Speaker 1: Employment agreements. One thing we should all have, but most contractors don't even write these for their employees. Hi, I'm Scotty Ogden from Ogden Contracting and today we're going to go through a detailed list of why you need to write an employee agreement and some of the key steps on how to write an employee agreement. Before you even give an employment agreement to a new candidate, first of all, you need to decide is this candidate a good fit for your company and we always discover that through the values and some of the preferences. An employment agreement is an agreement between the employer and the employee setting the standards and the understanding of what their job responsibilities are and why you're hiring them. A key tip that I would recommend you if you're going to be writing an employee agreement is making sure your lawyer has reviewed it. You don't want to be writing things in employment agreement that could be taken to court and be brought against you. So you want to make sure that it follows all the rules, follows all the laws and that it's equal, fair and under the government regulations. So what are some things you need to include in your employment agreement? Well, first of all, I would say make sure it's on your letterhead. You want to have your company name and the top, you want to have your phone number, your address and maybe a little spot at the bottom where the new employee or the new candidate can initial each page. The intro of your employment agreement should say who this agreement is for. So for example, this agreement is between Ogden Contracting and John Smith, for example. You also want to have instructions on what the document represents and how to get through the document, such as as you go through each page and you read and understand, please initial each page. If you have any questions, please circle and bring it back to me for clarification. So here's what I put in the body of my employment agreements. The company values, expectations and commitments, the compensation structure, reviews, staff meeting requirements, late arrivals and absentees, their probationary period, employee enforcements and acceptance of terms. And then on the very last page, you want to close it by saying I blank blank blank John Smith accept these terms that Ogden Contracting has listed. You want to have a the employee's name and a place for their signature and the owner's name or your name and a place for your signature. So that now this becomes a legal binding document and agreement with all the terms and conditions in it. Here's what's included in the terms and conditions. So let me give you an example of how I do it. So the company values are very key. First of all, we want to know that does your new hire share the same values? So you want to list all your values and what those policies are around the values. So explain it. Ours is integrity and teamwork and customer experience. So these are some of the things that we include and a full definition of your company values. This way your staff member knows that this is who you are, this is what you value and every decision that they make is based off of these values. This is important to do because when you do a review at the end of the month or in three months and you realize that they don't have integrity, you can look back and say you signed a document stating that you understand that our company has integrity and such and such and such or X, Y and Z shows me that you do not have integrity. This helps in the review form. Second of all, expectations. What do you as an employer are expecting the employee to do for you in this company? So things that I include are hours that I want them to work, the level of quality that they're going to give me and all my customers. I want them to respect my tools and any of the job site items. There are some tools that I want them to supply as well like their personal tools PPE and they also have to follow all the safety protocols that are issued for our construction sites. Next I include commitments. What are the commitments your new hire is going to give to the company? Here's an example of five commitments that I put on my employment agreements. Number one is delivering a project on time, on budget and good quality. Second one is customer experience. The third commitment is the Ogden property and tools. The fourth one is the employees personal tools that they're going to be bringing to the job site plus their PPE and the last one is safety protocols, the safety that they're going to commit to doing on the job site. The next thing you want to include in your employment agreement is the compensation structure. When do they get paid? How much are they getting paid? Do they have holiday pays? When are they supposed to take their holiday pays? And benefit packages, any benefit packages that you are offering to them that needs to be structured in the employment agreement. And the last example I'm including here is reviews. You want to be able to tell your new hire that in three months or three weeks or whenever you're going to do a review that you're going to sit down with them and review all this employment agreement with their accountabilities and deliverables that they're giving you. I want to thank you for watching. If there's something that resonates with you, don't forget to like, subscribe, leave a comment. We'll leave a link in our bio. Thanks for watching.