Finding reliable, motivated, passionate people who believe in your dream is an essential task for any business owner. Putting these people in roles that will allow them to do what they are best at and flourish is what will allow you to grow your budding enterprise into a long-term sustainable entity. A successful business owner finds the right people and then instills a passion for achieving the business’ goals into those people. You too can find these people and empower them to do great things using these tips:
How to find them
1. Take your Time – It’s important when you’re hiring to be highly selective, so make sure you give yourself enough lead time. A decision based on desperation can be very costly. Interviewing, however, is free. You should use your existing business network, the internet and word of mouth to get good applicants and take your time when interviewing them.
2. Avoid Snap Decisions - Meet with your candidates multiple times and try to have several people within your organization meet with them as well. If you are a company of one right now, you might arrange for your attorney, accountant or business consultant to cross paths with an applicant you are seriously considering, by setting up back to back appointments. It’s always good to get a second opinion when it comes to hiring. You may also want to give job candidates a personality test so you can fully consider whether or not the existing staff with be compatible with this person and if the role with optimize their strengths and minimize their weaknesses.
3. Hire the Employee on a Contract Basis – It is very common today to hire an employee on a contract basis for three months. That way you can each evaluate whether or not the relationship will be a fruitful one. At the end of those three months you can discuss going forward as a team or parting ways. It is also common to give a slight pay increase at the end of those three months or have benefits kick in at that point if you and the employee decide to continue working together.
How to get them to shine
After you have hired a good employee the next step is to get them to do great things.
1. Give them a Development Plan - Each position should have a training plan. You should hire people with the goal of promoting them up 2 levels and have a plan for how you are going to cultivate them to be ready to take on additional responsibilities. Some of the best CEOs are the ones that started as interns, learned the business inside and out and worked their way up in the company.
2. Give them Feedback on Their Progress - Have regular progress discussions, both formal and informal. Rather than waiting until the end of the year each year to discuss performance in a stiff and sometimes intimidating environment, make this an ongoing and less formal dialogue. Everyone dreads performance reviews, and more and more data suggests that they are an ineffective tool. However, progress discussions can be done at an appointed time or on the fly. They can be a way for your employees to air their worries and grievances and can be a way for you to outline the professional progression that you expect from the employee.
3. Coach them to Success - When trying to bring out the best in people, use a coaching management style instead of a dictatorial style. Take the opportunity to use a specific situation to open up performance conversations. Rather than talking about performance in an abstract sense, make it more concrete as to what was done well and what could be done better.
4. Match Their Role to What They Are Good At - Rather than trying to fix people and make them conform to the job, focus on bringing out the best in people and creating jobs that do that. Identify their strengths and what they enjoy doing most. You will have far greater performance success and retention if you get people doing what they enjoy.
5. Make Work Fun - Create fun jobs. Do what you can to take the mundane out of the job. Technology makes it possible to automate much of the redundant and boring work, why not take advantage of it? Get your people doing the highest value-add activities you can and you will make the company more profitable as well. People appreciate being treated like people. Celebrate a person or an event at work and take a little time out of a workday and show your employees that you care about them.
If you take these tips and utilize them in your workplace, you will begin to see less turnover and more employee productivity in the months and years to come. By hiring happy, hardworking employees you will keep them with you longer and watch them grow and flourish with your business. To learn more about how to get good people and get them to do great things, visit www.flourishingbusiness.com.
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