Nibletz Staff
As a startup starts to make a profit, your role in the business must change. There is simply too much to do for one person to manage. So you start hiring. You might engage a couple of part-timers from a pool of associates and friends. Over time, you might even take on a couple of managers and some contract staff. Unfortunately, nothing stays the same for long. Your business is growing, and more opportunities are presenting themselves. What happens now?
You have a couple of choices when things start to ramp up for your business. You can develop and fully utilize the employees you already have. Or you can start hiring people that already have the experience and training necessary, albeit with a different company. Neither option is ideal, but every company that enjoys success will face it. So which is best for your business at this point in time?
Recruit
It’s important not to be put off by the recruitment process. As expensive and long-winded as it might seem, there are many shortcuts and clever hacks to reduce the impact on your business. Start by centralizing your HR provision. You might use HRMS software that can easily track and present your current employees as well as applicants you’re considering for new roles. This saves you an enormous amount of time. It can also reduce your need for a dedicated HR manager or third-party recruitment agency.
Recruiting new talent into your business helps to bring in more experience. You might acquire market insights that you don’t already have internally. Fresh inputs and ideas can help your business to grow in new ways and can help your current employees look in new directions too. Ultimately it gives you the opportunity to delegate tasks that are clogging your schedule. It gives you the chance to hire specialists that can perform those tasks quicker and more efficiently than you.
Restructure
Restructuring is all about change. Some of your current employees might not react well to change. However, a restructuring that is sold as a career opportunity might encourage more positive reactions. You might restructure by moving personnel up into more responsible positions. Adjust the job title and add some cash to their salary and you’ll have very happy employees.
For the most part, you are looking for current staff members to take on more tasks without adjusting their pay band. This will be more difficult to acquire a buy-in. It’s important you balance the move by taking some tasks off their workload. The purpose of this might be to move certain personnel into more specialist areas rather than offering them a general role. Remember, any drastic change to their work title or duties might require Union notification.
The best approach to both recruitment and restructuring is to discuss it openly with existing employees. You might be pleasantly surprised by how involved some personnel might be willing to become. If they volunteer to take on the tasks or agree to swap duties, then you’re unlikely to need to spend a great deal of time managing this. Which would you choose?
