Employee issues: How to handle employees

Employees are a major resource for any small business. They can mean the difference between the owner scratching out a daily living or expanding into a multinational corporation.

We can't help you pick the right ones -- that's your job -- but we can tell you a little about the legal and financial issues that surround hiring a worker. We'll start out by telling you the various ways you can hire your most important worker: you.

Then we'll discuss employees -- their wages, the cost of providing benefits and some of the legal obligations that go along with being an employer.

The final three sections will describe some of the alternatives to hiring your own employees -- temporary workers, contract workers and leased employees.

Good luck, boss!