Being Fair With Your Employees: 5 Tips

Hiring help for your company can help you produce more products or offer more services. Growing your business will almost always entail the onboarding of several new people to help push your company forward. To keep them happy and your business profitable, you need to be fair with the people you're hiring. How?

Define Roles Clearly

A great way to treat people fairly as your employees is to define their roles clearly. Before you hire, think about what tasks must be completed and how you can best bring those people onboard. This will enable you to seek people with certain skill sets and qualities. This will also ensure that you can clearly communicate their roles to them so they're not surprised by what you ask them to do. Without defining roles well, they may become frustrated by the work you give them or you might find that they aren't doing what you need.

Don't Ask Personal or Illegal Questions

The interview is likely the first time you'll see many of the people who will eventually be your employees. You might want to conduct the interview like an informal conversation, but beware of asking personal or illegal questions.  You'll make interviewees uncomfortable. In addition, you might be so sidetracked by issues unrelated to the job that you hire the wrong people. Instead, you need to be focused on the skills and work history that people bring with them. Ask them about work-related subjects only; if unsure, employment attorneys can list possible safe inquiries.

Write Employee Policies

Don't let new people figure out how things work by themselves. They'll likely have questions about issues related to tasks, disciplinary actions and time off. An employment lawyer could be a useful writing partner to help you lay out whatever rules are relevant for your workplace.

Train Workers

You should also be training everyone to some degree. Training can prevent mistakes and injuries. You or supervisors can observe actions and work to suggest more efficient techniques.

Fire People in a Planned Way

Very rarely is it appropriate to just blow up and tell someone they're fired. Actions like that also create poor employee morale. Ensure that the manual describes how firing happens. For example, they might first receive an oral warning, then a written warning, and then a firing announcement, perhaps with your attorney there. If you ever have to fire anyone, being able to do it in a measured way can make remaining employees feel good about how the process unfolds. 

Share