Hi, and welcome to RootsChat

To answer the second part of your question ...
Also are there likely to be records anywhere at all about employees of Hartismere Union in the mid 1800's?
The standard place to look would be the Board of Guardians' Minute Books for the Hartismere Union. These are at the
Suffolk Record Office in Ipswich, but the
Workhouses website suggests that few records survive, and no minute books at all before 1907.
http://www.workhouses.org.uk/Hartismere/#RecordsNevertheless, you might want to email the record office and ask?
ipswich.ro AT suffolk.gov.uk
Staff records for the poor law unions are also held at the
National Archives, Kew. They are not online, so you would have to visit, or have someone go on your behalf.
First, look up your man in the staff registers in
MH 9/8http://discovery.nationalarchives.gov.uk/details/r/C1845711Once you have the date of his appointment, go to the relevant volume of Poor Law Correspondence for Hartismere, in
MH 12.
http://discovery.nationalarchives.gov.uk/results/r?_srt=3&_st=adv&_aq=hartismere+436&_cr1=MH12&_dss=range&_ro=any&search=rIf you are lucky, you may find his application letter, references, etc. There is little if any indexing in these volumes, so be prepared for a fair amount of reading.
There's a description of the school at Wortham + illustration here ...
http://www.workhouses.org.uk/education/workhouse.shtml (near foot of page)