You may well have seen Saturday's blog post, where I spoke about some of the most important things to keep in mind before hiring staff. If you didn't see it, check it out here. Anyway, that blog post was really just a bit of a warm up and so for today's post I would like to continue that train of thought and present you with a few more things which you need to keep in mind before hiring staff.
Do Not Talk About Politics: The world of politics affects all of our lives in significant ways, so of course most people are going to have strong feelings about this. Discussing politics with your employees might make them feel very uncomfortable and if you disagree with them, they may feel obliged to agree with you, as you have power over them. It is actually illegal to use a position of power like that to sway a person's political perspectives, so it's best not to discuss it at all.
Give Them the Benefit of the Doubt: If something goes wrong and you think that your employee may have been responsible, ask them about it in an understanding, empathetic way, if they turn out not to have done it, apologise, if they turn out to have gone wrong, help them to avoid making the mistake in future. If you accuse your employees of making mistakes all the time, this will create a stressful environment for them.
Be Gender Neutral: If you have some male and some female employees, do not treat them differently (especially in regards to pay.) This kind of discrimination can make people very uncomfortable and, again, can cross into the realms of being illegal, depending on what you say or do.
Be Honest: If you have multiple employees and you misrepresent the truth, it is probable that the inconsistencies will start to be noticed. Lies from an employer will create a sense of unease and mistrust, causing employees to leave.
Respect Sick Days, Holiday Days and Notice Periods: Remember that these are all things which you employees are entitled to by law. In regards to a notice period, do not try and coerce your employees into notice periods which are longer than the ones which they have agreed to in their contract.
Take a Management Course: Because while I may know a thing or two about how to correctly manage people, I am by no means an expert and a management course will be a lot more comprehensive.
I hope that this has been a helpful and interesting blog post which will help you to cultivate healthy working relationships with any employees you may hire. But if you don't even have an eCommerce website to hire anybody to work for, then sign up to Sellr now and get started for no cost at all!
