Having just started my new business, I thought others may find some of the resources I’ve discovered to be useful. Two area’s that caused me some consternation in the beginning, and the solutions I have found, allow me to make two five star recommendations to anyone considering a business venture that requires them to employ others.
Health and Safety
One of the major headaches for me was, having read all the negative publicity concerning Health and Safety; it appeared to be a minefield where a small error could result in significant costs to a new, or come to that, any business.
I found the Health and Safety website to be an excellent resource. It debunks common myths that appear regularly in the national press and it provides templates for all of the major health and safety documentation you require, even down to sample risk assessments that you can use to develop your own.
A business doesn’t require a Health and Safety Policy until it employs more than five people, my criteria to implement one before it was legally necessary was based on the fact that as the business grew, the time available to develop this type of documentation would diminish. Having a policy in place will become a legal requirement within the first couple of months and it was preferable to do this type of work before there were competing demands on my time.
Using the Health and Safety Executive website, I was able to complete the bare bones of a policy document and complete a full risk assessment encompassing all areas of the business in less than a day. It’s a living document, and as such must be reviewed and amended on a regular basis but the work required has been significantly reduced as a result of following the advice and using the simple templates on the site.
Payroll
I guess to any established business payroll is not an issue, for me it appeared a nightmare. A long hard look at the HMRC website left me confused and no wiser as to how to calculate tax, NI and my NI as an employer.
The BT business builder website came to my rescue and I could not recommend it highly enough for the payroll function. With no prior knowledge in this area, I was up and running in a matter of minutes and running payroll is a ten minute task each week.
The downsides to this FREE package for me are twofold; firstly, once you finalise your payroll the documents are no longer available for printing until the next time you run a payroll. Initially this caused me one or two sleepless nights not knowing that the next time I ran payroll the reports would be available again. Secondly there is no on-line help when completing tasks.
https://www.btbusinessbuilder.com/logon.jsp
I hope you find these sites as useful as I did