HR and Staff Management

What are employee benefits?

Employee benefits are products, services and resources employers give their employees.

Having seen businesses continue to succeed while their employees work from home during the coronavirus pandemic, it’s no surprise that a number of companies plan to keep offering the option of remote working. In fact, according to a Gartner Inc survey, 82% of business leaders plan to allow their staff to work remotely some of the time.

Reopening your business or bringing additional staff back to the office is a positive step. However, there are also anxieties around keeping everyone safe – your staff and also anyone else visiting your premises. Looking ahead how will you be able to judge when your risks in relation to Covid-19 increase, and you need to do something different? Will you be able to identify a new source of infection in good time? One way to help with all of this is to introduce regular and methodical testing.

When you are starting out as an entrepreneur, your dream is to grow your business into something much bigger. But once you turn this dream into reality, you should now plan on bringing new talents on board to ease pressure on your current workforce. This requires detailed planning and thorough vetting to ensure you add the right people to your time.

Managing a remote team, while extremely rewarding can come with its own set of challenges. The good news, however, is that with the right tips on how to organise and manage your remote team, you can conquer the problems you might face and create a high-performing remote team.

If your small business is expanding and you have a small team working for you then you might consider hiring an IT Support professional. As your business and team grow so will the technology involved, so it might be a good idea to either train your staff with basic knowledge of IT support or hire IT support staff. A go-to tech person can help with the day to day issues which may disrupt the workflow and be detrimental to the productivity of the workplace.

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Readers question:  I am one of two company directors in an ltd company. My partner in business has been told by her midwife that she is entitled to 90% of her salary while on maternity leave. For us to pay her, we would need to employ another person to do her job, this would put the business in financial difficulty. Is this the case?

Remote working has in the recent past gained momentum among employers, more so for the benefits, it gives to a business. Besides reducing office expenses, it allows the employer to engage the right people regardless of where they are. However, these people can easily become demotivated because they work with all the distractions that come with working from home.

April is the time when many businesses will take stock of the year just gone, whilst planning for the quarters ahead, however, the impact caused by the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic may loom heavily over these plans.  Many businesses are attempting to balance outgoings and ensure cashflow remains intact for the next few months, which, for many, could bring a downturn in income.  To mitigate the deepening economic and social impact, the UK Government has introduced a package of support to help both employers and employees through the crisis.

We made the decision to get our whole team working remotely well ahead of the Government’s advice to take this step. We called a morning meeting on 10^th March and had transitioned to remote working by the time everyone left that day.

Moving people to remote working can be stressful at the best of times. COVID-19 adds an extra dimension. For this reason, it is very important that business owners consider the impact on the mental wellbeing of their team as they adjust to the necessary changes.

You may be just getting started with your business and need the right skills to help it grow. Or, maybe you have seed funding and need to scale your team quickly? 

For small businesses running payroll can be a headache and fear of making mistakes means it can be very stressful. Unfortunately, Payroll is difficult, and errors can be expensive. This is why there is a professional body for payroll professionals (CIPP) which has exams which are tough to pass.

In October of last year, the University of Bristol released a report that revealed some rather sobering statistics. From a sample size of over 3,500 new parents, fewer than 30 per cent of women were still working self-employed or full-time — even three years after childbirth. At the same time, nearly 90 per cent of men of new fathers carried on with business as normal. 

Which matters more: recruitment or retention? Many employers struggle to answer this easy question. Every organisation is powered by its people, and hiring the right people starts with strong recruitment. Typically, employers believe that finding talented, motivated, experienced, and high-potential applicants to fill open positions is the best way to ensure a prosperous future of growth and innovation. But how much is that talent worth if it walks out the door after a year or two? Retaining existing employees means building institutional knowledge in your workforce and generating more stability.

Leadership is an amazing experience. It gives you the opportunity to shape and influence an organisation and, perhaps more nobly, to turn a vision and a dream into reality. That said, leadership can be hard, and people often harbour unrealistic expectations about what is involved.

You’ll be aware that HMRC is bringing in new, stricter rules around using contractors and consultants, known as IR35 effective April 2020.  These new rules are intended to stop contractors, freelancers and consultants being used as “disguised employees” to avoid paying tax and benefits.

A study has shown that many talented professionals are using search engines such as Google to look for work. This means that you can use SEO to attract the best talent available. As a result, you may be able to reduce the time, effort and costs involved in acquiring the top talent.

Hiring your first employee is a big deal. Not only will you be handing over responsibility for part of your business to someone new, but you will also have to be aware of your duties and obligations as an employer.
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