or evidence that may shed some light on the situation at hand. Make sure that you are keeping the matter entirely confidential in order to protect the integrity of the entire investigation from the beginning to the end.

Keep in mind that it is entirely against the law and against most internal policies for people to retaliate against another employee when they have filed a complaint against another employee, or when they have participated in an investigation regarding a complaint. Make sure that the accused employee is aware of the company’s policies in terms of retaliation to prevent any retaliation from occurring. Notify the management or someone higher up in human resources if you believe that retaliation may already have occurred or that it may be occurring to prevent the situation from becoming more severe.

Complaints that come to human resources are serious business, and so you should take them as seriously as humanly possible. Make sure that you keep the situation completely confidential until the point where the investigation has completed.

Filed Under: Employee Relationships, Human Resources Tagged With: , , ,
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