Small Business Growth

Swindon

To grow your small business effectively, you need to have the right elements in place and it is vital to recruit members of staff with the skills your business needs, and for them to work together well as a team.

Finding Team Members
As many small business owners know all too well, it can be hard to recruit the right people. Continuing skill shortages in many fields have led to competition for qualified staff, so you need to think about strategies for finding the talent you want.
As a starting point, work out what skills you need to continue growing your business and what level of experience and other qualities you are ideally seeking. Once you have drawn up specifications for the job, it’s increasingly necessary to explore different ways of recruiting. This often means not just placing traditional job ads, but also asking contacts if they know of anybody who might be suitable. Social media sites can offer another channel for finding people.
It’s a good idea to think flexibly. If you find someone who isn’t quite what you were looking for but has valuable skills and talents, is there any way in which your company can benefit from their input? This could involve getting them to do some work for you on a freelance basis, or reorganising some responsibilities within your company.
Another way forward is often to develop the expertise of the staff members you already have. For instance, you may decide you want someone who is already a key member of your team to learn new skills, while taking on a new trainee to take over part of their existing workload.
Getting Staff to Work Together as a Team
Finding the members of staff you need is only part of the story when it comes to team building you need your staff to work with you as an effective team. Key to achieving this is to get your team members engaged and enthused.
However, for each individual to feel they have a stake in your success, you need to get across the message about the company’s culture and aims, and make the staff feel they are part of it. Communication is hugely important, so when there is a project under way, it’s vital to ensure everyone knows what they are supposed to be doing, so there is no doubling up and no tasks are left undone.
It’s is also helpful if different members of staff have a good understanding of what the other people involved are doing, to get a picture of the project as a whole. Encouraging existing staff to be involved in training and mentoring newcomers is another way to help to build good working relations