I’m a small business – how do I look after my employees?
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Running a small business is often very different to running a larger company – the challenges are often different, defined by differences in scale, legal requirements and financial stakeholders. But both usually have one thing in common: people.
One of the biggest steps any small business will make is taking on its first employee. Often it’s a financial risk, and it brings with it a whole new set of responsibilities that as a business owner you have no option but to accept.
Suddenly, you’re not just having to think about yourself and how you interact with your clients and customers. Now you have to consider how you hire someone, how you reward someone, how you develop someone and how you retain someone.
And of course, the bigger you get, the more these considerations and responsibilities are magnified.
Eventually – hopefully – you’ll get to a point where those issues are just too big for you to handle on your own, and you’ll then need to be engaging someone like me to advise you and look after the practicalities of managing your employees.
But before that – as you’re growing and trying to expand your capacity – how do you manage your first few employees effectively?
Here are some things to consider.
1. It all starts before you even start looking for your first hire
It sounds obvious when you say it out loud, but having a happy, productive and valued team can only be achieved if you hire the right people for your business.
That means you need to get your first advert (and every advert thereafter) right, identifying the key skills you need in the person your employ, determining the scope and remit of the role they will be appointed to, and looking ahead to see how you expect that role to develop in the future.
That means developing some sort of crystal ball to consider how your business, its activity and your customers are likely to change in the short to medium term. How will demand change? How will your business process need to adapt? What sort of flexibility do you need in your team or teams?
When the government decides to build a new road, it doesn’t design and build that road for the volume of traffic that will use it in a year’s time when it’s completed. Instead, it models future traffic demand and builds a road that has the capacity to meet demand 5, 10 or even 20 years from now.
If you hire people who can grow with your business and who are agile enough to flex with consumer behaviour, there’s a good chance you’ll hang onto them long enough for them to make a positive difference to the health of your company.
2. Be clear in what you expect from them – and allow them to be clear in what they expect from you
Honesty is always the best policy when it comes to managing people. Bosses who are firm, but fair and straightforward will always enjoy better staff relations than those who are a good laugh, but always move the goalposts.
Most employees will respond positively to clear communication around roles and responsibilities, reward and recognition, and development and opportunity.
Hiring the right person for your business by promising them the Earth, will only ensure they move on quickly – and you won’t get the best out of them while they’re with you, because they’ll resent being duped into joining you.
Similarly, if you don’t know what they expect from you, it’s impossible for you to manage those expectations constructively. Encouraging them to share the experience they expect to have as an employee is an easy way to make sure you’re both on the same page.
3. Training, training, training – and development
Every member of your team should have a clear development plan and be part of a structured appraisal process.
If you hire with the aim of retaining that employee – and why wouldn’t you? – then you need to understand how you will create opportunities for that person to grow within your organisation.
Whether you think they might be a future CEO or simply a brilliant team leader, they’re going to need to learn skills they don’t currently have.
Develop a training plan, discuss their ambitions and career objectives and then agree how you will deliver the opportunities to learn and develop so that their own aspirations are as much in their own hands as in yours.
It’s also worth assigning them a mentor when they join the business so they can be encouraged and nurtured in the early stages of their time with you.
4. Allow your people to share in the decision-making process
Even in the most hierarchical organisations, employees who feel they have no investment in what and how decisions are made will eventually become discontented and disassociated.
Top-down leadership is all well and good, but to be successful, it needs to not only acknowledge the concerns of the teams it affects, but also embrace the new thinking that will drive your business forward.
The very nature of how small businesses tend to start – one person with a vision and their own way of doing what their business does – means they are more likely to be plagues by a ‘not invented here’ mentality – meaning that if the idea didn’t come from the management office, it has no merit.
In fact, innovation is often identified and driven by those at the coalface – and you exclude them from your decision-making at your peril.
5. Say thank you!
The biggest mistake many small business owners make is the one that’s easiest to avoid: recognising a job well done, or acknowledging when someone has gone above and beyond to achieve the desired outcome.
Usually this is not about ingratitude, but rather the fact that small businesses are almost always running just to keep up, and the niceties of personal and professional relationships can get left at the side of the road.
Knowing their work is appreciated and that they feel valued will almost always trump the remuneration in the monthly paycheck.
How you choose to recognise individual achievement is very much a matter of personal style – though I’d always recommend schemes that may prove divisive (e.g. those that might champion one person above other members of their team) – but do make sure you do it.
If you’d like to know more about how Constantia Consulting can help you to manage your employees effectively, and get the best from them, please do get in touch for an informal, no-obligation chat.
