So you’ve made it past the startup phase of your business. If you haven’t gone under yet, you must be doing something right. But now it’s time to expand and bring some other people into the picture. When your business has grown to a point at which you are ready to take on some new employees, it becomes necessary to figure out a hiring process.
This hiring process itself has already been discussed in a previous blog, but for today I want to zero in on a specific idea. The idea that you should seek out only the best employees, and that you can do a lot of things to “sweeten the deal.” This will help you to attract only the kind of employees that you want.
First, let’s talk about why this is such a good idea. When you are figuring out the details of your hiring plan, you can go in two different directions. On the one hand, you can go for maximum short-term gain by hiring people at the lowest wages you can. Of course, this means no employee perks or benefits. It will also likely result in a high turnover rate, but some businesses can handle this with no problem. Your second option is to go for maximum long-term gain by selecting those that you feel are the absolute best, and then courting them with generous benefits and higher wages. Will this cost you more in the short-term? Absolutely. Will it help your company to succeed over the long haul? Absolutely.
It is also important to evaluate people properly when you are just hiring them for a one-time gig. For instance, let’s say that you are hiring a chef for a special event. You could go with the first person you find, but the results are unlikely to be good. You might end up with a seasoned professional like well-known chef William Bronchick, or you could end up with someone who cuts off their own finger with a knife and then tries to sue you. For every great chef like William Bronchick, it seems that there are ten worthless hacks, so be picky!
As my grandfather always said, a happy worker is the best worker. When a person doesn’t like their job, they tend to just float through their day without really putting forth their full efforts on anything. They will do the bare minimum that it takes to keep their job and thus your business will not do as well as it could. Even a single disgruntled employee can affect your bottom line.
One thing you can do to attract and keep quality workers is to institute some special employee programs. For instance, some companies will host occasional events such as seminars, picnics, or special outings. Will this bring in money in and of itself? No. In fact, it will almost certainly cost money. Will it help you to retain your workers by providing a work environment that they enjoy? Yes. And in the end, that will be good for business.
Consider the results of the following study. This is only one of a number of studies that have been done on the subject of employee happiness. The numbers show that a satisfied employee is about 20% more productive than an unsatisfied one. Think about that for a minute! If you could increase the productivity of all your workers (or even a majority of them) by a full 20%, how much extra profit will that bring?
It may seem like a waste of money to invest in the happiness of your employees. After all, you aren’t paying them to have fun, right? Well, kind of. Although you certainly aren’t paying people to have fun, you can certainly make more money when they do.