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There are many milestones in business life. Some are inevitable as you expend operations and appeal to a growing audience. Some, however, are not. For instance, the desire to hire a new employee to fulfill vital functions may be a very wise idea, but isn’t always essential in a world of remote work, subcontractors, outsourced services, and freelancers.

For this reason, bringing a staff member into your firm, especially as your first employee, will redefine and reshape the culture and priorities of your business. For this reason, it’s good to hire on the most solid foundation you can, limiting the chance for mistakes, and reflecting on what you need in an employee.

This is a big ask, especially when you’re trying to run an actual business yourself, at this point most likely fulfilling many of the functions an employee could (and should one day) help you with.

In this post, we’ll discuss how to correctly bring your first staff member into your small firm:

Clearly Define Every Aspect Of The Role

It’s essential to properly define what you want in an employee, what vital functions they’ll serve and how they can add to your business, not simply work for it. This might sound simple on the face of it, but “I want an in-house accountant” should always give way to “who will perform X and Y duties, and will settle within this defined role.”

This way, you can better communicate what the job is, what you’re looking for, what experience you need for them to work well, and what kind of person you’re looking for anyway. For instance, someone who might be hiring for a business concerned with culture and heritage might look to those with academic qualifications in this field, or time worked at a museum.

Clearly defining every aspect of this role genuinely matters, if only for your own business planning.

Use Effective, Uniform Hiring Networks

If you can, it’s important to make sure you hire from the most accessible platforms where you’ll be gaining the widest set of prospective candidates. In some cases, that might even mean hiring a graduate, but websites like Indeed or Monster can also be a worthwhile place to start.

This way, you can make sure the talent you need is most likely to see your business considerations. You’ll also be able to stipulate essential elements of their remuneration and benefits, ensuring you glean the best, most motivated candidates for the role.

In some cases, you can even use professional recruitment services to headhunt a specialist. This could be essential if you need a practiced, qualified professional, such as those with a specific academic understanding of STEM subjects. In other words, to get the best result here, you need to know where to look.

Create A Training & Onboarding Plan

It’s important to create a training and onboarding plan as and when needed. This can help you better enroll your staff member into your rolling workplace effort, ensuring they understand your needs and ask any questions, no matter how silly, they need to..

Your onboarding plan can also include the infrastructure of setting them up for work at your firm, such as making them a user account on your system, showing them the overall software suite you use, cybersecurity measures, and any e-learning course modules you’re enrolled into in order to train staff correctly.

Of course, expect your new hire to make mistakes or errors at this time. That’s good, it’s how they learn, and the more they understand now, the less small issues will bite or cause problems over time.

Solidify Your Payroll Measures

Of course, it’s essential to ensure you have employee numbers and understand the federal tax ID number application process, this will enable you to pay taxes on your employees and also make sure your accounting and bookkeeping meets all crucial compliance standards.

This can help with the larger measure of integrating their payroll and the salary standards of your firm, signing them up for benefits programs, and making sure their payments come in at the right time on the right date.

This way, you can make certain that the most essential motivation keeping your staff at your firm is not only reliable, but part of your operational fabric. Unfortunately, some smaller firms can consider this an optional objective, or prove so in their actions. This way, you never need to suffer such a reputational knock.

With this advice, you’re sure to bring your first staff member into your small firm, ready, willing and able to help.