Many small business owners fear taking on staff. This sounds odd. After all, becoming an employer just goes to show that you’re making a success of your business and that things are taking off. But there is still a preconception that by taking on staff, you are losing a little control of your company. People assume that when you do everything yourself, you can keep an eye on every single transaction, process, and small-scale decision. This is true. But at the end of the day, you won’t be able to keep this up for long. The more you work stretch, the lower quality your work will become, and your business will quickly begin to suffer. Instead, it might be time to accept that by taking on help, you aren’t necessarily sacrificing control. Here’s how to negotiate the process best.
Managing Your Own Time
The first thing to establish is whether you actually need staff or not. Sometimes, after a little self-analysis, you will realise that you actually just need to manage your own time better and balance your priorities. So, as soon as you feel like work is building up and becoming even remotely overwhelming, take a look at your schedule. Are you using all of the time available to you during the working day as efficiently as possible? You should be using every second to be as productive as possible. However, if you feel that you are doing so, but still find that you are exceeding your set working hours or falling behind on deadlines, it’s time to take on some form of help!
Choosing Your Staff
Full-Time Employees
Full-time employees are the most common type of employees. Generally speaking, when there’s work to be done, it’ll take a full working day to ensure that everything is completed to a good standard. While your team will start off small while you’re establishing your company and brand, it should grow as your expand. So it’s important to monitor what your staff are doing and when any individual has to regularly exceed their job roles and expectations, it’s likely that you need to take on extra employees.
Part-Time Employees
Part-time employees are much alike full-time employees in that they will have a contract and you need to provide them with the agreed hours’ worth of work. When considering part-time employees, it’s important to remember that while they differ from full-time staff members in hours, they still have similar rights. You cannot treat these individuals less favourably just because they aren’t in as often or for longer shifts.
Extra Personnel
Extra personnel are brilliant when you have occasional influxes of extra work. Extra personnel come in for a day at a time or to complete a single job. This could be when you have sales on, or during particularly busy periods when people tend to purchase and spend more, such as Christmas. In these situations, you probably don’t want to take on permanent staff, as their employment won’t prove profitable in the long run. However, the extra hands provided by extra personnel will tide you over. Use reliable Extra Personnel Recruitment services to find the perfect fit!
Managing Your Staff
Taking on staff isn’t the end of the journey. You need to manage your staff appropriately too! The first step in this process is adequate training. By training your staff to a high standard, you can trust them to complete every aspect of work that you set them effectively. Training is where you assure quality and can add a signature seal to the way that your staff go about doing things. Second, you need to ensure that they have access to all of the equipment that they require to complete their work effectively. This can vary massively. Sometimes staff will need particular, up-to-date computer software to work. Sometimes they will require more basic items, such as step ladders to be able to reach high shelves. Third, you need to monitor their performance. It’s always better to reward than punish. So add incentives and bonuses to your work scheme. Offer something special to the staff member who brings in the most leads or makes the most sales within a given time period. Maintain this process. Many business owners make the mistake of limiting their efforts to the period when they first take a staff member on, then slack down the line.
As you can see, you can still maintain great control over a company when becoming an employer or taking staff on. It’s only logical! How else do all of the big names in the industry manage it? By following the above steps!
