Plan for your employee

There is plenty you can do before your employee’s first day to set them — and your relationship with them — up for success. 

Before making the decision to employ someone — Take a moment to work out what's right for your business and what type of arrangement is right for the work you want done before engaging artists and arts workers.

Before employing someone for the first time — Start by knowing the essentials for employment relationships — these are the foundational obligations you will have in any employment relationship.

Before employing someone for a particular job — Follow our step-by-step guides to:

• Engaging an employee — including knowing what type of employee arrangement you need, planning for what it will cost, arranging insurance and setting up for tax and superannuation
• Recruiting a new employee — including finding the right person
• Starting a new employee — including the details you need to collect from your new employee when they start, and the information you need to share with them.

Be clear about what the job is 

Everyone should be clear about the job you are asking your employee to do. 

This means that you need to:

• know what the job is — what the daily tasks are, and what the person in the job is responsible for
• clearly communicate this to your employee. 

Don’t assume that your employee already knows these things, even if they have done similar work before, and even after they have accepted the job with you.   

Make sure your employee gets the training they need 

It’s important to give your employees training and instruction. 

Training and instruction give your employees the information and direction they need to perform the job – and to perform it safely. It’s important for everyone, but it’s especially important:

• when you need things need to be done in a specific way — it isn’t fair to expect employees to follow your processes or procedures if you haven’t explained them to them
• for jobs using tools, equipment or machinery, or IT systems or databases
• in workspaces that have particular hazards and risks that need to be managed and controlled.

Not all employees will require the same level of training and instruction — this can depend on the job and level of experience and skill the employee brings to the role — but providing the instruction that an employee needs to perform the work is important for every employee in a new work environment.   

Training and instruction can happen:

• when a new employee starts working with you
• when an employee moves into a different job within your organisation
• if your processes change
• any time you learn that an employee needs help performing a particular task.

Job training and instruction can take many different forms. It can include:

• online training
• on-the job training under supervision
• providing employees with procedural manuals and signage
• frequent feedback and conversations with the employee
• training employees in organisational policies and procedures
• arranging for the employee to ‘shadow’ or learn from a colleague
• arranging a buddy or temporary support person for the employee.

Set your expectations for the job

Setting job expectations, and sharing these expectations with your employee, is an important part of building a supportive and sustainable working relationship.

Job expectations are more than identifying job tasks and responsibilities. Job expectations concern how well the work should be done, and to what standard or level. 

Assessing how well an employee is doing in their role can be hard if you don’t have a clear picture of what you are looking for. For example, you might have an employee producing work that isn’t what you expected, but you can’t pinpoint a specific problem.

Having conversations with your employee about their work can also be hard if you haven’t been clear about what a ‘good job’ looks like. 

Having and applying job expectations can support you and your employee check in with each other about how work is going.