Owner Of A New Startup? Be Sure To Cover Your Back
Starting a new business or small startup is a fun process. It can feel like you’re finally making progress after all the months of planning, and the years of dreaming. It can be tempting at this moment in time to go for it, and grow your operation as quickly as you can, doing everything you can to promote your humble operation through social media as well as trying to forgo any costs you can to give you somewhat of an advantage.
However, by doing this, you might be running before you can walk. This is never good, no matter what discipline or field of pursuit you are in. A business or startup of any size simply has too many moving parts to not pay diligent attention to each one that is starting to become functional.
It’s important to ‘cover your back.’ What does this mean? Well, it means protecting yourself from a financial, social, promotional, legal and security standpoint. It means taking any means necessary to legitimize your firm and make sure that it’s operating healthily. It means taking ethical action in setting every facet of your business up from the foundation because unhealthy foundations will later lead to an unhealthy business structure.
There’s no need to be overly cautious here though. Following the four steps listed below will give you the opportunity you need to keep on top of the ‘musts,’ so you can then worry about the ‘coulds.’
Draw Up Solid Employee Contracts
It might be tempting as a new startup to give your employees bare-bones assurances of their working hours and how long they can expect to be at the firm, but if you plan to be a legitimate business, you need to give your employees contracts. Pay them the respect of giving them regular working hours. If you’re not in a position to do this, consider hiring freelancers or simply not hiring extra people until you can support them.
Conform To Office Safety Standards
It’s also tempting as a startup to forgo rental costs by running your operation from home or in your garage. This isn’t wrong of you to do so, but it might be a problem if you plan to hire employees. There comes a time when you will need to rent a space. In your efforts to reduce costs, it might be that you’re tempted to rent somewhere that might not be as safe or well-ventilated as an office space. Don’t do this. You are responsible for those employees working in your name. Again, give them the respect they deserve by giving them a clean, safe, secure place to complete their duties.
Perfect Your Paperwork
Solid paperwork is the lifeblood of any organization. It helps you square away your proper legal responsibilities, and allows you to hold all the contractual obligations you need. To help you construct these or help you negotiate terms and conditions, outsourcing contracts and many other items of interest you won’t have a solid foothold of knowledge in, it’s important to hire a reputable commercial solicitors to give you this solid edge. A solid business has a solid legal foothold, so be sure to have one immediately.
Enact Security Solutions
The storage of your goods and the happy daily functioning of your employees can only be happily maintained if they are secure and safe. Consider gating entry to your place of work with either keycards or locks, and try to restrict undue access to your buildings. This is why renting reputable offices are so important because they have been designed with this potential public inflow in mind. Some of them will even grant you receptionists as part of the building.
These four considerations are not ideal to have they are necessary to have. Any startup owner worth his or her salt will sort these immediately upon opening the doors to their startup, so be sure you can count yourself among them.
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