Should You Hire Employees For Your Home-Based Business?

Running a home business comes with plenty of pros and a fair handful of cons too. One of the major downfalls is the employee conundrum. Do you hire people to help with your business? Can you even hire employees for this type of work?

Without any other members of staff, all the work falls on your shoulders. Some people can handle this, while others are crying out for help.

To answer the question; should you hire employees for your home business? We need to have a look at some of the key considerations that should enter your brain. Below, there are a few questions to ask and answer before you come to a conclusion.

 

Why Do You Need An Employee?

First thing’s first, think about your reasoning behind wanting an employee. Consider all the tasks you’ll get them to do, and why you need them to do all these tasks.

It might sound stupid, but you often find people hire employees to do tasks they could easily do themselves. The reason for this is simply to free up time, so you’re not constantly overrun with work.

But, if you don’t feel overrun and you can happily do many tasks every day, then an employee is a needless expense. They’re not essential, so you’ll spend money on wages for no real reason. By all means, if you do feel too overrun or need employees for specialist tasks, then go ahead and start hiring!

 

How Much Does It Cost To Hire A Full-Time Employee?

Can you even afford to bring someone in to work for your company?

A lot of small business owners find that they actually can’t afford all the costs of hiring a full-time worker. It’s not as simple as just going online to post a job ad and then finding the perfect candidate.

It costs money to go through the process of hiring someone. Many job ads are paid for, then you have training costs, not to mention their actual salary and benefits package too. When you calculate the true costs of hiring an employee, you need to compare it to the benefits they’ll bring.

Does spending your money on an employee bring more money into your company with them there? If the answer is no, then you probably shouldn’t hire anyone.

 

Where Will They Work?

Before you hire an employee, you need to think about where they’ll work. Seeing as you run a home business, you haven’t really got access to any other working premises.

This begs the question; what will you do if you hire an employee? Will they work from your home office with you? Some people do this, I personally think it’s a bit weird as they’ll constantly be in your home, but that’s just me.

Or, will they be able to work remotely from their own home office? If so, you need to ensure that all the work they do can be completed remotely.

Otherwise, the only other option is moving out of your home office and finding an actual office to rent. The bottom line is, make sure your employees can work remotely if you want to hire them for your home business.

 

Can You Hire Freelance Workers Instead?

This is a very important question that could save you loads of money. If you do really need someone to help with work, then it might transpire you need a freelancer instead of a proper employee.

The benefits of this are that you don’t have to pay tax on the employees, don’t need to give them any benefits, and can only pay them for the amount of work they do. This is the ideal solution for home businesses that have specific jobs they need doing.

For example, let’s say you set up a social media page and want someone to run it. A freelancer is best suited to this as they can dedicate time to your social content and post updates whenever necessary. Content writing for your website is another great example, as is someone doing your accounts and filing a tax return.

All these jobs are specific and require skills that you might not have, but they don’t need you to hire full-time employees.

 

What Are The Risks?

Last, but by no means least, you have to think about the risks associated with hiring employees. Here, you have to consider what could go wrong if your home business has an employee.

The obvious answer is that they could be rubbish at their job and harm your company. They might make fatal errors that lose you, valuable customers, costing you a lot of money. An employee could also damage your reputation by getting into trouble with the law or saying bad things on social media. If they make it clear that they’re your employee, then it lands you in the bad stuff with them.

Another risk is that they could leave their job after a few months or a year. This means you have to go through the whole hiring process again, costing you even more money and time.

This question is more about making sure you understand what you’re getting into when you hire an employee. Plus, it makes it even more important that you hire the right person if that is the path you go down. Ensure you only hire someone who’s fully trained in the right area of work, and committed to staying with your company for the long-term future.

 

Final Thoughts…

By asking yourself all of these questions, you should be able to tell if your business warrants an employee or not.

When all’s said and done, if you don’t have any specific tasks that require skilled employees to take over, then you really don’t need anyone.

Even then, you may need a freelancer at the very most. If your home business has nowhere for your employees to work and they can’t work from home, then it’s also not an option you will benefit from.

There are plenty of things to think about, and this is a major business decision. Hiring employees costs a lot of money, so make sure you make the right choice.