Here’s a stat that might the knock the socks off you:
A survey of 610 CEOs by Harvard Business School estimates that typical mid-level managers require 6.2 months to reach their break-even point.
Courtesy of this article on Investopedia, it’s obvious that hiring can be a real money-muncher. If you’re a cash-strapped small business with less than 300 employees, you can’t afford hiring mistakes. It’s as simple as that.
Luckily, your smaller workforce allows you to make adjustments to your hiring procedures to avoid any hiring misfires without getting lost in a bunch of heavy-handed bureaucracy. In other words, if it’s broke, you can fix it and fast.
We’re not saying your hiring policy is broken but almost every procedure can use updating to make it more efficient or user-friendly. Here’s 3 tips to reduce the cost of your hiring procedure that might free up more of that cash you’d like to have handy.
Ensure Your Hiring Manager is a Go-Getter
As a small business owner with a small roster of employees, you need people who can get stuff done without a lot of hand holding. You especially need a hiring manager who can multi-task well, handle responsibility, follow policy and procedure to the letter, navigate challenges, and roll with the punches. When interviewing hiring manager candidates, focus on questions that measure their ability to find creative solutions to problems quickly. Make sure to ask previous employers about the person’s willingness to be flexible and ask for examples of when this played out. Your hiring manager is going to be the gateway in which new employees walk through so if they’re not jibing with your company culture, then maybe it’s time you find someone who did. Letting in dozens of ill-fitting hires will cost you more money than rotating out one hiring manager.
Motivate, Motivate, Motivate
You won’t have to hire so many people or deal with constant (or unexpected) turnover if you make your company an awesome place to work. This does not have to cost big bucks. Check out this list of ideas from a previous post called ‘Top Talent for Top Dollar? Not If You’re Creative’:
- Flex Time
- Perks (Gym membership? Netflix membership? Holiday parties? Random parties? In house massages? Health coaches? Wine and cheese tasting? Bring your pet to work day? Volunteer opportunities?)
- Vacation
- Artsy or sporty or just plain fun offices
- Team building opportunities
If you’re the type of business who needs to hire seasonal or temporary employees, don’t think you’re off the hook either. Even a temporary employee can suck the life out of a place and make good employees run for the hills. So how do you motivate a temporary or seasonal employee? This article from Small Business Trends has a few suggestions:
- Introduce temps and seasonal workers to everyone on staff
- Work in teams
- Offer bonuses
- Offer opportunities to stay on board or learn a new skill
- Train, observe and correct
- Stay in touch
Do The Dirty Deed (We mean outsource… sheesh!)
Outsourcing some of your hiring needs, particularly your background checks, will save you money. Period. At Active Screening, we offer nationwide criminal checks as low as $12. There is simply no way that you’re hiring manager (even though you followed our advice and hired a winner!) can compete with that. It’s efficient. It’s affordable. It’s compliant.
We examined the benefits of outsourcing during Small Business Week on ActiveCare and explained why it’s a smart move for those companies managing less than 300 employees:
It allows both entities (that’s big speak for you, the owner, and you, the firm/independent contractor) to focus on your strengths. Why is that important? Not only does this streamline your operating procedures and budgets, but it produces an exemplary product because you’re both doing what you do best. In our case, that’s background checks.
When you outsource your screening needs to accredited professionals like us you’re guaranteed results that are timely, legally obtained, and thoroughly vetted. It’s one less headache you have to deal when you’re already pinching pennies to survive.
Have some create, cost-saving ideas to help your hiring procedure? We’d love to learn about ‘em! Send your suggestions here.