Recruitment is a headache for even the most successful businesses. From taking a punt on a new recruitwho may turn out to be not quite right, to finding enough resources in the budget to actually go ahead and take someone on, the whole process is laden with potential pitfalls. But there are ways for even the smallest of businesses to ensure that they get the vital talent that they need. This article will take a look at what options your small business has.
Prioritise first
If you’ve got a lot of tasks to complete and not much staffing budget available, your first move should always be to prioritise as much as you can. If you’ve got a product launch coming up, say, you need to ensure that you have enough logistics staff on hand to get the item to customers: while a sophisticated marketing function may come in handy here, a skeleton marketing staff may have to do in order to get the show on the road elsewhere. Admin staff can be a real help, meanwhile, but consider whether or not your senior employees could book their own transport and manage their own diaries if admin staff are a cash drain. Some functions, however, can never be sacrificed: for example, you’ll always need to ensure you have an efficient payroll team.
Use contractors
A contractor is someone who provides services for your firm which mimic those provided by a permanent, full-time employee – but on a much more flexible basis. Instead of working until one party declares the arrangement over, contractors can work for a pre-defined period of time and then simply leave and move on. Contractors are especially useful during those periods of downtime when there simply aren’t enough staff on hand to get a big project, like a website relaunch or a product release, completed. Using contractor services for agencies can take some of the potential problems, including managing the administrative side of payment, out of the equation for you.
Double up
People who create and work for small businesses tend to be talented. After all, the rigours of life in a busy yet compact workplace require some skill to navigate – and for a manager or business owner, this represents a great opportunity. If you’ve got a finance team member who loves Instagram, for example, why not ask if they’d be willing to do some social media marketing work one afternoon a week? While it may not always be possible to match sufficient talent to a vacant post, you may be able to be a little more creative with roles and identify some areas for crossover.
Running a small business is far from simple, and nowhere is that truer than when the issue of recruitment rears its head. With many start-ups finding that recruiting new staff members is expensive, difficultor simply too time-consuming, it’s no surprise that many become disillusioned. Instead, though, it’s wise to focus on actionable solutions – like using contractors, drawing up a priority list and more.