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Hiring Challenges and Solutions for Small Business Owners

Small businesses often face several issues ranging from the lack of experience, size, to lack of resources. However, few responsibilities stretch these businesses to their limit as the lack of talents. Even if it seems simple, hiring the right employees can be overwhelming and impose taxes on different levels.

Understanding these challenges can help entrepreneurs and business owners better control on how to do the least amount of interference possible. Great employees are the soul of any business, but finding and hiring the right people can be complicated for most small business owners.

This is twice as important for small business owners. Independent owned and managed businesses can face a unique set of problems that large corporations or franchise companies often fail to address. Below is a list of four challenges that small business owners often encounter during the hiring process with solutions to overcome them.

We’ve provided the visual flow-chart to help you see the hiring process at a glance. You can directly download your free PDF copy below or click this link. https://canadasmallbusiness.ca//wp-content/uploads/hr-hiring-process.pdf. This chart will allow you to be efficient and have a standard protocol procedure in place for hiring staff.

IDENTIFY & ASSESS STAFFING NEEDS:

Define and write up the job description
Determine classification
Send personnel request to HR if applicable
Determine classification II (if any)
See the chart for full details and steps and follow the flow.

Difficulties recruiting new talent

The problem: Small businesses do not attract as many candidates as big companies. This is because candidates prefer more prominent companies because of the opportunities that they get from working there. This leads to bigger companies getting more talents than the smaller ones.

Possible Solution: When small businesses want to recruit, it is not enough to publish vacant positions in an online job site or newspaper.

Actively seek out the type of people you want in your business on LinkedIn or Facebook and encourage current employees to do the same. You may also need to allow new graduates to prove themselves. Hiring experienced candidates is not a wrong choice either, but let there be a mix of both. You will find that by hiring young, enthusiastic, innovative, but inexperienced workers alongside mature and experienced who do not need constant supervision, you will be free to take the time to do more work as well as growing your company.

It’s worth looking for a more extensive network to find the right candidate. Since hiring is a long-term investment in your business and can significantly accelerate economic growth, it can be helpful to look for proactive funds to invest in the process. Once you have carefully calculated your return on investment, you can create a smart leveraging strategy to help you integrate the right talent that will help you grow your business.

Lack of dedicated training programs

The problem: when a recruit is hired in a large company, there is often a training program offered by the company to prepare them, such as learning the latest computer package or upgrading their skills. While larger companies tend to have resources for comprehensive training programs or initiatives, small business owners need to be able to conceive outside the box and be more innovative in training their employees at work.

Possible Solution: Ensure to have some form of training available to new employees, even if it only works ethics and a section of the company employee manual. It may also be necessary to determine which members of your team appear to have a particular ability to train new employees in different activities and to enable them to lead, even if the employee concerned is not a manager or supervisor.

And, of course, when you decide to train new employees, do it during the less demanding hours of work, as this can help avoid frustrations for you, your employees, and your customers.

Wearing Too Many Hats

The problem: Small business owners cannot afford to hire a dedicated employee for each service nor expect employees to meet and perform tasks beyond the original scope of work.

Possible Solution: Be direct and honest in the interview process about what the job entails and potential roles as well as staff strength. If it is possible to ask the IT expert to answer a phone call or to carry out the duties of a secretary, do not keep it secret; explain that a limited team can only succeed if everyone is willing to cooperate. This will allow you to find employees ready to go further without feeling resentment or to leave the first time you give them a different task that is not within the scope of work.

Failure to pay a very competitive salary

The problem: Small businesses generally have lower profit margins than larger companies. This may mean a smaller salary budget, which may result in fewer employees receiving a higher salary than a comparable job in another company. This agreement can be a detour for potential new employees.

Possible Solution: Try as much as possible to provide above the minimum wage to new employees.

Instead, go with the industry standard and go above minimum wage. But you must pay them fairly and there is no other possible solution, everyone is in need of money. In addition to competitive compensation, we recommend investing in your employees through benefits such as flexible summertime, encouraging recreational policies, happy hours, opportunities to work remotely, as well as health benefits and a friendly workplace enviroment with zero tolerance for abuse. While payments are essential, keep in mind that there are creative ways to pay enough to attract and retain top talents.

Remember the old expression; the best policy is honesty, and this applies to your business and workforce. When you keep your employees happy, they will be productive and will perform better, even on or off the job site.

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