Hiring employees can be tricky business. That goes double if you own a small business, and every addition to your staff can make a huge impact. Identifying the needs of your team, finding the right people to mesh with your business’ culture, and training your hires is daunting enough.
Then there’s the process of taking care of your team, so that everyone is happy and you don’t wind up needing an attorney for employment disputes to intercede for either party.
The cost of hiring the wrong employees or failing to keep your proverbial “ship” sailing steady is grave. This guide will give you an introduction to some of the things you’ll need to consider as you expand your business and start to take on new employees.
Step One: Making Sure The Time Is Right
One misstep small business owners often make is trying to expand at the wrong time. Some signs that point to the time being right, though, are if you find yourself turning down new clients/projects because you don’t have the capacity for them, or if you’re at a point where you could support opening a second location (but don’t have the manpower for it at present). If the factors are right, you’ll need to start determining what kind of employees you’ll need, and figuring out how to properly compensate them in your financial projections.
Step Two: Screening New Hires
Not just anyone will fit the bill for your team, so you need to develop your process for narrowing down potential candidates for the slots you want to fill. This starts with a job posting, in which you’ll want to be as thorough as possible about what each role entails and what qualifications you’re looking for in a potential hire.
After advertising your job(s), you’ll be receiving plenty of resumes, so you’ll need to know how to review these to continue narrowing down your search. You’ll also need to conduct thorough interviews so that you can learn more about your candidates and determine which, if any, will make for the right fit on your growing team.
Step Three: Taking Care Of The Team
Once you’ve gotten around to actually hiring new members to work on your staff, you’ll need to make sure you’re taking care of them so that all runs smoothly.
Salary is one part of their compensation you’ve probably already considered (make sure you have the cash flow to pay them properly), but there are other considerations you’ll want to keep in mind as well, like providing health insurance, flexibility in their schedules, free uniforms and the possibility of telecommuting on certain days so they can maintain that flexibility.
Remember, happy employees make for a productive workspace, so when you take care of your team, they take care of you in return.