I’m reading a fantastic book: “The Slight Edge” from Jeff Olson. This book is about turning simple disciplines into massive success and happiness. A must-read for sure! It’s the little things that matter most – build your business 1 step at at time.
As you’re building your business and developing your services or products, you’ll soon realize you can’t do it all by yourself. You’ll also realize that turning simple disciplines into actions matters more than you think!
Outsourcing human resources to an HR specialist is one discipline that will pay off really quickly.
The little things matter most: hiring is expensive, so plan ahead
Hiring new staff is expensive. As a small business owner, it’s difficult to gauge when you really need a new employee, and whether they should be full-time employee or a contractor.
You need to plan and prepare well in advance of your actual need to hire. If you don’t plan properly, you’ll to hire too fast. If you hire the wrong candidate, you’ll have to do it all over again! Can you really afford to waste time and money on hiring the wrong fit for your business?
Get support from an HR specialist early on
Talent considerations should start upstream with respect to the business strategy. Once a business strategy is established, talent must be front and center in terms of implementation.
What’s your business strategy? Have you identified your future talent needs? Have you assessed your current talent inventory? Are you aware of your current talent gaps and your strategies to close them?
What doesn’t get measured doesn’t get done
Develop metrics in order to sharpen your people plans. Start working on a SWOT analysis as soon as possible. What are your business strengths? What are your business weaknesses? What business opportunities are laying ahead? How about the threats to your business?
Write your answers down. Develop a metric and make sure you meet the deadlines set forth.
Preparing your human resources needs in advance, whether immediate or in the future, will help you understand what to look for and when the right time to hire is. It will provide you with a competitive advantage. Those are the small things that might not matter today, but when done right, will make a huge difference for you. A SWOT analysis template is available on our website.
