Develop effective management and recruiting systems that show you how to recruit and keep the best people for your business.

Every business leader must make the most of every resource including people and provide them with rewarding, satisfying jobs and careers as they help you take your business towards its Strategic Intent.

Why is this important? It’s important because you can’t live in a vacuum if you want to build a successful business. The level of work you alone can do is limited by time and your own energy and resources. When you do it on your own, everything is dependent on you and all you’re doing is buying yourself a job…and you’re not building a business.

To achieve your dream, you must have on board, and bring on board, the right people who are engaged in the process with you, and engaged in the vision and you bring them along with you. You want to work with a group of people who are raring to go, who are going to bring you tons of customers, who will deliver your products and services to your customers in a way that keeps them coming back. You want these people to help make your business profitable and who will also eagerly spread your message. You want to attract and keep great people with attitudes and values that mesh with yours and you want to build your existing people into great people. This means focusing on the people you already have and the people you want to have in the future.

So we look at managing and hiring because you need to manage those already there and know the right way to recruit and hire new people as, and when, that becomes necessary for the growth of your business.

What do you need to do to make this happen?

When it comes to your employees, you need to see it from the other side. Your staff are people too, with their own aspirations, their own hopes and dreams. Understand what they’re looking for in a job. What they’re looking for in an employer. Not everyone wants to own and run their own business. Which I’m sure is a big relief to business owners.
These people are going to spend a lot of time at work, wherever that may be. Why would they not be looking for it to be enjoyable and stimulating? If you have people who are just wanting to clock on and clock off, you need first to look at yourself and how you’re leading and managing them. Businesses are a reflection of their leader. If they came to you like that then perhaps you need to look closely at your recruiting and hiring processes. Sometimes things are desperate in a small business and when the right systems aren’t in place and someone leaves suddenly, it leaves the owner having to step in and cover that position. This is where the desperation can step in and you’ll take anyone as long as they’re breathing. But once things settle down, you start to notice the problems and challenges in that person.

Let’s look at how you recruit and hire people and how you manage them.

You first need to understand what motivates them. Why do they stay with one employer, or move on from another? Why do some businesses have a really low turnover, and others seem to have a revolving door for the constant movement in and out of staff?

First of all, I want to look at long term motivators for employees. What is it that will keep them, and keep them productive and happy? One of my favorite business magazines, INC., did a survey of thousands of employees to find out exactly what were the strongest motivators. The findings might surprise some people because money featured very low on the rankings. The first of these, starting from the bottom, profit sharing was 7% as a motivator, 8% performance bonuses, 8% percentage & ownership, 16% raises & salaries, 21% feedback & communication and the highest one on this list, a sense of mission and purpose, was 35%. Those two highest ones were the biggest long term employee motivators, a sense of mission and purpose and feedback and communication. So between those two, 56% of all the employees interviewed said that those two were the most important motivators for them to stay on with a company.

People will only look to money as a reason for why they’re not satisfied when they know that they are dissatisfied, but they can’t put a name to it. More often it’s because they aren’t stimulated, or challenged, they’re not feeling appreciated or feeling as if they’re going somewhere so they think it must be money and if they move on to a better paying job, they’ll have all those things that they feel are lacking.

So, a sense of mission and purpose. The mission defines the purpose of your organization. It’s the reason why everyone comes to work. Every employee should be able to answer the questions…What are our products and services? What do we provide? Who are our customers? What do our products and services do for our customers? And what makes us unique?

We’ll stop here today. Be sure to stop by next week when I get into Managing People in Part II of Fill Your Business ‘Bus’ With the Right People.

Until next time…

P.S. Learn more about working ON your business–talk to the coach! Click here to connect with me!