Happy 2020! From all of the team at Bespoke HR, we hope you had a relaxing and well deserved rest over the Christmas and New Year period. 

Setting your team up for success early on in the year is critical to success. Not only do you need to develop a goal plan for where you want to be at the end of the year, it’s important to zoom out and strategically look at how you can plan to grow your team and your business. 

Here are 7 key areas we recommend you look at when planning your workforce this year, and common errors in hiring to avoid.

1. Plan & hire for growth with strategic hires – not CRISIS hiring

Have a clear plan of where you’re heading and what roles you specifically need. A mistake many business owners make when hiring is making poorly timed decisions – usually backed by a pressure to fill a role.

This is doomed to fail. Poor decisions can be made under stress, and the role is filled by “the next closest person”, or a “friend of the family”, or “the first resume that landed on my desk”.

If you are required to hire under a high pressured fast-requiring role, start the person off on a contract before committing to a full time permanent position.

2. Create a “team” statement

As demonstrated in the 90 Day Culture Accelerator (we have an entire module dedicated to this exact topic – having the RIGHT players on the RIGHT field…) a team needs to know what attributes make them a valuable team member. 

This can come in the form of mission statements, culture codes and values statements. How to construct all of these are in the 90 Day Culture Accelerator – where we go into detail around these central points. 

By having a key statement that embodies all of your values and your business goals, and something you and your team can refer to at any time, this allows clear communication to your entire team, to ensure everyone is moving in the same direction.

3. Key positions – what are your big roles? 

Generally, small businesses have critical areas that need to be fulfilled. Assess your current team and if there’s any gaps in skills in the following areas:

• A “technician” or “product champion” – someone who is skillful at your profession – eg. a mechanic in a car shop, a hairdresser at a hair salon, or a writer for a newspaper. These people have a high level of mastery of their skill and generally have years of experience in this one particular field. They may have also niche’d down into a particular area, and have an insatiable passion for what they do. 
• An operations master – someone who’s often detail orientated, process driven and understands the way the business runs. Business owners can often double for an operational wizard, however if you are wanting to work on your business as opposed to in it, this role needs to be outsourced. 
• A strong leader – who is making key decisions on how to face challenges, adversity and problem solving? A leader requires the ability to inspire, motivate and steer the ship in stormy weather. 
• A marketer / sales superstar / face of your business – Again, this can sometimes be a double up for the business owner, however 75% of business success comes down to having the right message, right product in front of the right people. Without having a person with this set of skills, it may be difficult to assess market landscapes, lead the direction of where (and who) needs your product.

4. Hire on values

Once you have the particular roles secured as outlined above, you need to ensure that all players on your team are in line with the team statement. Do they fit the team in regards to what your business standards are, attitudes, interests and key drivers? 

5. Have your organisational structure identified

When people hire before this is defined, it can cause havoc at a later date, as well as waste thousands of dollars in productivity due to double up of roles, or hiring for roles that aren’t necessarily detrimental to the success of the business. 

Be clear in exactly what direction your business is heading in and goals you’re wanting to achieve by the end of 2020, and then work backwards from there. 

6. Use reliable sources of hiring / talent sourcing

Are you relying on platforms that have screening tools and can offer vetted checks on candidates prior, or are you wasting time and money on having to do this yourself? 

Find tools and resources that take the time out of doing screening internally. You know your business the best, however the recruiting process can sometimes blindside people. 

For example, someone who may be a brilliant fit for your business may not interview well, or someone who looks great on paper and speaks well in the interview, may not fit your company culture – something you may find out months down the track. 

A recruiter can help to decode these areas and ask the right questions to assess whether someone is a right fit or not.

7. Have a clear hiring process & criteria in place

The above point leads to having a clear hiring process in place. Again, this is something that we cover in the 90 Day Culture Accelerator in full detail (including templates and screening documents). 

Asking the right questions can help to get clear on a talent / company fit. Are you coming up with crickets when it comes to finding good questions or processes? 

We can help with that. 

We LOVE providing guidance and support in recruiting, in fact we can’t get enough of this stuff. If you’re pulling your hair out, contact Paulette directly for a no obligations chat to see how recruitment packages can help you.

Start your year off with a bang!

Email with the subject line: “Need help with my recruiting…” to paulette@bespokehr.com.au and we’ll send you some resources to help with the recruiting process.