New employer resources

Sod the software tracking shite. Find yourself a recently made redundant lady of a certain age with a point to prove. She'll organise you; give her the tools you need and prepare to be mind-blown. I was lucky enough to find two over my career...absolute game changers for me👍

Sorry, couldn't edit "give her the tools she needs" 🙄

Would it not be simpler to take them on as contractors rather than PAYE?

HR outsourcing company?

give her the tools you need and prepare to be blown

I find posts like this on a family forum disgusting!....

I worked in a successful engineering consultancy (still do) that for a decade or more used the medium of pen and paper to do this stuff.  With 100-300 employees (depending on when  - continious growth for all that time).  It worked like a charm !   And waaaaay more efficient and user friendly than any of the electronic systems I've had to suffer using since. 

For 2 employees, I'd avoid electronic systems like the plague.

We use BreatheHR at work for HR, expenses, holidays, reviews, sickness etc. In combination with a part time HR lead for 43 of us. Works well, not perfect, but does save a lot of time and faff.

https://www.breathehr.com/en-gb/

What Brian said, we have a South African lady of a certain age. Suffice to say, we no longer have any outstanding debt!

Hi OP,

My wife runs a small HR consultancy that specialises in supporting SME's & charities.  They can get you set up with everything you need to be an employer, then provide any ad-hoc help you may need along the way.

PM me if you want their details.

1. Make sure you’re set up as a LTD co. Don’t lose your house on account of being green.

2. CharlieHR is cheap and does the job. Track it all from day 1 and don’t let anyone slack off admin around this. Works fine for co’s under 100 people. I’d argue this or similar over a Google sheet is worth using just to let employees know you are keeping track of everything and being diligent. Make sure you do quarterly performance reviews too. All too easy for good people to drop off without it. 

Would it not be simpler to take them on as contractors rather than PAYE?

It might be until (1)  HMRC decides they are actually employed and assesses for the tax/NI gap (2) you ask people who would normally be employed to deal with self assessment etc to make your life easier. 

Of course it they're genuinely meeting the contractor test then that's another thing but if they walk like a duck etc..

Cheers.

Whilst pen and paper might be an appropriate medium for some, my lack of organisational skills and my immaculate ability to push tasks to the next day is a recipe for disaster. I'm looking for software that can automate the process to a certain degree I.E employee makes holiday request via the software and I can approve it, record it and calculate any balance with a simple click of a button. Might seem overkill for only having two employees but I maintain that one of the best things you can buy in life is convenience.

I've avoided an outsourcing company because I've only ever experienced/heard terrible things; crap service, long contracts etc.

There are a couple of suggestions that look good; will dig deeper.

Along with the logistics stuff, you might just want to familiarise yourself with some of your duties as an employer.

Gov website is excellent, as usual: Employing staff for the first time - GOV.UK (www.gov.uk)

Also consider any relevant rules around health & safety, etc

Good luck 🙂

When I started out I found the Federation of Small Business to be an affordable way to access the things that I needed, we didn't go to dedicated HR support until we had 10 members of staff. 

www.fsb.org.uk if you want to find out more.

Some of the cloud-based CRM offerings have HR modules. Monday is about the cheapest, it has a bit of a learning curve and there's some decent video tutorials to go with it.

If you have a spot of luck one of your employees may be au fait with a CRM package, use that as the savings in learning time will pay for themselves.