Marc Bishop - HR for Small Business For Dummies

HR for Small Business For Dummies

Published by: John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., The Atrium, Southern Gate, Chichester,www.wiley.com

This edition first published 2016

2016 by John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., Chichester, West Sussex

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Library of Congress Control Number: 2015954401

ISBN 978-1-119-11132-0 (pbk); ISBN 978-1-119-11133-7 (ebk); ISBN 978-1-119-11134-4 (ebk)

1. Table of Contents

Welcome to the world of Human Resources, or HR for short. From the peaks of strategy to the foothills of statistics, you will travel through the law of the land, with a peek at European regulation, and some diversions into amateur psychology along the way, but dont be daunted! Armed with this basic guide and a good dose of common sense, you can avoid most of the pitfalls and may even enjoy the ride.

We wrote this book for people running small businesses who have ambitious plans and dont want to spend all their time sorting out people problems. Whether you are dealing with a tricky employee issue right now, or you can see opportunity or trouble coming down the road, grab this book and you will find some practical tips about how to handle it.

In its broadest sense, HR covers every aspect of people at work, so we offer advice about how to attract the right people to work for your business, and how to manage them so that they add value. We show you some of the ways you can create a positive relationship with your employees, using the employment contract, the working environment, pay and benefits, and creative career development. We also share some ideas about how your leadership and management can make a big difference to peoples performance.

To make it easier for you to find what you need, HR for Small Business For Dummies follows certain rules. When we introduce an important new term, we put it in italics, and if one item on a list is really important, we write it in bold. You will find some content in shaded grey boxes, and this is material that we think you might find interesting, but its not critical to your knowledge of HR. There are lots of inter-related topics in HR so throughout the book as you read about one area, we will point you to other relevant chapters. Sometimes you will want to go straight there, but you can also save it for later.

Whilst we like to think were experts, and we give you lots of golden rules to follow, it would be foolhardy to think we know everything, so treat these pages as a guidebook rather than a Bible.

Were not lawyers, but weve based our advice on the laws of England and Wales, assuming we are still in the EU, so if you are using this book somewhere else, bear that in mind.

Lord Denning is quoted as saying the law is an ass and it may well be, but who wants to be kicked by an ass? Weve provided lots of signposts to online legal and government advice, so if in doubt, follow these signs rather than taking a shortcut.

Weve tried to anticipate many of the people issues you might face, but as the Yorkshire saying goes, theres nowt as queer as folk so there are bound to be situations we havent covered. If youre not sure what to do, our advice is to establish the facts, assess the risk and then make a decision in good faith thats right for the business and fair to the person.

To help you pinpoint vital information, we place icons throughout the text to highlight nuggets of knowledge.

This icon tells you were using a real example to illustrate a point - of course all the characters are suitably disguised!

This icon offers you practical advice about how to apply some of the principles of good HR.

The Remember icon prompts you to pause and take note of something that could backfire if you dont pay attention.

Proceed with caution when you see this icon - usually were letting you know that if you take a wrong step, youll face a fine, or something worse!

This icon points you to other places online where you can find information and guidance. It is particularly useful for recent legal and government updates, because lots of HR and legal stuff changes at least twice a year.