Author: Pamela Swift

Categories
Human Resource

How to Hire Employees for Your Startup

Launching a startup business can be extremely exciting. A successful new business venture brings forth a tremendous sense of success and accomplishment. Hopefully, the venture provides a pathway to financial freedom — always a great added benefit to any entrepreneurial endeavor.

Successful startups do need a talented, driven entrepreneur at the helm. The proprietor, however, can only do so much. He/she must hire employees to help the business move along in the right direction. Hiring decisions must be done with careful deliberation and a smart approach.

Keep these points in mind when thinking about hiring new employees to help steer the startup ship.

Don’t Wait on Hiring an Employee

Hiring the first employee for a company often relies on timing. When duties and tasks become too enormous and veer into becoming overwhelming, hiring an employee probably would be a good move. Waiting too long to hire that first employee creates risks. An over-extended entrepreneur may not be as effective as he/she otherwise would be if tasks were delegated to someone else.

A caveat does exist here. Hiring should only commence when doing so is affordable. Prematurely hiring an employee without taking budget matters into consideration may lead to a disaster. Be sure the money and cash flow are there to pay the employee.

Seek a Committed Employee

Certain applicants look great on paper, but they might not work out. And no, this does not necessarily mean their performance turns out to be undesirable. The employee may not be committed to the success of the startup and could bolt for “greener pastures” with no notice. Sometimes, it may be best to look at the overall potential and commitment level of an applicant prior to hiring. Loyalty might be the most important trait an employer could look for in a first and subsequent employees.

Develop a Strong Training Program

A confused employee hardly can contribute most effectively to the operation. While spoon feeding an employee every task may not be feasible, properly training all new hires is. More than just feasible, supporting reliable training methods makes practical sense. The better trained the employee is, the better apt he/she becomes to perform the job. The business ends up on a better path to success as a result.

The types of employee training vary. Maybe hiring a third-party to handle the expert training would be advisable. Bringing in experienced, skilled trainers could be another worthwhile investment for the company.

Devise an Onboarding Strategy

Prior to training, the new hire should go through an onboarding process. An onboarding process is akin to a mix of welcoming the new person combined with introducing him/her to the company and required tasks. Onboarding, sadly, can be ignored or dismissed by start up entrepreneurs. Even sizable corporations may not enact a viable onboarding strategy. Whether the company is big or small, a startup or an established entity, an onboarding system should be in place.

Acclimating and introducing a new employee to the company the right way increases the chances of a smooth start. Rocky starts undermine long-term relationships.

Be Sure All Legal Contracts are Taken Care Of

Does hiring the first employee require signing a contract or a non-disclosure agreement? Any issues or matters associated with legal contracts and matters may be best served through speaking with legal counsel. Printing out documents off the internet for employees to sign might not be the right thing to do. An attorney can draft up correct documents and provide vital legal counsel.

Hiring is Never Easy

Hiring employees comes with many responsibilities and a lot of thought. Starting up a busy can be extraordinarily difficult. The right approach to hiring may help alleviate some of those difficulties. Remember, getting the right employee onboard could assist setting the startup on a proper course for success.

Categories
Human Resource

How to Determine When It’s Time to Make a New Hire

Article Contributed by Susan Ranford

The beauty of a small business is that it can be done by one person alone. If you’re selling items on Amazon, you may not need more than one person, or you may just need to work with your co-founders. Hiring an employee is something you may associate with bigger businesses and brick-and-mortar locations.

However, there (hopefully) comes a time in any small business venture when you’ll need to make your first hire. Employees exist for a reason, and not hiring somebody when your business needs one can strain your workflow. Here are some signs that it’s time to hire.

You Can’t Grow Your Business Because You’re Too Busy Maintaining It

There comes a time when you’re doing so much work for your business that you feel like you have multiple full-time jobs.

Whether you spend too much time doing the paperwork, campaigning on social media, making sales, or anything else that could be done by a new employee, you’re not getting things done efficiently. And this can prevent you from making real expansions and decisions for your business.

There’s a difference between not wanting to do the work because you’re lazy and passing the work to someone else because you want to focus on the growth of your business. Think about your workload and the potential you’re missing out on. It’s probably the right time to hire an employee.

You Can Afford it

An employee cuts into your profits.

You have to spend money to recruit an employee. You need to pay them a fair wage, deal with taxes and insurance if required, and so on. The cost will depend on what kind of business you have, but it’s going to cost you. But, when you’re working on your business while the employee does the tasks you don’t have time for, you can end up making the money back and then some.

So if you have the money to pay for an employee, and you’re sure you need one, then do it.

And that’s all there is to it when deciding if your business needs an employee. If it’s work that needs to be done consistently that you can’t find the time to do, and if you can afford someone to do it for you, then hire an employee.

With that said, here a few tips to finding the best fit:

Know Your Laws and Figure Out a Plan

As you’re about to hire, look up the federal and state labor laws and see what you need to do it on the up-and-up.

You’ll need an employee identification number, certain forms, and anything else that’s required by law. You’ll also need to figure out if your employee will need insurance, and you should come up with a schedule and a vacation plan.

Post a Good Job Description

Post your help wanted ad on any outlet possible. If your job is local, you may want to stick to the local job boards as this will help narrow down your applicants to people with reasonable interest in the job.

When you write the description, you need to explain what you need, and do it clearly. However, don’t post so much information you end up boring people. When it comes to job requirements, be reasonable but leave the door open for less experienced candidates who may still have something to bring.

Make Sure Your Employee is Invested in the Company

Whenever you’re interviewing potential candidates, you want someone who legitimately wants to be a part of your company and doesn’t see it as another job. Maybe they love supporting small businesses and want to be a part of something bigger. Ask the important questions:

  • Why do you want to work for my company?
  • What do you think would help the company grow?
  • What are your biggest accomplishments?

These can help you separate the willing employees from the lazy. Don’t settle for the first employee you can find, as this may end up blowing up in your face. If your employee isn’t productive, it will cost you more than you thought.

Treat Your Employee Right

Finally, your employee’s expectations out of you should be reasonable, and same for you and your employee. Don’t overwork your employee for little pay, and don’t forget to reward good behavior. Challenge your employee, listen to them, and be a team leader instead of a grouchy boss.

Hiring your first employee can be an intimidating task, but it’s a leap every company will have to make if they want to grow. If you can do it, do it, and make sure you find yourself a good employee who will help your company propel into the limelight, whether locally or around the world.

Bio:

Susan Ranford is an expert on job market trends, hiring, and business management. She is the Community Outreach Coordinator for New York Jobs. In her blogging and writing, she seeks to shed light on issues related to employment, business, and finance to help others understand different industries and find the right job fit for them.

Categories
Branding

Tips To Designs Effective Brand Marketing Materials

In the age of the digital revolution, physical real-world marketing remains as important to business success as it ever was.

We still want to do business face-to-face, so we network. We still want to attract new customers locally, so we promote and we still want to create a strong brand that takes a big share of the industry marketplace…

For that, business stationary marketing materials are a solid foundation on which to build your brand.

Often this kind of marketing collateral is the first formal encounter a person will have with your business, so making a strong first impression matters.

It also pays dividends to present a quality, professional image of your business from the get-go, even if it’s just you working alone, and yes, even before you have official office space!

There are also a host of practical reasons why this is good practice; from the fact that a branded business card is more likely to be kept and found than a scrap of paper with a handwritten phone number on it, to the fact that an invoice on branded stationary is easier to spot in an in-tray pile than a blank piece of paper.

Creating Branded Artwork

The obvious initial challenge in designing your business stationary is the creation of a company logo. You should look to hire a professionally-designed piece that uses colour, style and messaging to communicate what you do and who you are to new audiences. A low quality design or an amateur effort will do more harm than good so it’s worth investing in.

Likewise, if you’re opting to include text, while it can be tempting to try to be unique, make sure it’s easily legible or the message will be lost on people. The use of white space is another useful tool in maximising your marketing collateral because a busy page will simply be skimmed over and, again, the message will be lost.

With the digital arena in mind, regardless of your industry, you may likely need alternate versions of your logo, such as a square cut to allow for social media profile photo uploads, or longer logos with accompanying strap lines plus contact details on letter heads for example, so it’s recommended that you create a suite of these variations that can be used across your materials.

With so many online marketing options now and the ability for staff to create their own leaflets and social profile designs, it’s best to create your business style guide while you are developing your branded materials. This is basically a guidelines document for how people should use your logo, especially those outside your organisation, explaining how to position it, whether the colours can be changed or telling people not to change the size or distort the dimensions.

The idea is to create consistency, maintain brand reputation and keep things simple, because it is this constant repetition that will help your brand to resonate with everyone who sees it.

Consider Your Audience

Make sure to focus your business stationary designs on the end audience – who are you making them for? What will they appreciate? What message do you want to convey to them? Are there any important elements to consider, such as offering materials in larger print for seniors or people with sensory disabilities?

If you need to keep printing costs down but need to grab the audience’s attention, think of other ways to stand out, such as using coloured paper or branded envelopes for your written communications.

Next, you need to think about what information is vital to include on the stationary materials. You clearly want to direct people to the right source should they have a response, a question or feedback in general. Contact details are therefore important, but so too might a tax registration number be on invoices for example, as well as a business postal address.

While the messaging and overall tone of your branding is important on your business stationary, so too are the materials you use, because they will also communicate meaning. Will your audience appreciate a higher quality material such as gloss laminate, or do you work mostly with the not-for-profit sector who would view that as wastage, or intimidating, and would prefer to see recycled materials, as an example?

If you have a more generic audience, the advice would be to opt for the highest quality materials your budget will allow.

Top Tips:

Business Cards

While many modern business owners are on LinkedIn for their own networking, and may well have a social presence for their business online, such as a Facebook Page, business cards bring the personal touch. They’re a cost-effective marketing tool that means you always have a professional contact card easily to hand whenever an opportunity arises.

It’s a really good idea to incorporate more of your digital marketing into this particular product to maximise your connection opportunities and grow your online audiences simultaneously. That means signposting people to your website and profiles online, as well as your email and phone contact details.

Notepads

Branded notepads present a professional image when you use them yourself in meetings or at events, but are also an excellent gift-type marketing product. When left with existing or potential clients they are almost always kept, because of their utility, meaning your brand remains quite literally “under their nose” much longer than any email or conversation would.

Notepads are often used for brainstorming, at meetings where procurement is being discussed or at planning sessions. This makes them a prime area to really sell your business and, with the added space available, you can include more than just your logo. Think about including a short testimonial quote from a client in the bottom corner for example, providing that extra social proof.

Pens

As with notepads, desk pads and wall calendars, pens are a really practical marketing tool that keeps your brand front of mind for as long as they last (which is usually pretty long). Branded pens are a cost-effective gift that can be put into deal-closing information packs, left on front desks and given to event delegates.

The small space requires you to be succinct in the marketing message, though, so think of the prime channel you want to direct people to – such as a website or phone number – and focus the design on that. Also steer towards black ink, which is more often required on official business documents than blue ink!

Letter heads

Branding who you are and what your business represents isn’t just about the obvious sales marketing tactics, it should ideally filter down through every interaction you have with external stakeholders, including the mundane printed communications like invoices or letters.

For legal reasons it’s advisable to use branded letter heads on things like employment contracts but it also creates a formal tone on all your documentation. If you want to try a design that’s a bit different to the usual right-top-corner-logo, think of using a large watermark design that fills the page, or geometric coloured shapes around the page within which you can set the text.

About the Author

Quinnstheprinters.com are an online trade printing company based in Northern Ireland, operating a 24-hour factory with 5-colour printing that produces high quality, quick turnaround products for small entrepreneurs to big corporations across the UK and Ireland.

Categories
Entrepreneurs

Women Excel As Entrepreneurs; Here’s Why

When it comes to starting and running their own businesses, women simply shine. You probably know a number of successful female entrepreneurs whose stories would provide anecdotal evidence to back this up, but it turns out that there’s actually some science behind the claim, too.

What is it about women that makes them so well-suited to the challenge of entrepreneurial ventures? They tend to be optimistic yet realistic. They aren’t ego-driven and can admit failure — meaning that it’s easier for them to pivot and change course, or to abandon a plan altogether if it’s not working out. However, they’re also perseverant, and will learn from their mistakes, so that subsequent ventures will be more successful.

Then there’s the proverbial “women’s intuition.” Turns out that’s a real thing — female business owners are able to use subtle cues to size up a situation on the fly, and to make better decisions — even if those decisions defy traditional business logic.

Similarly, women appreciate creative approaches to the everyday problems of running a company, and take smart, calculated risks. They consider the input of their colleagues are are less likely to dismiss suggestions out of hand, even when those suggestions are radical or unorthodox.

Men’s egos can sometimes work as blinders, and they can become invested in a business to the point of stubbornness. It’s something of a cliché that women struggle with work-life balance and “having it all,” but in fact women are often more able to find equal fulfillment in their many roles: mother, wife, artist, businessperson.

They can be intensely passionate, and don’t generally begin a business simply to make a quick buck. Rather, they truly believe that the products or services their company offers to the world are valuable and will help others. Women also take a long-range approach, and can ride out the tough times with their eye on future rewards.

Women are good at negotiating, because they understand the true value of compromise and don’t see negotiations as battles that must be won at all costs. They give respect where it’s due, and demand respect in return.

Their communication skills, too, help them be direct and to-the-point, but with the empathy and compassion that build long-lasting professional relationships. And they’re naturally good at networking. This means finding common ground with the people they meet and striving to build and maintain connections that will benefit both parties.

Lastly, women excel at integrating the skills they’ve acquired throughout their life — in school, in their previous positions, in their personal lives, even raising children — into their approach to doing business. In other words, they have the “street smarts” and life skills that rival the formal education provided by an MBA.

Thinking about starting your own business, or maybe investing in a franchise opportunity? If our infographic rings true, and you can recall times when you exhibited these qualities, then you might make an excellent entrepreneur!

Author Bio
Marsha Kelly is a serial entrepreneur, after doing “time” in corporate America, who has learned about what products and services work well for entrepreneurs who want to start a business. You can learn from my experience and my associates as we shop from the internet for tools, supplies and information to build our businesses and improve the lives of our family and ourselves at her small business blog  https://best4businesses.com/
Categories
Teamwork & Leadership

4 Steps in Making a Group into a Team

Article Contributed by Sia Hasan

Working together as a team at work can be the missing element your workplace needs to be a more efficient company. As a team, you’ll notice more productivity and positive thinking amongst coworkers due to the needed support amongst each other. Build up a team at work can help accomplish tasks that are long overdue or need more than one head at work to get it done. However, even though establishing teams at work can take cooperation, patience, and dedication, you’ll notice respect among your workers and a balanced atmosphere in the workplace on a constant basis to improve workflow.

  1. Explain the Benefits of Working Together

Meeting with your group and explaining what each person’s roles are can help increase productivity and motivation. One of the best ways to keep track of everyone’s roles and responsibilities is by using workflow management software. However, you should also ask for each team member to voice their own input on how to make your group more effective on a regular basis.

It’s important that you explain to your team how they benefit the company as a whole. Explaining how each member can contribute to the success of the business can help keep the team connected, positive, and productive.

  1. Lay Out Your Team Goals

Setting goals in place are a great way to help your team finish a project before a set deadline. Make sure that each team member knows what their role is in a project to help reach a goal in time. However, it’s wise that you put forth achievable goals to prevent stress or irritability among your team members if a goal is not reached in time.

When laying out your team’s goals you should talk to each person individually, as well as in a group, to make sure everyone is on the same page. This will help smoothen the workflow and allow you to get individual input on finishing the goal in time that you can share with the whole team. However, you should also plan routine meetings such as informal luncheons to help improve social connections among your team.

But, just as important keeping connections strong among your team, you should also ensure a reward that your group will be presented when they reach their goal. Although this can be anything, we suggest that you make it a team reward that they can share amongst each other.

  1. Learn to Respect Each Other

There are different levels of respect that your team members may feel for each other. While the group members may tolerate each other, for the good of the group, they must learn how to hold each other in high regard. This is the way to bring your team to the next level. Prioritize this type of high respect. Remember that respect is gained, it cannot be forced.

With respect, your team will be able to communicate with each other much more easily about business topics. Respect also means looking out for each other’s best interests and celebrating the successes of others.

  1. Communicate Effectively

This goes right along with respecting each other, as you cannot communicate well when there is no respect. The two aspects are intertwined as they both depend on the other. Respect is built on great communication and communication leads to deeper respect.

Communication is a skill and like all skills, it must be practiced and honed. This is one of the most important skills a person can have in the business world, but especially when working with others. This skill reaches across all aspects of business and will help you whether you manage rentals, do direct sales, or run a restaurant. This is the reason why it is so crucial for all team members to work on communicating effectively and courteously.

The key to maintaining any good relationship is open and honest communication, whether it be business or personal. Without communication, there are bound to be misunderstandings, resentment, and a lack of productivity. Each team member should work on building their communication skills. The team leader should also take it upon themselves to help any employee who is struggling with their communication.