Will I need to employ people?

During your business journey, you should continually identify your people requirements. Too many business owners try and do it all themselves and although some may achieve it, this can create a vicious circle that stiffles growth.

When starting a business or when you want to expand, you will need to consider how to best resource the planned workload. Your considerations could include reorganisation, outsourcing, hiring temporary staff, obtaining training for yourself and any existing staff or recruiting new employees.

Before you take on people and the committed costs involved, you should understand whether you really need to recruit and if this matches the objectives of the business.

Recruitment should not be an unplanned decision just because the current workload suggests a need. You should consider if the current work going to be consistent over a period of time, profitable enough for the recruitment you are planning and if you were to take on people would the requirement be part or full time?

If or when you need people, you need to make sure that you have got the right people and that they do what you recruited them to do in delivering your planned objectives. Most successful entrepreneurs will acknowledge how key it is to have a reliable and skilled team around you.

When considering your people requirements you need to look at what skills your business needs and plan how best to bring them into the team.
What is your skill gap? What skills do you need to improve the business?
These will be role specific skills such as marketing, finance, production, etc but also consider how important the person specific skills are to your business such as the ability to build relationships, a positive attitude, pressure management, their commitment to the business etc.

Planning what people your business needs involves: deciding if you should employ staff; planning how to get the right people; and then planning how you are going to train them.

An employee can be defined as a full-time or part-time worker, a casual worker or a director.

Employing people has risks, costs and responsibility. At the start up stage, I would suggest that if you cannot identify or sometimes afford the right person, then first consider outsourcing activities that are not core to your business.

In summary to maximise any recruitment and the return on the investment, I suggest you:

  • Work out what skills and people you need.
  • Decide which ways of taking on people best suit the business.
  • If employing people is a consideration then review the advantages and disadvantages of this.
  • Plan how you will find the right people
  • Understand how you will decide who to employ.
  • Know the value of the role to the business to help decide a remuneration level
  • Know the detail of any role and how to communicate your expectation so that they deliver the intended result.
  • Create an induction plan for all new recruits showing the role in detail, covering the legal requirements, your company philosophy and your expectations
  • Decide on a training plan for the people you employ

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