Business Owners: Help your employees grow your business – not cripple it

Whether employees are going to help grow or cripple your business starts with your hiring policy and extends to their onboarding, training and development.

As a business owner, you are ultimately responsible for the success – or otherwise – of the employee hiring and onboarding system you set up.

Below we look at a few of the problems that business owners face with this – and how you can go about solving them.

The problem with making reactionary hires

Unless you have a defined system for hiring people, you find yourself making reactionary hires in a panic, when the business starts to grow.

These can be problematical for the following reasons:

• You end up with the wrong people on the bus and in the wrong seats!
• Their skill set does not adequately meet the growing needs of the business
• Their general style does not match the job function
• Their personality does not suit the culture of the business

When an employee is not a good fit for the business in terms of skills or personality, it is unlikely that they will align to the vision of your business either.

Failing to onboard and train properly

If the employee does have the skills and personality but is not up-to-speed with getting the job done, take a look at your onboarding process.

For those of you who can remember your first week at new job, how you were welcomed to the company probably made a huge difference to how you settled in. Right?

Was there an onboarding process? Was it a positive experience? Or did you want to leave straight away?

In your business, do you have a documented process for “how we do it here”? Is this easy to find, understand, and use by all team members?

If you don’t have a good onboarding system with easy-to-follow processes documented, new hires will quickly become disengaged.

According to Gallup, people who use their strengths every day are six times more likely to be engaged on the job. But this can be difficult if you are spending a large proportion of your time looking for internal information or tracking down colleagues for help.

What’s the real cost of poor hiring & onboarding?

It’s not just the salary, super and insurance costs that impact your business. And it’s not even the other overheads attached to each new hire, such as IT and communications costs.

The costs of a poorly trained or wrong-fit hire can be far more than the cash cost of employing them.

What is the impact to your business of a lost customer? And how do you measure the cost of inefficiency by having the wrong person in a role?

How to turn it around

Firstly, don’t panic. If you’ve made some wrong hires, make the decision to terminate early and start again.

Take advice from an HR professional on your rights and obligations in respect of hiring and firing employees, to cover yourself legally.

Don’t keep throwing good money after bad. If the team member needs to change dramatically, it means you didn’t do your job properly during hiring.

You may have hired too quickly, without determining the requirements and outcome of the role; and without paying appropriate attention to detail.

Make your employees a key part of your overall business strategy

Having the right team members on board really can supercharge your business. But this won’t happen by accident or by being reactionary in times of high demand.

It requires careful planning. Firstly, consider the following questions:

• What functions need to be performed by employees and what kind of person do you need?
• How will hiring this person or creating this position add value to your business?
• How will it enable you to increase revenue profitably?

When you get this right, customer acquisition and management, product delivery, innovation, and efficiency can improve exponentially and help to grow your business.

When you are clear on what you want your business to achieve, consider the roles and skillsets required to make this happen. Identify the personality styles you required to achieve the optimal outcome in the role and cohesiveness with other team members.

Experienced advisers who understand the goals and needs of your business are invaluable in this process.

Involve them in the hiring process to maximise your success in finding the right matches. This level of planning can not only save thousands in cash costs from a bad hire; it will also save time and opportunities lost from hiring the wrong person and having to clean up the damage they leave behind!

Contact us for assistance with developing your hiring and onboarding system.

Or check out this podcast episode on HR issues.