Most small businesses only grow by hiring; but even if your hiring has been successful in the past, as a business owner, you need to examine your work environment and consider all the trouble that could erupt if and when the mix of your staff changes.
This doesn't just mean situations where your workforce comprises people of different ethnicities or cultures; often, people who have much in common in their backgrounds don't always get along with one another.
Issues around clothing, lunches brought to work, perfumes, perceptions around behavior and more, can erupt to disrupt your workplace.
Depending on where you operate, such incidents could also drag you into a nasty and prolonged legal battle before a human rights tribunal.
Taking time to prepare some sound and specific policies will go a long way to keeping this type of trouble from your door.
Probably the first category to tackle is physical issues, many of which may be real problems.
It is perfectly acceptable, in a workplace, to have rules about how people dress, asking them to be clean and asking them to avoid heavy scents, or preventing them from bringing smelly foods to work, or prohibiting them from chewing gum while speaking with customers and suppliers.
While such policies are mainly designed to prevent problems among your staff, if your workplace is also one where you meet with customers or clients, this is an extra reason why you would want to spell out some parameters.
As recent human rights cases show, it's important not to leave these things to chance.
At one company, the owner was taken before the human rights tribunal because an employee filed that she was harassed over her race and ethnicity, because she was asked to stop bringing certain foods to work.
Had there been a policy in place before she was hired, she wouldn't have had a case.
The second major area is that of mental issues, situations in the workplace that could cause someone to claim they were under mental distress.
Some of this involves having policies on how your staff are to behave and treat each other; although this seems obvious - it should be part of common courtesy - do not leave it to chance.
Policies stating how everyone treats everyone else, allowing people to get their jobs done and more, can at least set out the framework so that fewer complaints can be raised.
It is also equally important to make sure that people are fit for the job, which is why trial periods, rotating probationary employees through a range of tasks, and similar tests are essential before you confirm someone to a permanent position.
The third group of issues to consider is that of issues that are imagined.
In another human rights case, a small company spent $20,000 on legal fees, because one employee complained another was staring at her breasts.
Some of these perceptual or imagined issues can be forestalled entirely if your office design means employees cannot see each other as they are working.
Workstations with privacy panels can reduce the likelihood of anyone being able to complain someone else is staring at them.
Or, design spaces so that there are never fewer than three people in an area so that either some of these 'one-on-one' issues don't arise or that there are always witnesses around.
While it is not possible to prevent any problems from arising, well-thought-out policies, can act as a defense.
And as long as they are in place before you even start hiring any employees, no one can complain they didn't know about the policy.
One of the first things you should do with every new employee is provide them with a copy of the policy and procedures manual for your company and require that the new hire review it thoroughly.