How to increase your workforce as your business grows

Congratulations, your small business is growing. You’ve achieved what all small business owners hope for when they start their enterprise. But now the real work begins. If you want your small business to keep growing, you have to provide the resources. You’ll need more capital, tools, skills and most importantly, more human resources, to ensure the continued success of your business. When done right, hiring new staff can give your business the crucial advantage to operate better, maintain growth and boost ROI. Here are some tips to help you along.

How to find the right person for the job

Hiring is a more complicated process than simply looking for the most affordable labour. It’s not supposed to feel quick or easy, but it’s not supposed to be overwhelming either. Start by following these guidelines:

• • Define the position clearly. Looking for someone to “pick up the extra slack” is not good enough. You need to get specific about the job description of the employee you hope to hire. Everything from the skills, qualifications and experience required, to the duties they will be expected to carry out, should be made clear from the beginning. This ensures that you get only relevant responses and you’ll be able to narrow them down a lot faster.

• • Get referrals from your staff. A referral from within the business is worth a lot more than a blind application. Your staff is able to frisk their network and use their insider intel to find candidates who will be appropriate fits for the business and what it requires from its employees.

• Get smart about recruiting. There are entire social networks and online services dedicated to making professional recruiting a more optimised process. Use these to your advantage and also make your online presence (including your website and social media profiles) attractive to prospective employees.

How to retain top talent

After you’ve worked hard to find excellent employees, you have to work even harder to keep them. A good employee retention strategy guarantees that you aren’t wasting time training employees just to lose them to your competitors.

• • Encourage growth and personal development. Your employees need to be assured that there are growth opportunities for them within your business so it helps to openly talk about promotions and to ask your employees what their aspirations are.

• • Upskill. Upskilling your employees not only improves the quality of work that they produce, it also shows them that there’s more to be gained from their employment than a salary.

• • Foster a positive company culture. Company culture can be a dealbreaker for prospective employees, with good reason. No one can produce quality work if they feel uncomfortable in the workplace. Maintaining a diverse, collaborative and healthy company culture has helped Paycorp find the talented people working here since 1999.

• Purpose. People tend to prefer to do work that matters and work that has a greater purpose. At Paycorp, our ultimate goal is connecting people to their money and businesses to their customers. Establishing a creed such as this motivates your employees to perform to their best of their abilities and to gain work satisfaction simply through doing their jobs.

Inspire, motivate and nurture your employees

Recognise and reward good performance and exemplary work with public praise and monetary reward. Challenge your employees with work that stimulates their wits, sharpens their skills and keeps them from becoming lazy or bored. Pair novices with mentors who can guide them and encourage innovative and unconventional thinking. Hiring new staff is a process every employer needs to become good at because it’s an integral part of business growth. Hopefully, our pointers have made it that much easier for you to welcome new members to your team.

To learn more about Paycorp’s journey, view our company profile here.