If you haven’t noticed, candidates are interviewing you more than you are interviewing them. 

So, what makes your company a great place to work? 

This is the question that most job seekers ask (or are at least thinking) and most business owners do not know how to answer. 

It is no longer ‘well you get paid’ that will excite the candidate.

Some small businesses worry because they cannot compete with the budgets of big companies or resources they can offer. Don’t worry, some team members much prefer working for a small business due to their speed to market, ability to make fast decisions, access directly to the owner or CEO, they are known as an actual person by name and an important contributor to the team, generally are exposed to the strategy of the company and so on.

Similarly, larger organisation may be able to offer more structured career progression and professional development, bigger project or resource budgets, more developed IT systems, more structured remuneration frameworks, and so on. 

The main thing is to have a response and don’t forget, nowadays, especially with our newest generation coming through, you will definitely need to have a position on the below areas:-

1. How do you treat your team? 

If we were to speak with the last 5 people who left your organisation what would they say? Seriously? We need to start paying more attention to this as business owners as just like customers who have a bad experience with your companies can do 10 x the amount of damage, team members are exactly the same. 

If team members are leaving ask yourself why. If you need to exit a team member make sure all team members know in advance what your non-negotiable standards are. What are the standards you will not walk past so there are no surprises if this occurs and everyone knows the consequences of them? 

For example, advise team members that you will fight fearlessly to protect your culture and team and therefore have a zero-tolerance for any team members who steal property or IP, treat people with disrespect or harm, intentionally lie, don’t live by our values, bring or come under the influence of drugs in the workplace (unless advised) or other code of conduct matters. Performance matters will be addressed with open communication and conversations around development requirements and fit. 

2. What is your policy in relation to flexibility?

What are your working hours, expectations, and working from home position? If you don’t have this clearly established for the roles in your business, it is time to put pen to paper. 

3. What is your policy or budget or process for professional development and learning?

This doesn’t need to be expensive but you will need to answer how you will train and develop your team for success. 

Will you have a PD budget or have an internal or external mentor/buddy or do you have an internal training calendar or do you just allow a particular time per month for team members to engage/research their own learning and development.

Growth and development will be an important area not just for individuals but also for organisations to develop and continually improve.  

4. What is your remuneration and benefit process?

Sharing your team members’ potential salary trajectory in your organisation is important. What level could they have the potential to earn and how regularly do you really review salaries? Otherwise, team members’ expectations may be misaligned to yours and sometimes the standard CPI increase may not cut it. 

It is important, to be honest here as businesses can only offer what they can offer and don’t make increases or incentive programs if you do not plan to commit to them and/or keep changing them. 

5. What community organisations/charities etc do you support?

While your purpose, brand, products, and/or services are important, how you support and interact with the wider community and whether you are good corporate citizens is also just as important and an integral part of your team connecting to your organisation.