The good and bad of hiring new employees

Editor’s note: Michelle Stockman works for Little Rock-based Arkansas Capital Corp. to promote entrepreneurship development around the state. Stockman earned a bachelor’s degree from Loyola University-Chicago in communications and fine arts, and earned a master’s in entrepreneurship from Western Carolina University. Her thoughts on business success appear each Monday on The City Wire.

Hiring employees is an exciting yet stressful point in your business. Adding additional help in your business means that your business is growing and financially healthy. However, hiring employees adds new stress to the business owner.

Many small business owners add staff to the business to meet a growing need within the company. By the time the entrepreneur is ready to hire, the hiring process becomes an emergency. When a company is stressed to hire, the opportunity to hire an employee who may not be a good fit for the company increases greatly.

To protect the entrepreneur and the company, the business owner needs to take time to write and implement an employee manual. This manual is the first key to employee communications, and it is the place where the business owner can set policy, rules and regulations that all employees must follow (including the business owner). This document is an outline to the rewards and punishments for the employee’s work.

To start writing an employee manual, the business owner should decide what he/she needs for the business. There are some templates available online, or you can buy a template to customize.

Before implementing the employee manual, the business owner needs to have a business lawyer review the content to make sure the business is within legal limitations. The business owner should also have the manual reviewed by his/her board of directors.