Personnel is sometimes the life line of your business. If you do not have enough personnel to help you maintain your business, your business may not last or continue to succeed.

Personnel is one of the biggest challenges in business. Especially right now with the labor shortage after the last two years with the pandemic.

In business, I’ve held every job within my company. I never expected any of my employees to do anything that I would not do myself. If you have not held every job within your company, how are you going to know what the job entails? How are you going to know if the equipment is working properly? How are you going to know how much time it takes to complete a task? How are you going to know if your employees are telling you the truth or not?

You may say this is what your supervisors, team leads, managers or VP’s are for. But, one thing I have learned in business is the further you remove yourself from the operations and your daily business the more chance you take in losing your business.

We all try to hire people we can trust. In my experience hiring personnel is like buying a car or a house. You never really know them until they are hired. (You never know the car until you drive it or the house until you live in it.) You need to be up to date according to your state laws to know what you can and cannot do. For example: Does your state allow for a 90 day probationary period? This is where an employee can be let go within their 90 day probationary period without cause. Is your state an Employee at Will State? Stay on top of your local laws.

You need to have an up to date Personnel Handbook. Everything needs to be in writing. Document – Document – Document. If it is not documented, it is not done. This is one of the major rules that I have lived by and enforced within my company. This documentation may save you one day if you find yourself in the middle of a workman’s compensation claim or a law suit.

For the most part I was blessed with good employees. I have always tried to treat my employees the way I would like to be treated. It’s the Golden Rule: Do unto others as you would have others do unto you.

Depending on the type of business that you are in will depend on if you need to have your employees bonded or not. If the employees are going to be handling money, or are going to be working around or on your client’s property, then you may want to consider having them bonded. Bonding your employees is like an insurance policy on them in case they should take your client’s money, or steal your client’s property. Collecting on the bond may mean that you have to prosecute your employee in order for the bonding company to pay.

One of my employees embezzled over $16,000.00 from one of my clients. Unfortunately, I only had my employees bonded for $10,000.00 each. I had to prosecute the employee who ended up with jail time in order for my bonding company to pay. I had to pay the extra $6,000 from my company in order to make my client whole and maintain our professional working relationship.

Share some of your personnel stories and how you handled the situations. We will be discussing employees, employee training, insurance, liabilities hiring practices and more as this blog continues.