Laura Tolhoek is the owner of Essential HR, the business she started three years ago in order to provide HR relief to small businesses. Her company provides an ultra-flexible way of managing HR so businesses can focus on their core operation and growing their business. Laura shares the best practices and tips on how to hire and fire digital agency employees. She covers everything from creating your employer brand to the details of the offer letter and how to protect yourself when letting someone go. 3 Golden Nuggets Building an employer brand is as important as your agency brand. The employer brand is the reputation your agency has as a workplace. It defines the experience you're giving your employees before they even come on board. An interview guide helps guide your internal process. An effective interview guide maintains consistency throughout the interview process as well as helps narrow down who and what you're looking for in the position. A well-written offer letter is essential. The offer letter outlines policies, sets expectations, and even lays out how the end will go. This protects your agency from any potential misunderstanding or potential liability down the road. Sponsors and Resources Oribi: Today's episode of the Smart Agency Masterclass is sponsored by Oribi. Check out Oribi.io/smartagency for a free trial. Plus when you sign up for Oribi get 20% off the first three months with promo code: Smart Agency Subscribe Apple | Spotify | iHeart Radio | Stitcher | Radio FM 47 Laura Talhoek Jason: [00:00:00] On this episode, I talk with an HR agency about what's the importance about building your employer brand? What's the importance of the offer letter and how it can actually protect your agency later on. And also making sure you follow a process in your interview process, which, I just said process a couple of times, but that's okay. I think you're really going to like this episode, especially if you're in a growth phase and you're bringing on more team members. So let's get into it. Hey, Laura, welcome to the show. Laura: [00:00:36] Thank you so much for having me. Jason: [00:00:37] Yeah. I'm excited to have you on. So tell us who you are and what do you do? Laura: [00:00:42] Yeah, so my name is Laura Tolhoek. I am the owner of EssentialHR and EssentialHR is a business that was created to help small business owners with their HR systems and structures. So a lot of times when you're growing a business, You would really benefit from the help of a professional person who understands the legal, the risk side of things, as well as best practices. But you often don't need somebody who's there full time. So we come in and we help small business owners with those small retainers and HR projects where they could use an HR professional but don't want to have one on their team full-time. Jason: [00:01:15] Awesome. What's your theory of wind to bring someone in full-time? What's the employee count? Laura: [00:01:22] You know what I would say about 50, you could use somebody, you know, at a moderate level. I don't think you need, you know, the, the pinnacle director of HR. But you could use somebody, certainly, because at that point you already have someone in admin doing a lot of your recruitment things. You probably have somebody in admin doing payroll. And if you bring all of those things together to one, one system, it might be a little bit easier. Jason: [00:01:48] I always looked at a lot of our HR people also did recruiting as well. Not just, you know what I used to think when I would go back and I'd be like, oh, HR is just making sure I don't get sued. Making sure people don't get hurt. Like I didn't really look at it as making sure employee retention's there, you know, recruiting new talents. So I don't have to interview all these people and just try to keep up with the amount of business coming to us. So do you feel the same way, like HR is more than just pushing paperwork? Laura: [00:02:20] Well, of course, yeah. I'm