Congratulations, you’ve made the decision that it's time to employ a casual employee. While this can be an exciting period of growth for your business, and a time when you can look to offload some tasks on your to-do list, it can also be a confusing time getting your head around the legal ins and outs of how you can go about employing a casual employee the right way.

Working from home has become increasingly popular since the pandemic began with the versatility of being able to remotely have kept businesses afloat and employees in their jobs. In many ways, flexible working arrangements have been one of the great business lifeboats over the past 18 months.

But with this change comes risk. Because this way of working on a large scale is still new to us, there are many risks that people have yet to think of, especially when the arrangements are made in reaction to a snap government lockdown. A work-from-home agreement will help to cover the following risks.

With different business models and structures comes different forms of hiring. Determining whether you should hire an employee or a contractor is an important step that can come with repercussions should you get it wrong.

If you are unsure whether the person you need is an employee or a contractor, we have covered this in detail in a previous article (Employee or contractor – what’s the difference? And why you could be fined if you don’t do it the right way.) but right now let’s look at contractors.