SS M A L P
MALL OL
OP
ADVICE AND KNOW-HOW TAILORED TO THE 1 TO 4 ROUTE OPERATION
O
Vending
Personnel
Files 101
ver the past several months I have talked about
inventory controls, pricing, merchandising,
how to set up your vehicles, and how and when
to service accounts. This time I want to spend
some time talking about the offce paperwork, particularly
the employees' personnel fles. These need to be organized
and maintained no differently than vehicles and routes.
As small operators, when we frst started out, we
really didn't worry too much about employment applications. We hired family and friends of family to get
us started. They weren't asked to fll out any forms
because we knew who they were and we needed bodies,
not seemingly unnecessary forms.
'Oh, but the times they are a changing' as has been
sung so many times. If you have even one person working for you, you need to put together a folder for that
employee so that you will be prepared in the event a
wrongful termination lawsuit is brought against you.
By Dominic Finelli, Contributing Editor
How to be your own human
resource department and protect
yourself against liability.
Start with the basics
Have every person working for you, including family
members and yourself, fll out an employment application. These are easy to print from any online source. All
workers should have flled out state and federal payroll
deduction forms, and these should be updated any time
there is a change in that employee's payroll deductions.
Everyone must also fll out the Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) form, where an employer must
check to see if that person is in this country legally. Be
sure to make copies of the individual's photo IDs, again
this includes all family members. Next, make up a form
that will show each person's emergency contacts such
as who to call, their phone numbers and relationship
to employee. This should be placed in the employee's
folder along with all the others forms.
Require a clean record
Another very important item that you need from any
employee who will be driving a company vehicle is
their current driving record. If your insurance company hasn't asked for these yet, they will as you grow.
No insurance company will insure anyone with a bad
driving record and operators should make employees
aware that if they can't be insured then they can't work.
Also, make them understand that their record is not
just what they have done in your vehicles, but what
they have done in their personal vehicles as well. Going
forward, any time someone applies for a job, they should
fll out the employment application and attach a copy
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VendingMarketWatch.com
October 2013