Small businesses rely on their employees to provide excellent customer service and ensure that all the business’s operations run smoothly. Hiring the right employees boosts your company’s productivity and profitability, while hiring the wrong employees can have the opposite effect. For this reason, it is important for business owners and human resources professionals to take the hiring process seriously. You’re not just adding a cost to your payroll; you are potentially adding an asset to your organization. To assist you, we’ve listed a few common pitfalls in the hiring process.
It is a very competitive labour market. The days of people being happy just to have a job are long gone as employees strive for a positive work-life balance. As an employer, you want to structure a job opportunity around things that will make your company appeal to a prospective employee. Competitive wages are always important. But so are other things like comprehensive employee benefits, including employee benefits administration, time-off allowances, on-call expectations, remote work opportunities, advancement, skills/trade acquisition, and predetermined working hours.
Be creative. There are payroll service providers who can economically offer and manage a wide array of employee benefits for small businesses, such as RRSP plans, workers’ compensation, health care, and more, alongside essential employee benefits administration and HR tools. If you don’t attract the right person for the job, you will end up dealing with high employee turnover.
When you are operating a small business with limited resources, it may be tempting to settle for the first job candidate you find who meets your basic qualifications. That would allow you to focus on your other responsibilities and fill any open positions as quickly as possible. However, if you don’t cast a wide net when looking for new employees, you may not find the best person for the job.
Instead of hiring quickly, give candidates from multiple sources a chance to apply and interview. Advertise open positions in as many ways as possible, including on social media, online employment directories, at your workplace, and by word-of-mouth. Develop a streamlined screening and interview process to find the candidate that will be most beneficial to your small business.
Small business owners and human resources personnel are already working hard to manage their everyday responsibilities. Taking on the additional tasks of screening job candidates and conducting interviews can be taxing. However, because the employees you hire impact your business in so many ways, it is still important to be very thorough in the hiring process.
Don’t take what you learn in the interview as fact without following up. Check with candidates’ references, review information available on social media, and make sure that the employee has not misled you. If you find anything questionable on social media or any other location, give the candidate a chance to explain before you draw conclusions.
In some cases, you may find that an individual is well suited for the position but simply does not fit in with the company’s other employees. Unfortunately, if you hire this person anyway, he or she is likely to be unhappy and less productive than another candidate may have been.
Someone who doesn’t fit well within the company’s culture or work environment may also become disruptive to other employees, leading to additional problems. This is particularly true for small businesses, as employees are often required to work closely together. When interviewing job candidates, their qualifications and experience are obviously very important considerations. But how they fit into your organization from a group dynamic is also important.
A new employee’s wages are only part of the financial obligation a business owner needs to consider when hiring. Vacation pay must also be accrued and paid out to your employee. In addition to employee compensation and benefit costs, the employer is also responsible for calculating and remitting other things like payroll tax, workers compensation and employment insurance. A common mistake some small business owners make is to use these funds as part of their operational cashflow and then default when the date arrives for remittance. The government and other agencies consider these withholdings and contributions to be their money. Therefore, in addition to the outstanding original withholdings, the employer may be assigned penalty and interest costs. Within a short period of time the employer can find themselves unable to recover, so staying current with payroll tax remittance is very important.
Payroll expenditure plays a big part in any company’s bottom line but hiring correctly in the first place can help minimize those costs in the long run. Choosing the best payroll services for small businesses is crucial, especially those offering direct deposit and unlimited payroll runs, which significantly enhance the efficiency of payroll operations. Online portals and HR software play vital roles in streamlining both payroll and HR tasks, making managing payroll a critical aspect of financial management for small businesses. The convenience of being able to pay employees efficiently through modern payroll processing systems cannot be overstated.
Utilizing a payroll service provider simplifies payroll taxes and the processing of payroll tasks, ensuring compliance and accuracy. These are just a few of the mistakes you should avoid when hiring new employees. For more hiring tips, information on our payroll services, or other small business advice, please contact your nearest Padgett office today.
