No matter what industry you are in, the nature of your operations, if you employ staff then they play a key part in helping you realise the vision set for your business. As a result, they should be right up there as one of your top priorities.

Employees, whether they’re full time or on a part-time contract, are one of your greatest assets. So you need to take responsibility for ensuring they feel valued and motivated. To make sure they have dreams and aspirations as big as yours. The more they fell motivated and inspired to work hard, to grow and develop, the greater the potential they have for adding value to your business.

As a business owner, it is important to understand the following fundamentals when it comes to your employees. At the very least so you know when you need to seek further help and advice from an external specialist:

● Employee rights
● Pensions
● Policies
● Whistleblowing
● Development and Training
● Payroll
● Recruitment
● Redundancy

Performance management is key to building a thriving business with hardworking and motivated employees. Helping improve and develop your employees while also monitoring individuals who’s performance is, for some reason, not up to scratch.

So, if you’re thinking about how to manage performance and increase employee motivation, you could consider implementing some of the following:

● Quarterly, half-yearly, or annual performance reviews for every employee
● Peer reviews to make sure your employees are performing well within their team
● Setting expectations or targets to be completed by a specific deadline

Employee development is important not only for their personal growth but also for growing your business.

If you understand how to develop your employees and provide them with access to more opportunities, training courses, and qualifications, they’re more likely to be engaged and to be more productive.

Employee development can be achieved through many different disciplines. These are just a few examples to think about:

● Increased training opportunities
● Mentoring and one-on-one regular reviews
● Personalised career development plans
● Team building activities

It’s important to recognise and reward your employees’ contribution, commitment and dedication.

Knowing when and how best to reward your employees is important. The right rewards should help improve employee satisfaction and motivation. You might decide to reward the whole business, particular teams, or individuals who have excelled in their job.

There are many ways to reward employees for exceptional work, including:

● Regular and consistent feedback
● Acknowledgment in an email, newsletter, or online channel to showcase their achievement to the rest of the company
● A pay rise through an appropriate pay structure
● Commissions
● Performance related bonus
● Employee share option schemes
● Employee benefits, such as private health insurance

Employee engagement is key to maintaining a positive culture and a thriving workplace. If the nature of the work is overly repetitive, unnecessarily complicated, or often disrupted due to system issues, you risk your employees becoming disengaged. Productive may drop, and individuals may start looking for employment elsewhere.

. Your business could be missing out on the full potential of the work you know they’re capable of.

Engagement can look different for every business, but if you’re thinking about new ways to engage your employees, consider the following options:

● Send out regular company updates
● Frequently ask for opinions and feedback
● Show you’re engaged with them, as much as you want them to be engaged with the business
● Reward individuals for doing a great job
● Publicise and celebrate the kind of performance and behaviour that you wish to see from your employees

As much as your employee might love their job and your business, they still want to be paid the correct amount, on time and obeying UK payroll laws.

If you don’t understand how to pay employees correctly, and have experienced problems and at times have got it wrong, that’s not good. Your employees are people, they have commitments outside of work and rely on the money from your business to pay their bills, do their shopping and live their best lives.

Managing payroll can be fiddly, time consuming and confusing. Particularly if your business has different pay rates and salaries. Either by outsourcing your payroll or investing in the right software and skills, you can help avoid your business running into problems when it comes to payday. Mistakes being costly both in terms of employee satisfaction and the risk of falling foul of the various laws and regulations that govern employees pay and payroll taxes.

If you operate a workplace for your employees, you also need to understand how to support employees in the workplace. If you have a large number of employees, you may want to consider recruiting a dedicated in-house manager. Or use an external expert to look after things such as:

As you grow your business you may well need to expand your workforce. This will be an exciting time for your business because you’ll be looking to hire like-minded people whose values align with your business values. It’s a big investment in terms of time and money. And, therefore, important to get it right.

You’ll want to find and hire individuals who are not only great at their job, but also fit in well with other team members and the culture of the business. Employment costs are often one a business’ greatest expenses, and if not managed well can lead to costly mistakes being made.

As your business starts to grow, it’s a good idea to invest in an Human Resources team who understand how to find and recruit new employees and look after existing ones already in the business. Whether that’s full time within the business, or via trusted third party providers who you go to for expertise and help. Your Human Resources team will be responsible for the things such as:

● Screening, interviewing, and recruiting employees
● Onboarding new employees and making sure they settle into the business
● Handling employee benefits
● Managing payroll
● Keeping up to date with employment law and employee rights

Your business needs to be prepared and ready to deal with any HR issues which occur. These could include:

● Discrimination in the workplace
● Unfair dismissal claims where ex-employees believe they’ve been fired without proper cause
● Disciplinary actions if an employee breaks procedures or isn’t performing well enough
● Absenteeism, excessive sick days and absence
● Whistleblowing
● Employee retention