Starting your own business is an exciting adventure, but as you grow, you need to employ the help of others. This is if you want to continue to move forward at the same rate. Hiring employees for the first time seems daunting, but comes with a plethora of benefits. These benefits include filling skill gaps in your business that enables it to grow and creating more opportunities. Hiring employees also increases brand awareness as more people are invested in your business and vision. Other benefits are additional support with your business and good company. Running your own business is often lonely. Employees certainly help the days be much more pleasant.
Top Tips for Hiring New Employees
Hiring the right new employees can be extremely difficult for new, small businesses, as the budget can often be small, and there is little room for error or time wasters. You need to find employees that are talented, skilled, and share the same values as you. If you are a small business looking for top-quality employees to help you accelerate your business growth to new heights, here are some top tips to help you get started, and onboard them efficiently.
Be clear on your business needs
Before hiring anyone, you must take time to get clear on your business needs. This will require a full review of where your business is now, and where you intend it to go within the next 5-10 years. This is an important step, because hiring an employee is a huge investment and one that needs to be aligned with your business, and finely balanced between where you are now and where you are going.
What does your business need to grow? What skills does that require? You may not know the answers, but it is an opportunity to research to find out and see what gaps in your business need filling, and most importantly, how you will fill them. You will also need to compare the skills gap with your finances and produce a budget. It may be that you can hire the skills you need straight away, or you need to create a strategy to stagger the hiring over time.
The budget will also help you to determine whether you are going to start by hiring someone on a full-time, part-time, or contract basis, and how many people your business is ready for. Remember it is not just the cost of paying someone, it is also the cost of training them, providing them with equipment, and many other factors.
Once you are clear, it will make the recruiting process much simpler for you, as it will be refined to what you need, rather than a hunt for something random that may or may not fit.
Create a clear job description
Once you have established what gaps your business needs to fill with employees, it is important to articulate the specifics into a job description. A job description needs to reflect exactly what you are looking for, to ensure it falls into the right hands, and you don’t get lots of irrelevant applications. Determine the skills you need, what you are expecting of them, the job title and responsibilities, their previous skills and experience, salary, and any other relevant information.
Make sure you research the current market, too. Regardless of what industry your business is in, things are constantly evolving, which means job roles, skill sets, expectations, and salary rapidly change.
Learn the process
Depending on where your business location is registered, and what your business structure currently is, there may be different rules that apply to hiring staff. It is therefore important to research the rules surrounding how hiring employees is going to impact your business. You will also need to consider who will manage the employees, what contract you will provide them with, how you will pay them, taxes, etc.
Next, look at how you are going to advertise for the available roles and get the word out there. Use recruitment websites, agencies, or post in any local networking groups you are a part of. This depends on your preferences, the relevance of each channel, and the time and budget you have to allocate to the recruitment process. The whole process is often time-consuming. Also, consider the demand for other companies hiring for similar roles and the availability of the skills in the market.
Prepare for the interview
Once you have a shortlist of candidates who applied for your role and you feel are suitable for your business, set up an interview and be fully prepared. The interview is an opportunity to meet the person behind the resume and to verify he or she has the skills, the right attitude, and communication skills that fit your business values.
It is also a good idea to set up more than one interview, as both of you may go away after the first with more questions. Hiring an employee is a huge investment, and you want to make sure you are making the right one, which is why spending a little more time and effort can be worthwhile.
One important measurement to check in potential candidates is their passion for the work they do and in anticipation of working with you. You can also consider how the person makes you feel. When you own a small business, it is likely that you will be working closely with this person and spending a lot of time together, so you need to be able to establish a good relationship and it needs to be a good fit for everyone involved.
An interview is also a great opportunity to talk about expectations. You should lay out your expectations right from the start, but also find out what their expectations are too, for example, what are they expecting from getting this job, from the business, from their career, from the role from you as a manager, etc.
Invest in their development
Once you have made an offer and hired your first phase of employees, it is vital that the time and effort spent on them does not stop there. Investing in them and their development is vital for your business growth as it will be a direct correlation. Not only does this set the tone for a motivated, productive, and eager employee, but it will also enable everyone to uphold the business mission and move things forward as a team. Along with a well-prepared orientation, it would also be a great idea to give your new employees onboarding packages. Swag Bar can help you with this to reduce the hassle of preparing for your new employees’ orientation.
Employees often feel undervalued, which can lead to high turnovers, which is not something small businesses can often budget for. By investing in their development from day one, you show them appreciation, and you boost employability in the future. Do this by setting aside time and budget to host training for your employees on a regular basis. Make this fun and engage by bringing in external parties, using technology to your advantage by using different tools and methods, such as an iPad Rental, or video tutorials, and incentivizing the training in a fun way.
Not just skills for the job, but also develop their communication and teamwork. This can help your business work more efficiently and much more engaged, and overall, increase your bottom line. When employees communicate better, it creates a much better environment for everyone in the office. Get to know your employees on a more personal level. Then tailor your management style and development training to them much better, to help them grow. You can do this by scheduling regular team bonding activities, or nights out, depending on the preferences of your team. It is important to include positive, fun aspects of work.
Equip your employees
You may hire employees with the right skills. However, if your business does not have equipment made accessible to them, they cannot work to the highest standard possible. Give them the tools needed to complete their jobs to high standards. Also, create comfortable workspaces and offer reasonable working hours. Make sure your business has up-to-date and working software and hardware available. Finally, ensure they have other relevant tools and equipment tto complete their jobs efficiently.
Also consider a method of communication that works best for all employees. One method is a regular team meeting, that enables you to connect with your employees. You see how they are doing and what they are working on. You find out how their workloads are going and what they need to better complete their jobs. Moreover, you can provide them with updates on the business so they can stay informed and keep their work aligned. If employees are not able to work properly, then efficiency, productivity, and morale decrease significantly. You also risk losing employees and your bottom line suffering as a result.
Conclusion
Hiring employees in your small business is challenging, costly, and time-consuming. With the right preparation, considering the process for recruiting employees and how to best manage them when onboard are vital. This helps you make the process much simpler. Moreover, it helps you to find the right employees to share your vision and grow the business.
