Hiring Employees and Processing Payroll for Startups

Successfully running a startup is a complex process that involves dedicated efforts by your core team in establishing your company and accomplishing the set goals. However, now it is time to take it to the next level and expand into a full-fledged company. This would require hiring employees, and that may not be as easy as it sounds. If not done right, hiring employees for startups could lead to problems such as mismatches, thefts, and even loss of reputation.

Common Mistakes Made by Startups

While hiring employees, startup founders often make a crucial mistake of hiring generalist, or star performers, or even people exactly like themselves. This will result in a team that may not be able to deliver competitive results. Another crucial mistake is misclassifying employees as independent contractors. While it may seem practical at that moment, a few years down the line, it could create serious problems. A clear demarcation from the very first day will benefit your company in the long run. Startups also make a fatal error of ignoring the payroll system and end up setting it incorrectly, maintaining a poor record, making wrong payments, and even missing tax payments.

How To Proceed

It is essential that you do not get caught up in getting the perfect job description. However, it is paramount that you clearly define the job requirements. Always do a background check of prospective candidates for their qualification, job experience, any criminal history, if possible. Don’t hesitate to call professional references to verify the facts stated on the CV and to know the work ethics of the candidate.

With the entrepreneurship boom in India, getting top talent for startups is a tough task. So, founders resort to offering more benefits including higher salaries and equity. Set a fixed limit keeping in mind your long-term business goals and stick to it, even if it means letting go of a potential star employee. Sometimes, startups try to be too particular and end up impeding the employees with endless paperwork and contracts. Yes, paperwork is necessary, but you should keep it minimal without compromising your interests.

Processing Payrolls

So you have managed to hire some very talented employees, great! But, the battle is only half won as you also need a payroll system in place. Processing payrolls is not just about paying your employees, it also involves adhering to latest IT policies, timely and accurate deductions, maintaining a record of loans & bonuses, and even FnF (Full and Final) settlement when an employee leaves the organization.

You can go the traditional way and hire an accountant who will take care of all the parameters involved in processing payrolls. Finding an experienced accountant and convincing him to join a startup can be way too difficult. While you may already have hired an HR professional, detailed accounting could be beyond their scope of work. The best way to take care of such aspects is by hiring services of a company offering online payroll and accounting services. Since the services are online, it ensures streamlined & secured interface along with ease of managing taxes and financial reporting.

It is essential to treat hiring employees and payroll processing as any other vital part of your business. Neglecting it at the earlier stages could prove to be very costly few years down the line. Be proactive and make sure you have hired the right set of people and have good payroll and accounting systems in place.