How to Get the Right People for Your Business

You may start with family members, relatives, friends, neighbors, or acquaintances. Wherever they may come from, be sure they can deliver what you will require. Before hiring them, be sure to explain your ground rules and have them agree to your policies. Level your expectations; from your end as the employer and from them as your employees. It is always good to prepare a staff manual. This should contain information pertaining to staff privileges and benefits and working hours, among others.

If you decide to hire friends, relatives or even family members, be clear about requiring them to be professional in the workplace, especially when dealing with you.

One of the reasons why the Government is encouraging people to start small enterprises is because of their potential to generate employment. It may seem easy to look for people to fill in the positions in your business. Many people are finding it hard to be employed. This should not excite you at all to hire whoever will come asking for a job. Match each position with somebody who will meet the requirements of the position.

Do not limit your recruits to the trained and experienced. Be open to applicants who can help your enterprise grow. Choose people who are willing to be trained and to stay in your company after being trained. Take care not to get opportunists or those who apply for lack of a better opportunity outside. They will be willing to work for you only for the time being either because they want the work experience or they don’t have any other source of income. Hiring people who are willing to work for a long time is particularly important not only for reasons of ensuring continuity of work but also for the legal implications of employee resignations. Of course, you don’t want your pockets to shrink by paying the separation benefits to people whom you should not have hired in the first place because they never had shown any intention of staying in your business for long.

The bottom line to these discussions is for you to come out with a set of qualifications for people whom you will hire.

Here are the steps in coming up with the criteria for selecting applicants:

* First, list down all the different activities that have to be done in your business. You can group this according to the four functional areas of management

 Marketing
o Sale and delivery of products to buyers
o Delivery of products to distributors
o Promotion and advertising
o After-service support, etc.

 Production
o Product manufacture or service delivery
o Machine operation
o Repair and maintenance
o Quality control
o Raw materials and finished products inventory, etc.

 Finance
o Bookkeeping
o Payroll preparation
o Settlement of payables and collection of receivables
o Petty cash management, etc.

 Administration
o Ordering of supplies
o Sales contract preparation and business permit renewals
o Keeping and maintenance of personnel records
o Business communication and inquiries, etc.

You can specify your list further according to the nature of your business. For example in the soap making business, the specific jobs include mixing of the ingredients, molding, curing, cutting, packaging, washing of the utensils, sales and promotions, supervising, and bookkeeping. Note that each of the listed activities does not have to be done by a different person. One or two of your workers may perform a combination of jobs.

* In your list of activities, exclude those that you are taking for yourself. The remainder will be those that will be taken by the people you are going to hire. These are now the tasks you are going to translate into job designations or position titles. As said earlier, one or two of your workers may perform a combination of jobs. A
production worker in a soap-making business, for example, may do all the activities related to soap making prior to packaging, and these include mixing, molding, curing, cutting, etc. Similarly, your bookkeeper may also be your secretary or administrative assistant. But be sure that no worker will be too much preoccupied or overworked. Thus, it is important to determine the sufficient number of people for each position title.

* Next, list all the qualifications you will require for every position in terms of education, experience, training, etc. For example, you may require the following from a worker for your home-based soap-making business:

o At least high school graduate
o Preferably with experience in soap manufacturing
o Willing to work overtime
o Willing to work in shifts.

For a bookkeeper or secretary, the requirements could be:

o Graduate of any business-related course
o Computer literate
o Must know how to use the copier and the fax machine
o With good oral and written communication skills
o With pleasing personality
o Preferably with experience in bookkeeping and secretarial work.

* At this point, you will now determine the salaries you are going to pay your workers. You must follow the prevailing minimum wage in your region or, if your business is BMBE-registered, you should consider what is just and equitable for them.

Critical to any business is worker compensation. Labor cost affects production cost, which, in turn will affect profitability. On the other hand, wage is one of the most important factors that will motivate or discourage a worker to stay in a company.

One way for fixing wage rates is to match them with the industry standards. Some entrepreneurs ensure that their employees receive slightly higher (about 10 percent) than the prevailing industry rate. These entrepreneurs believe that raising their employees’ salaries has a direct impact on productivity. Some other entrepreneurs pay a new recruit lower than the industry rate, which they can adjust upward after the worker has shown good performance within the probationary or trial period.

Once you are done with the four steps, you can now begin to recruit, screen, and select the people who will work for you. For a starting small business, the above steps are already enough to complete an entire organizational plan. Additional steps will be needed to complete a bigger set-up.

Source: Your Guide to Starting a Small Enterprise -dti.gov.ph