Starting or growing your own business and making mistakes go hand in hand.
Some of the hardest lessons to learn are around hiring employees. It’s a challenge to find great people, recruit them, manage them and hold on to them, especially as a small business. If you didn’t hire good people to start off with, it can cause you a great deal of stress and negatively impact your business.
10 THINGS BUSINESS OWNERS SHOULD DO AND KNOW BEFORE BECOMING EMPLOYERS
1. Be honest about what you are bad at, and then hire people who are good at those things.
2. Spend more time getting to know people in great roles before starting your business.
3. Spend time with your employees and build good relationships with them. It’s all about people at the end of the day.
4. Know that going through an employment agency has pros and cons. It can be expensive for small-business owners. Referrals from people you know well, and whose opinion you trust, is a better strategy.
5. Always interview multiple candidates and check references carefully.
6. Learn how to become a leader. Don’t focus only on the kind of people you want – spend time on learning how to become the leader they want.
7. Don’t neglect the paperwork that goes with hiring someone. Labour relations are highly regulated in South African law - The Labour Relations Act (LRA), The Basic Conditions of Employment Act (BCEA), the Employment Equity Act, and Unemployment Insurance Act, to name a few.
8. Consider what you can do to attract and keep star people, beyond salaries, for example, flexi-time, skills development, and exposure to interesting work
9. Have codes of conduct, policies and procedures in place and lead by example.
10. Communicate regularly, meaningfully and personally.
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