Most BC business owners do not get HR wrong because they are careless. They get it wrong because nobody told them the rules, and the rules only surface when something goes sideways. Here are the seven mistakes I see most often in the first ten hires.

1. Hiring on a handshake

No written agreement means the Employment Standards Act fills in the gaps for you, and it will not fill them in the way you assumed. Every employee should have a signed agreement covering role, pay, hours, probation and termination before their first shift.

2. Copying a job posting off the internet

Postings get screened for BC Human Rights Code compliance for a reason. Phrases about age, energy levels, physical ability or being a good cultural fit can quietly become evidence of discrimination. Write the posting around the work, not around the person you imagine doing it.

3. Skipping the young and new worker orientation

WorkSafeBC requires a specific orientation for workers under 25 and for anyone new to the workplace, before their first shift. It is one of the most commonly missed obligations in small businesses, and one of the easiest to fix.

4. Treating the handbook as optional

Without a handbook that people have acknowledged in writing, you have no documented standard to hold anyone to. When you eventually need to discipline someone, that gap is the first thing that gets pointed at.

5. Getting vacation and stat pay slightly wrong

Vacation pay, statutory holiday eligibility and overtime calculations are where small payroll errors compound. Multiply a small miscalculation by ten employees and four years of records, and it stops being small.

6. Not documenting the small stuff

The conversation you had in the parking lot about lateness is not documentation. Progressive discipline needs a written trail, created at the time, before anyone talks about termination.

7. Waiting until there is a problem to get HR advice

By the time an owner calls me, the situation usually has a deadline attached. Almost every expensive HR problem I have seen would have been a cheap one if it had been raised three months earlier.

Where to start

Pick the two that made you wince. Fix those first. HR does not have to be finished to be better than it was last month.