Employment: Hiring, Contracting & Firing People

Hiring Process/Practices/Requirements

Some kind of clearly-stated trial period is very powerful for removing people who make good early impressions, but prove to be unreliable or not a good cultural fit. As much as possible, have people come visit, spend time with staff and students, and get feedback from the community about everyone’s comfort with hiring a person. Listen carefully to student feedback. There is usually important insight in it.

Contracts

Clear contracts for employees or contractors are important. Hard feelings and resentments are almost always caused by poor communication of expectations. At least provide a brief outline of payment amounts, payment timelines, and expected commitments/hours/attendance.

Payroll Set-up and Administration

In the USA, and in many other places, managing payroll is a complex process. Taxes and required forms of insurance on Federal, State, County and City levels need to be to be withheld from employee paychecks and/or paid by the employee to appropriate government agencies on either a monthly or quarterly basis, depending on the size of your staff.

To get all these figures right and payments sent to the right places, at the bare minimum, use accounting software which calculates it all for you (such as QuickBooks) or have another company process and manage your payroll.

A small accounting firm will process your payroll, help you keep your bookkeeping and financial statements updated, and file your required annual reports. A payroll processing company will only process payroll and probably cost a similar amount as the accounting firm.

The accounting firm should also be able to advise you on keeping your employment practices in compliance with regard to health benefits, workers' compensation, unemployment insurance, overtime pay, vacation policies, posting of required notices and such things. It is hard to keep track of all these things yourself, so this is a domain we recommend you find people you can trust to advise you.