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The guys discuss the recent developments in employment law for 2015 and what employers should consider when hiring new employees. Full Podcast Transcript NASIR: All right. Welcome to our podcast where we cover business legal news. My name is Nasir Pasha. MATT: And I’m Matt Staub. NASIR: And, today, we are talking about hiring employees in 2015. It seems like everyone is talking about hiring employees either for the first time or they’re expanding and I think that’s good – that’s a good sign for the economy, obviously, and maybe it’s also the new year. MATT: Yeah, and, I mean, I’m thinking it has to do with a couple of things. One, the beginning of the year. NASIR: Yeah. MATT: I would say anyone, any business owner in the last quarter of the year who was thinking of hiring people – unless it’s a seasonal thing – probably was thinking, “I’m just going to put it off until the beginning of the year and not mess with it.” NASIR: Oh, yeah. MATT: And then, two, just the economy in general has gotten better. Businesses are making more money so they can pay people to be there. So, I’m sure there’s more reasons but those are two things that come to mind and it’s definitely a good thing. Let’s see. I think I had some numbers here. So, this is from Career Builder which I guess deals with hiring people but who knows how credible this is. NASIR: It’s some blogger, you know, that just came up with some number. MATT: It’s something. NASIR: Oh, yeah, careerbuilder.com. MATT: Yeah, 36 percent of employers plan to increase their full-time permanent employee number in 2015 up from 24 percent last year. So, that’s a pretty significant jump. But it’s interesting too because we talked about, obviously, more people being hired, but in terms of – at least in California, and I think probably nationwide, too – the amount of money that needs to be spent on employees has also increased. So, it’s interesting that employees are now more expensive to have, but people are hiring more of them. So, it’s a weird dynamic where, I guess, at the end of the day, as long as, you know, you make more money than the cost of having the employee there then I guess that’s fine with the business owner. That’s how I would view it, at least. NASIR: Yeah, absolutely. In fact, we even filled out our San Diego Regional Chamber of Commerce every year. Actually, also periodically during the year, they do a survey. I just filled out mine a couple of days ago and they ask these questions – you know, “Do you plan on hiring? Do you plan on expanding?” et cetera, like that. And so, the sentiment of businesses is always really cool to kind of see where they’re heading because that’s usually a good indicator of where the economy is going or at least what people’s impression thinks it’s going. So, when you hire somebody, there’s just so many issues that are going on and I think your employees are the biggest liability of your business. And, if you’re hiring an employee for the first time, then you better learn pretty quick. I mean, there are a lot of issues to go through, even from the setup perspective. I mean, there’s lots of setup – everything from registering your EIN which you should have already, obviously, but, you know, doing things like registering with your state labor department, workers’ compensation insurance, payroll is huge. MATT: Yeah. NASIR: I’m always surprised that people actually handle their own payroll. I think it’s just silly. I mean, if you can afford an employee, you can afford to pay someone to do your payroll because it is something you do not want to mess and do incorrectly, for sure. MATT: Oh, yeah. I don’t understand how people handle that by themselves either. I mean, I have some connections with some payroll companies in San Diego. I know their pricing; it’s very reasonable. Your time’s going to be way more valuable than just paying someone a little bit of money to handle it and they actually know what they’re doing.