Perhaps the hardest part of developing a small business is building a strong staff. Your business model is simplest in the very beginning, when it's just you and maybe a couple of collaborators building a product and selling it; eventually, though, your company will start to grow, and you'll need to bring people on board who can help.
Perhaps the hardest part of developing a small business is building a strong staff.
Finding the right talent can be difficult. Who's talented enough? Will they have a good grasp of your company's long-term vision? Can they fit well with the people you already have? Answering all these questions is crucial for growing your business in a responsible way.
If you want your growth to go well, you need to recruit effectively. This isn't just a one-time thing - it's a constant, never-ending responsibility for an effective small business leader.
You can't ever stop recruiting
When you have the right attitude to recruiting talent, you kind of end up treating it the same as cash flow - it's a constant focus, fundamental to the day-to-day success of your business. According to Bankrate, companies are at their best when they're always in recruitment mode, constantly looking for talented people who might help.
"The moment you're done hiring, you should be keeping your antennae up for the future," said Joe Kennedy, author of The Small Business Owners Manual. "That's something that flexible smaller companies can do that bigger firms, often weighted down with policies and procedures, cannot."
Even if you don't immediately have a job open on your staff, you should still be on the lookout for recruits. That way, when you do discover an opening, you can spring to action quickly, and you'll be ready to fill the role with a strong candidate from your talent pipeline.
Make the hiring process fun again
Recruiting might be a constant focus for your business, but that doesn't mean it has to be a chore. In fact, some of the most successful companies are able to make recruiting fun by mixing in flexible new strategies that tap into modern technology.
Using mobile games is one way to make the hiring process enjoyable.Australian Government research has noted, for example, that many businesses today are using gamification and recruitment videos as regular tools for attracting applicants. This way, the process is more fun than simply filing a bunch of paperwork like resumes and cover letters. This helps build a sense of candidate engagement and brand loyalty for the future.
In addition to looking for basic job qualifications, companies have also been able to engage candidates by asking them about their "soft" skills as well as "hard" ones. Someone might be talented in the workplace; they might also be adept as a swimmer or guitarist or pastry chef. Letting them share this side of their personality will help make the recruiting process more pleasant.
Of course, there's one major caveat to all of this - none of this recruiting and hiring is possible if you've got a pile of unpaid invoices on your desk rather than money in the bank.
To make good hires, you need cash
There's no way around this. If you want to continually add talented people to your staff, you need to have the working capital to pay them. This is tough to do if you're struggling with cash flow issues as customers are sluggish to pay the money they owe.
Fortunately, there's a solution to this problem, and it's invoice finance. If you can't collect the cash you're owed, turn to an invoice finance provider and secure a backup source of funding. This way, you don't have to worry about customers who might take weeks or months to pay up. Regardless, you can get the cash you need today.
If you'd like to learn how Earlypay's Invoice Finance & Equipment Finance can help you boost your working capital to fund growth or keep on top of day-to-day operations of your business, contact Earlypay's helpful team today on 1300 760 205, visit our sign-up form or contact [email protected].