Recruiting new staff? Start with a plan

When you are employing staff, there are a few things to consider for your business.

Before you place the job ad, review your current staffing. Is there existing talent and capacity within your team that could cover the role? When you’ve established that your current staff capacity requires you to hire, you’ll want to follow a robust process to ensure you attract quality candidates.

Job description – Be clear, concise and accurate about the role and what experience the candidate will need. Include details such as the start date, hours, and remuneration in order to give your candidate all the information needed to decide to join you.

Business background and history - Remember they will be researching you prior to applying to see if they feel they would fit in and want to work for you. Your website and social media should provide information about who you are and your company values.

Budgeting for employment costs
It’s easy to think about the base hourly rate as the main cost of employing staff, but there are other costs that you need to consider. And these will differ for individual employment contracts.

Make sure you have accounted for:

  • allowances like meals, tools, travel etc.

  • Overheads such as consumables, equipment, uniforms and health and safety equipment

  • training - does the role require specialist training?

  • entitlements such as parental leave, sick leave or overtime rates

  • superannuation contributions - you may consider a contribution over and above the obligatory amount as part of your remuneration negotiations

  • Withholding Tax - you’ll need to collect and pay withholding tax and any legislated statutory deductions on behalf of the government, for example, student loans, child support, tax arrears and others

  • Workers compensation insurance - plus, the provision of a safe and healthy environment for employees and essentials like amenities and breaks during the day.

In summary
It’s an exciting time when your business growth provides the opportunity to add new talent to the team.

Although there is a lot to consider when employing new staff, success is in the planning. We can assist with your budget and compliance obligations before you grow the team. Let's make the employment process easy. Give us a call.