Already self employed cleaner, expanding and taking people on!

[nipfab]

I'm a self employed clearer currently only working part time as I have a toddler & school age children, I'm getting offers of more work everyday and although I would love the money I also need to be home for my children (single mum to 4)

So it's got me thinking about taking on someone to help, firstly by working along side me at my current jobs to cut the time in half enabling me to take on double the amount of hours (currently do two 3 hour jobs in a day, so could double that if I had someone working along side me) and then hopefully branching out and having people work for me on my non working days.

I currently clean homes but would be interested in branching out to tendency cleans/office contracts etc (though have no idea in pricing for these currently)

I'm presuming if you charge a job out at say £12.50 a hour you take someone on at a set hourly rate of say £8.50 ?

Is it possible to build a cleaning business that doesn't actually require me to be working all hours and to take on more of a admin/running role? (Though initially I would be willing to build the business up.

Realistically how many people do you need to have working for you to make it a profitable business?

Bear in mind you will need to cost in your employees statutory holiday pay and employers contributions. So if you pay £ 8.50, you may need to charge over £13.

Also, your insurance will probably be more expensive when you have an employee, but your insurance broker will be able to give beter costs.

I would say to start with a helper/employee with you on jobs, then if that is working, you could give the employee jobs on their own on your non working days. If that works well, then maybe a 2nd employee to help you while first helper does seperate jobs on their own (or with a 4th employee!)

One thing you willhave to factor in is that employees need to be reliable and you will have to cover for when they don't show or do abad job.
Secondly you will run the risk that clients ask your employees to work directly, or employees steal your clients to start on their own.

Good luck with it, as hopefully their is enough money in each job to take on an employee now!

To be honest, by the time you have taken into account employers insurance, public liability insurance for employees, pension contributions, the cost of sick pay, holiday pay, maternity/paternity pay, contracts, reliability, HR, national insurance contributions, payroll and probably countless other things, you have to ask yourself if it is really worth it for one employee. It probably isn't. Your fee would have to increase considerably in order to even pay that employee minimum wage and you will find clients who wanted you to work for them won't pay the higher price. You could employ someone on a self employed basis. They would have to be as flexible as they want to be, you couldn't stop them working for anyone else and you would have to get a contract drawn up to stop them poaching your clients, but I would say this is a better option for you.