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Employee ChecklistEmployees. Groan! May I suggest, if you are a parent with teenagers or preteens, that you put them to work and mold them into excellent workers with the lure of future co-ownership. If you must hire employees – and to grow beyond a certain point you most certainly will have to – you’ll oftentimes feel like you are indeed raising kids with all the whining, lapses of common sense and deflection of blame. Conversely, since I was once an employee of a janitorial firm, occasionally your employees might think they’re working for an unreasonable, unsmiling, parent, barking commands as if they truly were unruly kids. An employee can make or break you, or at least slow you down to add distance between you and profitability. But, yes, they can also get you into a lot of trouble if theft or damage is involved. The employers dream is to always find someone trustworthy with the same work ethic as themselves, the same concern for the customer’s need as they have, someone they can groom to become a supervisor on up to a Vice-president of Operations But most employees may not have the patience or share the same vision as you. Besides, he or she is only making, at best, ten dollars an hour working for you. Not much incentive to believe that one day they will share a stake in your company. The lower the wage, the higher the turnover in this industry. And with wages gravitating near the bottom, attracting and keeping the best will always remain a challenge. Hiring the best by effective Help Want Ads. Wouldn’t it be great to hire duplicates of yourself, with the same goals and work ethic as you? Dream on. It’s rarely going to happen. All you can hope for is to find a hard worker with learning potential without the attitude. Narrow your search by the way you word your Help Wanted ad. Before you advertise for help, sit down and write a job description. List your goals for the new hire. By spending time working through your thoughts on hired help you are setting yourself up for a great working relationship. If you can clearly articulate the job to all applicants, they will have the opportunity to determine if this is a mutually agreeable fit. Be sure to concentrate on specific job-related descriptions, and not subjective information. In all fairness, what type of manager are you? It's imperative that you're honest about your work style. After all, if you say you want an independent thinker, but really do a lot of 'checking-in', you may end up with an unhappy employee On the other hand, if you hire someone who needs lots of feedback, you need to be sure that you are cut-out for the 'people part' of the management process. Background Checks. Initially, an employee will be working alongside you, usually within viewing distance. Because it is your intention to grow your business, you are grooming each employee to work alone, without your constant supervision. This means that eventually, he or she will be given the keys to the jobs. Can you trust the employee not only to get the job done without your presence, but trust them not to steal from the company they are cleaning. Many larger companies don’t want to gamble and as part of the interview process subject the employee to a background check. If you wish go this route, expect to pay roughly $20.00 - $50.00. Some companies pass the cost onto the employee (a practice I personally don’t like). Careful, there are numerous scam operations posing as Background checkers. Some of the more reputable Background checkering firms are: http://www.efindoutthetruth.com/ http://www.easybackgroundchecks.com/ http://www.amerusa-criminal-records.com/employee_screening/ Employee Manual / Training Program. Try to put your expectations down on paper. The advantage is that an employee can never say that you never told what your rules and cleaning procedures were expected of them. Make sure you have a written outline, whether this be a detailed manual or one-on-one training for a specified period of time -. Your training program should include all aspects of the job you expect your new hire to complete. Many misunderstandings and frustrations occur simply because a new hire didn't understand the expectations of his employer.Establish a time-off policy. Just like you, your employees will need time off whether to recover from illness or simply to recharge. How will you handle these absences? Be sure to include a policy in your Employee manual.Review and disciplinary process. Have a policy in place before you hire your first employee. Whether you need to tackle issues of poor performance, or chronic absenteeism. Questions to address in this process include: How many emergency absences are acceptable in a given time period? How will you deal with customer complaints and concerns? How will you reward outstanding performance? What format will you use to communicate with your team? Insuring additional employees. Whether you hire Employees or Independent Contractors, you may want to consult your provider about any additional costs.Payroll Taxes. You are required by law to withhold state and federal income tax. The necessary federal forms and education can be found at:http://www.irs.gov/businesses/small/Consider hiring independent Contractors. If you’re not too thrilled with the prospect of the extensive supervision and bookkeeping involved with employees, consider hiring independent contractors (also referred to as freelancers). Instead of a wage, they generally are given a percentage of the job, oftentimes 60% or greater depending on the amount of supply they are responsible for. At the end of the year, they must receive from you form 1099 which is a record of the income they received during the recent tax year of service. True, they’re still going to need to know the rules and expectations, let alone have a solid grasp of cleaning, so have a revised handbook for them as you would an employee.
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