HIRING AND FIRING
The basics of employing staff..
Your people are the face of your business. Good people can help you lift your business to the next level. But sometimes they are the stuff that keeps many business owners awake at night. In this article we’ll give you our top tips for how to get those good staff and what to do if by chance you don’t.
Let’s start at the beginning with the hire. Once you get this right the rest should fall into place or at least that’s the theory!
Our top 4 tips for hiring:
1. KNOW WHAT YOU WANT
This means understanding your business and the type of person you want in each role. Start with defining the values of your business that all employees will need. This could be qualities such as team work or accountability.
Next, think about the role in detail; as an example, it would be important for a customer service operator to be a good communicator, confident and friendly whereas as a kitchen hand would need good attention to detail and to be unphased by repetitive tasks. Think about the absolute bare minimum you need in qualifications and/ or experience. Our top tip would be to hire the person with the right qualities and then train or teach them the skills they need.
2. DO IT RIGHT
Ensure your contracts/employee agreements are compliant and use them! We know it’s
nice to hire a friend or their children but doing it legally will save confusion, heartache and friendships if it all goes wrong at the end of the day.
Know the Modern Award that covers your staff and the applicable pay rates. The Fair Work Ombudsman site www.fairwork.gov.au can assist you with this or hire a HR consultant to take the hard work out of it.
3. HAVE A RECRUITMENT PROCESS
Think about the steps you need to go through. A typical process involves placing an advertisement, shortlisting, phone or video interview followed by a group or personal interview. And most importantly don’t forget to referee check! Our top tip: ask a referee if they would hire the person again.
4. INDUCT NEW STAFF
Again, it’s about the processes, make sure everyone is on the same page regarding your values, workplace health and safety, bullying and harassment and your day to day work instructions. This is particularly important if you are hiring young people who have never held a job before – they don’t know what they don’t know and that could cost you and your business.
Induction should include some initial “on the job” training. If you’re not conducting this yourself make sure you have a written process/checklist for your managers to follow and employees to sign off that they have received the training.
If you follow our tips above on hiring hopefully you won’t need these next tips. But just in case you need to follow a disciplinary process, here’s what you need to do to ensure it’s fair.
1. KNOW THE RULES
Understand the Small Business Fair Dismissal Code (you can find this on the Fair Work Ombudsman website) or contract HR consultants to do this for you.
2. MAKE SURE EVERYONE KNOWS
YOUR RULES
Have processes and policies in place and ensure EVERYONE from your managers who are implementing them to your most junior employees know and can access them. Before embarking on any performance management or disciplinary policy refer to your policies. Many small businesses have tripped themselves up at the Fair Work Commission by failing to follow their own policies and processes.
3. DON’T LET ISSUES FESTER
Have the difficult conversations early before they become a major issue. Don’t do this in front of other employees or by group message. Take an employee aside and talk to them. And remember this is a two-way conversation. If you find it hard to know where to begin start by asking how your team member feels they are going and what you could do to help.
Remember to document all your conversations. And to keep these locked away where other employees can’t access them. If you do end up terminating an employee, you will need to show you have followed a fair process.
4. MEET YOUR OBLIGATIONS FAIRLY
Ending someone’s employment is never an easy decision and can be particularly hard in a small business where employees can feel like family. Sometimes the best you can do for that employee and your remaining team is to let that person go. But you can do it fairly by paying notice and entitlements promptly.
And never respond to a disgruntled ex-employee with anger. You are the boss and your team takes their cues from you. Tegan Rose & Lee-Anne Hunt, HR Dept Ringwood, have over 20 years’ experience in HR, change, learning and development and communications for small to large organisations, nationally and internationally. They are extremely passionate about supporting businesses to grow and thrive through good people practices.