When you have a small business, the people that you employ are completely crucial to its success. You absolutely need to be able to access that high-performing talent that will take your business forward in the right direction.

The good news is that you already have the draw needed to access these individuals, as many want to work for a small business where their efforts can really have an impact. 

Let’s take a look at how you can build a strong core team for your SME and use your skills and talent base for success.

In a start-up there really is no room to hide and everyone needs to pull their weight. This means that you must focus on finding high performers for your business; self-started, motivated individuals who are ready to work hard, who understand and believe in the business and who are highly motivated in contributing towards its success. 

In the early days, especially, your team will need to work hard and are likely to be working long hours, often with the promise of bigger rewards to come. Reliability is key as there will not be ‘back-up’ functional team members to share work. You are likely to have one expert for each core area – if you are lucky!

Is it Time to Build a Team – or Should I go it Alone?

It can be hard for entrepreneurs to know when they need to start to bring other people on board. After all, when you have built up your own business from scratch, it’s natural that you will want to protect it and continue to make the right decisions for it. 

But there will come a point where you simply can’t do it all and when you need the specialist and functional skills of other professionals, particularly in vital areas such as sales and marketing, finance and accountancy, operations management and IT.

When thinking about whether to build a team and what that team will look like, there are three important points to think about:

• What skills do I lack?
• Where and how can I find people who believe in my business idea?
• Committing to not bringing family or friends onto the team.

This last point is important as many people become tempted to bring friends and family into their business. However, this is a difficult line to walk and it can result in management challenges, especially if those people don’t work as hard as ‘non inner circle’ employees. It’s important that everyone on your team feels equally valued and supported.

Where can I Find People?

Social media is a great route to building your new team. Start by creating your own employer brand and communicating your mission or purpose, your vision and your values. Share content that explains what your business is and what it’s trying to do. Focus on your values, as these are something that will really make a difference to people wanting to work at your organisation – or not. Remember that today’s talent is looking to make a difference at businesses with strong social, ethical and environmental values – so don’t talk about money or corner offices. Yes, the benefits package is still important, but it’s no longer the be-all and end-all.

You can then build your online network via LinkedIn and build your presence at industry networking events, so you can nurture and cultivate a pool of potentially interested individuals who would like to work for your company when the right role comes along. 

Recruitment agencies are also valuable to startups and scale-ups as they will have a pre-assessed pool of relevant talent – with individuals actively looking for roles. A good recruiter can save you time and money and also improve your recruitment outcomes by offering a quality, benchmarked, best-in-class recruitment process that offers a superb candidate experience. The only downside is recruitment agencies will charge you a premium for finding the right candidate, usually a percentage of their first year’s salary (although they’ll also offer a rebate if the candidate leaves within a given timeframe).

Be open too about having a diverse workforce to bring in the maximum level of innovation, fresh thinking and experiences which reflect your customer base. This is likely to mean offering flexible hours and flexible work locations, to access the talent that is otherwise unable to apply to quality roles. Great part-time staff can be a real asset to your business.

How can I Build the Right Company Culture?

When you have your vision, values, purpose and mission in place, you can communicate easily the type of company you are and the culture that you are trying to create. You can then hire people who support this culture and install activities and methods which help to bring the culture to life. Communication is a central tenet of a strong culture, and you can create a strong internal communications culture by regularly sharing updates, encouraging two-way feedback and creating an atmosphere that encourages and promotes this open, constructive communication.

This culture will also help to ensure that when you hire great staff, you are able to retain them. Consider elements such as training and development, organisational succession planning so that everyone coming into your business has a career path, mentoring and coaching, secondments, volunteering, projects and so forth. Benefits packages should be creative and valuable. Remember that flexibility with factors such as work location and even the odd duvet day is likely to be more attractive to many people than an extra 1% bonus.

In Conclusion

Businesses are only as good as the staff they are comprised of and startups and scaleups need to be smarter than ever smarter about accessing the talent that they need to grow and thrive. By thinking creatively and by building a great employer brand, you can find the talent that you need to make your business a success. 

In focusing upon a diverse hiring policy and creating a diverse, creative and supportive culture, you will also naturally attract the sort of people that you want within your business – again, boosting your chances of beating the competition and growing sustainably and for the longer-term.