Small businesses are paying out millions of pounds for advice on employing people which they could be getting for free, according to a new Government study.
Four in ten small businesses admit turning to external advisers for guidance on employment related issues including legislation, training, recruitment and retention, according to research from the Department for Business, Enterprise and Regulatory Reform (BERR).
The research also shows that the employment issues businesses are most concerned with are staff training (24%), keeping up to date with employee legislation (22%) retention (19%) and recruitment (18%). Now BERR has launched a campaign to help businesses cut the time and cost involved in employing people.
Small businesses can visit www.businesslink.gov.uk/employingpeople for simple, practical advice and guidance on the full range of employment issues, from taking on staff through to dismissals and redundancies.
The site includes calculators and interactive guides to help businesses understand their legal obligations and save themselves time and money.
Employment Relations Minister Pat McFadden said:
"For small businesses in particular, every penny counts and they shouldn’t have to put their hands in their pockets unnecessarily.
"By using Business Link as their first port of call, businesses could save on the costs of advice.”
Businesses could save up to £160m on the cost of producing written statements of employment by using tools on the site themselves rather than using external advisers to complete them.
And if a third of affected businesses used the new redundancy statements tool, the saving to business could be as much as £5m.
Interactive features of the site include:
o An employing people checklist
o Downloadable written statements of employment
o A new redundancy tool, which enables employers to produce redundancy statements.
o An interactive tool to calculate how much holiday staff are entitled to
o An interactive tool to help with managing new and expectant mothers in the workplace
o The facility to sign up for email alerts about new and changing regulations.
