Experiencing growth in your business is an awesome feeling. It tells you that people appreciate the value that you are creating for them. As your business grows, it increases the responsibilities and needs for you and your business. One of those needs is from a personnel standpoint.
Having hiring practices for your business is critical to the long term growth of your business for 3 reasons. The first reason is to ensure that your business is complying with the law. The other 2 reason have to do with building your team effectively and efficiently.
Without further ado, here are my top 3 reasons to have hiring practices for your small business.
Reason #1- Legal Issues
There are several legal issues that surround proper practices for your small business. One of those being how you bring those employee on. It’s important to understand what you can and can’t say in an interview for instance. It’s also important to have the necessary disclosures for them when they start. Forms such as non-compete, non-disclosure etc. should the employee terminate down the road.
How you deal with employees once they are part of the team is important. Do your employees understand that their employment is at at-will? Meaning they can quit or be terminated at any time. How do you handle disciplinary issues? Do you document employee interactions? Have you covered topics such as sexual harassment? Having any employee manual is a great way to ensure that these policies are in writing.
Ultimately proper legal practices keeps your business from going under from a law suit, having your customers stolen from a former employee and helps to ensure that you have recourse should a former employee share trade secrets.
Reason #2- Allows you to build an effective team
When you have hiring practices in place, you have a better idea of who you need on your team and what skills that they need to bring to the table for a given position. In his book, The E-Myth, Michael Gerber talks about mapping out the organizational structure of your company as you want it to look at the peak of its growth.
Putting this structure in place not only helps you assess your needs but it also starts the discussion, in your mind, about what type of people would fit best within your organization. You can start answering the question of what types of personalities you think would work best on your team. You will also increase your chances of landing top talent because you are more clear about the needs of your business and how potential employees fit into that.
Reason #3- Your hiring is more efficient
Picture this. Your business starts growing and, as with most entrepreneurs who experience rapid growth in their business, it’s always faster than they thought it would be. In any event, you need employees now. The question becomes, if you don’t have hiring practices in place already, when are you going to have time to get this done?
The answer is you probably wont have time and you will throw something together as quickly as you can but definitely not as quickly as if you already had an employee growth plan in place. Not only are you not efficient but since it’s thrown together you also violate reason #2 above. The good news is that this scenario can be avoided with a little preparation.
These 3 reasons for having hiring practices for your small business are hopefully reason enough for you to get your hiring practices in place for your business if you don’t have them in place already. I am curious to hear from business owners about their own experiences with hiring for their business. What recommendations would you make for small business owners?
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