Being a female business owner isn’t easy. Even with the great support and motivation that women receive from having an online or offline female business network, it’s hard to find the balance between our work, our families, and other responsibilities. This pressure is further escalated once we make the next big step: hiring employees.
If your business is at the point at which you can hire staff– you should be proud! It means that you are doing something right! However, you might find that you have additional stress due to the obligations that you have to your employees and their well-being, both emotionally and financially. At the same time, expansion creates vulnerability in your business as all the systems that you had in place have to be altered to fit the new reality. It’s important to be very careful during this transition period so that you gain all the benefits that having a team supporting you provides without hitting any glitches along the way.
Here are some tips for women going from me to we, a.k.a. hiring your first employees
Stay Legal
You might be unsure about this transition and feel hesitant about hiring people officially. However, it is always worth it to get professional legal advice and counsel about the right kind of contract to offer and getting the terms of employment right. You’ll learn about things like probation periods, defined term contract, and you might consider casual or part time status to start. One thing that you should never do is employ people “under the table” in order to avoid signing a contract or taxation. Not only can the taxman come after your business, you can be looking at liability issues if anything should happen to your employee at work.
2.Hire the Right Person
If you are deciding on your first hire, you better be thorough during the recruitment process. Hire someone with not just the right skills and qualifications, but with a personality that you connect with. Remember that during this phase, you will most likely be trusting this person with a lot of responsibility and be interacting with him or her constantly. It’s worth getting this right the first time, but don’t despair if you don’t. Finding the perfect employee is difficult. Period.
3.Discover their strengths and weaknesses
Once you have hired your perfect employee, it’s time to explore where you can get the most value from him or her. I don’t mean exploiting and overworking your staff, rather I’m referring to studying their strengths and weaknesses. Play to everyone’s strengths and distribute the workload so that it jives with the natural acuities of each individual. This means that work will be done better, faster, and with greater employee satisfaction. Obviously, this translates to great value for your company and your clients will appreciate it too!
4.Integrate
The era of Word Documents and hard drive storage have ended. With more than one person needing access to software, important documents you’ll need to completely rearrange your way of working. Does your organization regularly capture the vital knowledge your team possesses? If not, you might need a knowledge management system that will tie together your business’s entire operations so that everyone is “on the ball”.
5.Nurture Your Relationship
Employees need to be valued and appreciated. Not only will you have a better time working with them if you do, but you will see the dividends in both the quantity and quality of the work being done. Better treated employees try harder, are more loyal, and are willing to go the extra mile for an employer who respects them.
So once again, congratulations on getting so far with your business! Now it’s time to bring someone on board to help you attain your business dreams. Just make sure that you are doing this the correct way, right from the start!
