While there are many demons that visit business owners in bed at night, one ranks consistently at or near the top of the nightmare list – staff.
I see staffing as consistently presenting four challenges to businesses:
• The empty seat kills your momentum. You know you could take on more business or expand locations, if only you had more qualified staff on board to deliver.
• The empty seat erodes service. You aren’t quite servicing your customers as you promised, and they can take their hard-won business elsewhere.
• You, and often your other key staff, spend time, money and angst on staffing issues with no lasting impact on the staffing problem, except distracting you from what you are best at – running your business.
• You and your key staff have to work harder and longer to pick up the slack of empty seats, burning them out and eroding morale.
‘Empty seats’ are also the poor hiring decision you made that has you stuck with a chronic under performer – a figurative empty seat.
Here are some practical lessons for SME’s that can actually make a difference.
Write down exactly why you need to hire a new staff member. Are your people working too long or their work not getting done? Is there an opportunity to grow or can you service your customers better with an extra person?
Get into the nitty gritty of tasks. Define what each of your current staff do and what tasks aren’t being done that need to be.
Then allocate the tasks to your current staff based on their strengths and preferences. With the tasks that are left over, do you have a coherent job description for the new hire? You may need to re-allocate tasks more than once to come up with a workable mix.
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At this point, you can determine if the estimated workload of that job description requires full-time, part-time, casual, or even a job-sharing arrangement. Thinking outside the box here can really open up the number of potential recruits for your position, remembering that the majority of available roles aren’t flexible enough to accommodate the preferences of mature workers, working students and working mums. If yours is, you can find yourself someone of exceptional quality who is equally happy that they have found work that fits in with their lifestyle.
Now define what skills, experience, and the temperament a person will need to have in order to perform the new role. Be realistic here. If you are not going to be able to train the person, and the task is technical in nature or difficult to pick up, you aren’t doing yourself or the new hire any favours by glossing over the need for them to either already have experience in the task, or have related experience that can be quickly reapplied.
Similarly, if the tasks are easy to pick up and/or your environment lends itself to personal mentoring by current staff, don’t insist on candidates having performed the role in the past. Do not gloss over temperament – if there is one thing that all good hiring managers have in common, it is that they test for and hire according to a persons character. The right type of person will usually adapt to any role, because it will be important to them to do a good job and take pride in their work.
How will you find the right type? Flyers on bulletin boards in places they will congregate and your own premises are options, as are job ads on the internet or the local paper. Referrals are a great source of potential candidates. A recruitment agency specialising in a particular discipline, or generalist firms should be considered. Once you know where to find them, the how becomes a lot clearer.
How will you sell the role? Define what’s good about it, where can it lead to and why it will appeal to various groups. For example, a part-time bookkeeping role may suit a mature-age worker for extra income, some people contact while keeping them mentally sharp. If you know who you are targeting, the appealing points of the role become easier to define and articulate.
What will you need to pay this person? This is influenced by four things: their tasks, their experience, the demand for them in the employment market, and what you can afford to pay! All of these factors push and pull against each other until you get a salary range you are comfortable with.
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To select the ideal candidate, I strongly recommend formulating a two-step process. One tests for behaviours, the other for technical ability. The best way to test for behaviour is to ask behavioural-based interview questions. For example, ‘Tell me about a time where you really disagreed with your co-worker on how to approach a task, and how you resolved it?’ The questions should relate to each of the behaviours you outlined in your job description.
In terms of technical ability, if you or someone in the business is also a technician you will know what questions to ask to test for this. If the role is not technical, a short practical exercise, related to the tasks they will need to perform in the role, is a great way to observe how the candidate will approach a task. Ask the same questions and set the same tasks for every single candidate. You must take your emotion out of the process and try to make a rational decision, and the only way to do this is to ensure they all jump through the same hoops.
Once you have selected the preferred candidate, you MUST check references. Some people are great interviewers but terrible employees – only a previous employer will know.
Congratulations, you have just hired someone. If you got this right, you have a person with a clear role, a practical workload, the right background, realistic expectations about the job, and they are being paid the right amount of money. You are also more than 50 percent of the way to making your task of retaining them that much easier.
* Liam Ovenden is managing director of recruitment specialist RPO Group (www.rpogroup.com.au)
* The opinions expressed in this article are those of the author, and don’t necessarily reflect the opinions of DYNAMICBUSINESS.com or the publishers.
