A founder has been managing alone for two years and is about to hire somebody. She searches for an employment contract template, finds one, adjusts it and considers the job done.
There is no employer registration, no payroll, no liability insurance, no pension arrangement and no right to work check. The new employee starts on the first of the month and several obligations were already due.
Step 1: establish what they are actually hiring
Employee, worker, contractor or an arrangement they have invented. The classification decides everything that follows and first time employers routinely get it wrong.
Step 2: register as an employer before the offer
Registration and payroll setup take time and must be in place before anybody is paid. This is the item most frequently left until the week before.
Step 3: sort the right to work checks
Before the start date, documented properly, for everybody. There is no version of this that can be done retrospectively.
Step 4: get the written particulars right
A contract that covers the required items, issued within the statutory timeframe. A downloaded template frequently omits several of them.
Step 5: set up payroll properly
Software or a provider, deductions, payslips and reporting. Paying somebody from a business account without any of this is more common than it should be.
Step 6: arrange the pension
Duties apply from the first employee, with assessment, communication and contributions. This is the obligation first time employers most often miss entirely.
Step 7: check the insurance position
Employers liability cover is a legal requirement in many jurisdictions and it is not included in a standard business policy.
Step 8: cover the health and safety basics
A policy, an assessment appropriate to the work, and basic arrangements. Proportionate for a small business and not optional.
Step 9: settle the holiday and leave position
Entitlement, the leave year, how it accrues and how it is recorded. This is where disputes with a first employee usually start.
Step 10: write the small number of policies that matter
Sickness, discipline, grievance. Not a handbook nobody reads, and not nothing either.
Step 11: plan the probation period deliberately
Length, review points and what happens at the end. A structured probation is the most useful protection a first time employer has.
Step 12: think about the second and third hire
Systems built for one person collapse at five, and a business that plans for growth avoids rebuilding everything in eighteen months, which is the transition in outsourced HR retainer questions from growing firms.
Step 13: get the payroll questions answered early
Frequency, dates, deductions and reporting, which is the ground covered in payroll questions from businesses hiring their first employee.
Step 14: expect the urgent version of this enquiry
Some arrive after a problem rather than before, which is the situation in HR help enquiries from small employers with a problem today.
Step 15: capture the enquiry when the founder is working
Which is late at night. An assistant that asks what they are hiring, when the start date is, whether payroll exists and whether anything has been promised produces a triaged enquiry with the urgent items flagged. For a business weighing its own first hire, an AI employee versus a part time admin is the comparison. See features, start at try, and the sector view sits under consultants.