Hiring and retaining good employees can be a big hurdle for small businesses. Varied expectations on the part of the employee and the supervisor can lead to problems down the road. Avoid confusion by using BizToolkit to craft a clear job description for all of your employees.
In BizToolkit, go to the Management section and select Job Descriptions from the menu. Here you will find several great resources on designing job descriptions. The first site featured on the list is the Job Description Writer from Careerinfo.net. This is a one stop interactive tool for generating a job description and an advertisement for the job itself. You can craft a quality job description by following seven easy steps.
The site is simply designed and seamlessly connects your information with pre-existing occupational information from O*Net taxonomies. After completing the seven sections, you can save the job description as a Word, XML, or HTML file. You can also link to job banks in your area to post your job description.
Use the Job Description Writer on BizToolkit to define the role you want your employees to play. Having clear expectations spelled out for your employees will not only make them more satisfied and productive, it will also make it easier for you to assess their work.
As an entrepreneur, you may play the generalist, but there will likely be some gaps in your business know-how. Human Resources is a broad field that can often stymie the expansion plans of business people with other specialties. Use the general information in the BizToolkit to cover all the bases.
In the Management area of BizToolkit you will find a wealth of information on Human Resources Topics. The first area you should examine is from the US Department of Labor. Their Business Compliance Assistance site is a fountain of information about standards and laws governing employment in the US. 
The best information can be found by clicking the “Employment Law Guide” in the right side navigation bar. As the Department of Labor states: “This Guide describes the statutes and regulations administered by the U.S. Department of Labor (DOL) that affect businesses and workers. The Guide is designed mainly for those needing "hands-on" information to develop wage, benefit, safety and health, and nondiscrimination policies for businesses in general industry.”
Another great resource in the Human Resources section is the Free Tools section of HR Tools by Administaff. This is a categorized series of articles and interactive tools that can be easily used by your organization to improve your process.
The Performance Appraisal Process tool is an excellent interactive program that walks through every aspect of the process and even has downloadable forms in PDF format. The Free Tools and forms are a great way to augment your nascent HR policies.
Also in the Human Resources section of BizToolkit is the eInsight Business Ethics Resource Center. This site offers both practical Business Ethics content as well as a Business Ethics Quiz. The content can be found in the eInfo center and features case studies, links to associations and other resources for evaluating the ethics of your business. The Business Ethics Quiz is an interactive tool to benchmark your business’ ethics and provides actionable items to improve its culture.
Human Resources is such a broad ranging field, making the holes in your knowledge seem daunting. Thankfully the Business Information Specialists at the James J. Hill Reference Library have compiled this range of resources. You will find useful information to improve your business regardless of your level of knowledge.
Search Tip – Google Tricks
Google (www.google.com) is the world’s most popular Internet search engine, and we’re all familiar with using it --- simply enter keywords into Google’s search box, and find web pages related to those keywords. But are you aware of the following tricks to use when you’re searching for definitions, specific site types, linked pages, calculator functions or conversions?
- The word define, followed by a colon, followed by a word, will give you links to definitions of the word (for example, define: amortization).
- The word site, followed by a colon, followed by a domain extension, will search only sites of that extension (for example global warming site:edu will give you references to global warming found on .edu sites).
- The word link, followed by a colon, followed by a website, will search for websites that link to that site (for example, link:www.jjhill.org).
- Enter basic arithmetic functions into the Google search box, and Google serves as a calculator and provides the answer (for example, 876 * 4 or 20% of 440).
- To convert units of measure, simply enter what you would like converted, and Google will provide the conversion (for example 10 km in miles or 25 celsius in fahrenheit)
