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How To Scale Your Trades Business

Like so many small business owners, you have a fabulous and dedicated Office Manager, just like our own Penelope. Not only does she manage running the office, she manages your HR functions and much more. While she is a rock star at so many things, she struggles with the HR functions. 

Why?  For most office managers, there’s a couple reasons: 

  • They’re already doing 12 jobs, so they are short on time.
  • They don’t have a real background in HR. It’s just another thing “they do”. 

How can you help? 

Like with the plumbing company we’re about to dive into, you need the right tools for the job.  The value that technology in HR can provide will save you countless hours and dollars and massively reduce your HR risk. 

Rascal Note:  For those of you who have not read about Penelope in our previous posts, check her out here:  How to Hire “A” Players and Build Your Dream Team

Managing HR Operations in a Growing Business

At the center of a 25 employee plumbing company stood Penelope—the heart and soul of the company’s operations.  

Hired as a young woman to be the warm welcoming receptionist to greet a multitude of clients, for fifteen years Penelope worked hard and earned herself the title of Office Manager. Of course, she still ran reception, scheduling, ordered supplies and of course, managed HR operations for the business.  

Thanks to a new ad campaign (also managed by Penelope – she is so awesome), business was booming. 

With all the new jobs, there was a shortage of plumbers to handle the load, so the company decided to hire two new staff.  So Penelope switched hats … into HR and recruiter mode!

Time to Hire FAST

Penelope found an old job description and posted it on a local job site. The next day she had 286 applications. Great? (you KNOW this has happened to you!) 

After a bit of a headache and a whole lot of tedious work, Penelope found a couple good candidates, whom she immediately hired!  Success!

With a little work, Penelope found the offer letter she was given when first promoted to Office Manager.  A couple changes later and she provided it to the company’s new plumbers.  

While Penelope knew this wasn’t the right way to do things.  She had no employment contracts, no policies, not even a real onboarding process.  

Last year, she tried to improve their HR processes and was quoted $14,000 dollars by an employment lawyer to get up to date employment contracts and a complete employee policy manual. The owners decided it wasn’t affordable so Penelope had to stick with the offer letter format they have always used. 

Issues With the Employment Contract

Within a few days of being hired, both Connor and Kevin had HR-related questions and issues.

Kevin had a bunch of questions about the company’s benefits, vacation pay and time off.  Normally this information would be included in Kevin’s employment contract.  

Connor was unsure what the policies were in a number of areas, especially safety.  A proper policy manual is best practice for any business.  In the trades, this normally would include safety protocols and procedures. 

Not having both of these also opens up the plumbing company to employment-related risk.  

Penelope knew it was time to push and get their HR elements up to date, but that $14,000 quote was so far out of budget … 

RascalHR: The Right Tool For The Job

With one quick google search, Penelope found RascalHR. She quickly learned that Rascal is an affordable HR tool that can help her in many ways, including:

  • Creating branded job descriptions in record time
  • Building employment contracts at the click of a button
  • Writing and customizing a complete Employee Policy Manual, including province-specific rules

Like the rock star she is, Penelope dove in and got the regulatory-side of her HR issues taken care of.  With the right elements in place, onboarding new staff was far easier and the company’s risk level was much better managed in case they ever hired their own … Bob.  

About RascalHR

RascalHR helps your business meet legal compliance and mitigate risk while saving you time and money. RascalHR helps you avoid headaches such as:

  • Expensive, recurring legal fees
  • Spending hours to create job descriptions
  • Risk of litigation due to outdated or non-existent employment contracts
  • Spending months creating policy manuals which don’t meet regulatory compliance
  • Using generic templates and customizing them manually
  • Staying up to date with the law of each Canadian province

Ready to get your HR requirements under control?  Let’s talk. 

* Penelope is a completely fictional character… well, sort of…