Four Keys to Hiring For Small Businesses

Hiring employees is an important step in the process of building your business. When helping companies position their company for a small business loan and update their business plan, US Business Finance Corp puts particular attention on the employees and management – a key potential strength for any business. Sometimes it seems that a minor degree in psychology would be the best help. Actually, understanding people is a tremendous aid and the following tips may just be the ingredient you need to help you increase your workforce without increasing your employment problems.

1. Recognize your own weaknesses. No one has the 360 degrees of strengths needed to run a business. By hiring people who know more than you to handle the weak areas strengthens the company. Since most entrepreneurs are natural salesmen, making sure you have a good bookkeeper to handle payroll and taxes saves you time and trouble.
2. Set an employment hiring plan that matches the needs of the business. Often small businesses start with several part-time employees to keep overhead low. But once an employee is trained and knowledgeable about your business, they become a key asset to your marketing and sales, not just a payroll expense. Figure a plan to segue into full-time work and the benefits you will institute to keep your labor assets. By hiring employing people that can be delegated day-to-day duties, owners are freer to continue using their time and entrepreneurial strength of building the company.
3. Set measurable employee standards. From the very outset, make it clear to your employees what they are accountable for and train them to do the job. People always respond to how they are measured. Make sure you couch your goals in a positive way – a negative goal simply creates that vacuum which nature doesn’t like. By disciplining the business to train and convey standards, you will be able to quickly assess whether an employee will measure up to the business’s needs or if they “have a calling elsewhere”.
4. Understand the baseline of good employer-employee relations. The two key ingredients to having a solid employee base is to constantly monitor your actions and measurements to see that they both value the employee (and their creative insights) and give the employee security. Studies have shown that the drivers of employee low morale and its attendant negative behavior are where employees are not valued and their job security is always in question. By establishing principle-based standards of operation, where employment is not hanging on the thread of the employer’s whim, employees can both operate to their maximum capacity and “ride for the brand”.
5. Building a solid management team. Research has shown that businesses with a management team versus a sole proprietor are the most successful. A key to maximizing the management teams talent is to have the decision-making steps match the company’s needs. Most top-flight talent leaves when the decision-making process is undermined by sole owner decision making. Then the safety net of other people’s perspectives and strengths is short-circuited by the owner’s blind spots.

These are some simple points on an area that is the subject of many books. However, these keys can spur your thinking into what areas of employee hiring and HR practices you may wish to pursue further.

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Filed under: Management and HR, Your New Business