Employee

Employees may be hired and work for businesses in The Sims 2: Open for Business, The Sims 4: Get To Work and The Sims 4: Dine Out.

The Sims 2: Open For Business

Hiring employees

Employees can be hired over the phone or computer. Sims can also be hired as employees by interacting with them directly, but they might refuse the offer unless their relationship with the hiring Sim is good. Hiring over the phone or computer provides a choice of six Sims to hire and displays their Skills, Talent Badges, and starting salary. A business can employ up to 8 Sims. A business owner can use the phone or computer to hire Sims from home. Members of the owner's household who are on the business lot can use the phone or computer to hire employees.

Sims that can be hired as employees may be either from the pool of townies (regular townies, Downtownies, Garden Club members, locals, tourists, and social group townies) or Sims that live in the neighborhood. When using the phone or computer to hire employees, Sims in any of those groups may appear in the hiring pool, and Sims in the Family bin may also appear. If a Sim being hired already has a job, hiring that Sim will force them to quit their job.

Most of the time, when the Garden Club members, locals, tourists, or social group townies appear in the hiring pool, they will not have any talent badges at all. This could be advantageous or disadvantageous, depending on the player's view. They might require on-the-job experience in order to gain more advanced talent badges. On the other hand, if they do have talent badges, that will raise their required salary, even if those badges are not useful for the business.

Managing employees

Assigning tasks

After employees are hired, they can be called into work by using the open/closed sign. Once they arrive on the lot, they must be assigned a task.

Assigning the right employees to the right task

Assignment	Associated Skill	Associated Personality	Associated Badge
Barista	?	?	?
Be Stylist	Cleaning	Neat	Cosmetology
Be Masseuse			No badge
DJ	?	?	?
Arrange Flowers	Creativity	Playful	Flower Arranging
Fishing			Fishing
Prepare Meals	Cooking		No badge
Garden	Cleaning		Gardening
Sculpt	Creativity		Pottery
Restock	Body	Active	Restocking
Ring up sales	Logic	Serious	Register
Craft Robots	Mechanical		Robotics
Selling	Charisma	Outgoing	Sales
Sewing	Creativity		Sewing
Tend Bar	?	?	?
Make Toys	Mechanical		Toy Making
Tidy Up	Cleaning		No badge

Breaks and sending employees home

Giving employees a break is great for when they get hungry, bored, or have to go to the restroom. An employee's mood is symbolized in the small dot above their head. Yellow and red dots indicate employees in a bad mood; these employees should be put on break or sent home, or they may quit. If their mood is still red after they've been on break for a while, the best thing to do is send them home for the day.

Raising wages and promoting employees

Raising Wages - Changing an employee's wages is easy, and is important to keep employees happy as they gain skills and badge levels. Sims with higher skills and/or talents demand a higher salary, and Sims who are underpaid may refuse to come in. If employees are too underpaid, or underpaid for too long, they'll quit. If they are "fairly paid" they will stay longer.

Promoting (Community Business Only) - Promoting an employee to Manager allows a business owner to make a profit from a business without being at the business. Only employees with 5 talent points (Bronze Badge = 1, Silver Badge = 2, Gold Badge = 3) are eligible for promotion. Promotion is done by selecting a business owner, clicking on the employee, and selecting management/promote to manager. If FreeTime is installed, a playable employee who receives a hobby chance card outcome that results in a promotion will be promoted to manager even if he or she does not have 5 talent points. Once promoted, the new manager becomes selectable. Managers can be told to Mind the Store, meaning that a business owner need not visit the business for it to function.

Firing and laying off employees

Firing - Firing an employee is necessary when that employee is not doing his or her job properly, or is failing to follow instructions about basic procedures.

Laying off Employees - Laying off employees is the same as firing, but lets them down easy and does not make them angry with the Owner. Laying off is also useful for good employees that aren't needed anymore, or employees the Owner cannot afford to keep.

Checking in

If a business has at least one manager, that business owner must check in with their businesses once a day to ensure that everything continues to run smoothly, or the business may not make a decent profit, or may even lose money. If a Sim owns more than one business with a manager, all businesses can be Checked at the same time. Checking In is done over the phone, by selecting the Business/Check in with Business or Check in with all Businesses. The Business Rank of a business determines how long it will take for a Sim to Check In - the higher the rank, the less time it will take to check in.

Playable employees

When playing a family in which one or more Sims is an employee, those Sims will work from 9am to 5pm (0900 to 1700), Monday through Friday, and will be paid a daily salary based on their hourly wages. They will receive paid vacation days, pregnancy leave, and parental leave on the same basis as Sims in regular career tracks. Like Sims in regular career tracks, they may bring other Sims home from work. While those Sims will also be employees, they may not be employed at the same business. If FreeTime is installed, they may receive work-related hobby chance cards.

The Sims 4

The ability to create and maintain a business, including the ability to hire and manage employees, returns in The Sims 4: Get To Work. It is used again in The Sims 4: Dine Out to manage restaurants.

Hiring

Hiring employees done by using the "Manage Employees" area of the Business Panel. The button will open up a window showing Sims who are employed by the business, and Sims available for hire. Both tabs show a picture of each Sim, along with that Sim's skills, and will show the skills needed for the job.

For retail employees, it will show work ethic (how well they will follow instructions), sales ability (talking to customers), and maintenance skills (cleaning, restocking, etc.). Retail employees will arrive at work, and must be assigned a job in one of those three areas by the owner of the business, or a member of their household.

For restaurant employees, there are three jobs, Host, Waiter, and Chef. Each job has a separate tab on the lists of employees and Sims available for hire. All three jobs require two skills. Hosts will need Comedy and Charisma, waiters will need Charisma, and Fitness, and chefs will need Cooking and Mixology.

Firing

Employees can be fired at any time for any reason. Firing an employee who does not live up to expectations or will not do their job helps the business. Sometimes, the Sim who was fired will insult the employer, but even if they don't, firing an employee will always leave a negative relationship between the owner and employee.

Management

In either type of business, employees will have moods that depend on how they're being treated and how long they work. The owner must pay close attention to their employees' thoughts when they are on the lot or at the owner's home. As in Open for Business, owners can promote or demote employees, which raises or lowers their level and salary.

Employees of retail businesses will have no primary role, until the owner assigns one. They can be assigned to chatting up customers, ringing up customers, restocking, or cleaning.

Employees of restaurants will get straight to work at the job they have been hired for. As they will often have low skills, they may be slower and make more mistakes. For example, hosts may take too long to seat customers, waiters may drop food, and chefs may cook poorly. However, owners can offer their employees money for training once their shift is over. This can be brief training (§150), standard training (§600), or extensive training (§1500). Once an employee has returned from training, their skills will have risen considerably.

Employee Satisfaction

An example of Employee Satisfaction from a financial report of a restaurant.

Sometimes, an employee will be unsatisfied with their job. Owners or their household members can fix this by praising the employee for their work. Criticizing employees for their work will make them work better, but lower their mood. At times, praising an employee for their work isn't enough, and the employee will ask for a promotion. In this case, not promoting the employee will lower the employee's relationship with the employer, and the employee may even quit.

In both retail and restaurants, employee behavior is a reflection of four things: Mood, Skill, Work Hours, and Pay/Promotion.

Mood: Mood is very important for an employee. An employee's mood can affect how well they do their job, and could affect other customers' moods as well. Owners can improve an employee's mood by praising them or by telling them a joke to lift their spirits.

Skill: No matter how good an employee's mood is, they still need to have the skills required for their job. Improving an employee's skill can easily be done by having the owner give them money to train once they are off their shift. After a day, the employee will return to work with a higher skill.

Work Hours: After 8-10 hours on the job, employees will begin to feel tired, work and this will greatly affect their mood and skill. This can be tracked by monitored by the employees' thoughts. To make the employees feel happy, close the business for the day, which will make the customers and employees go home.

Pay/Promotion: A check is given out at the end of the day to all employees, and sadly, after repetitive top notch work, employees will be saddend to see all their hard work is still giving them the same amount of pay every day. Employees that won't get their desired pay are risked on quitting. To make sure the employees feel happy, make the owner give them a promotion in which will make them get a better pay and more willing to come in every day to work.

Promoting and Demoting

All employees can be promotes and demoted a level, all employees start at level 1 and cannot be demoted, from there they can be promoted multiple times or demoted back all the way to level 1.

In Retail Businesses, employees start at §19/hour and go up to §51/hour or more when promoted

In Restaurant Businesses, employees have salaries based on their job, Hosts at level 1 get §3, at level 2 §6, at level 3 §12, at level 4 §20, and at level 5 §30. Waiters at level 1 get §2, at level 2 §5, at level 3 §9, at level 4 §16, and at level 5 §25. And finally Chefs at level 1 get §7, at level 2 §12, at level 3 §17, at level 4 §30, and at level 5 §50.

Playable Employees

Sims apart of the household that owns a Business can pitch into the family business and do the jobs instead of hiring NPC's to do the job. This is very beneficial as they don't need to be paid and allows the player full control over their business.

However, this only applies to Retail Businesses, it is impossible for Sims of the owners household to replace the needed jobs such as Host, Waiter, or Chef, as it is a requirement to hire them through the Manage Employees tab.