Secure Your Talent, Secure Your Future. Don’t Make These Mistakes...

As an entrepreneur chances are you just want to get on with the job of taking your disruptive product or service to market.  After all it’s what you started up to do.  The problem is as soon as your business starts to motor you need to hire.  Recently, though, I’ve observed a series of entrepreneurial companies repeatedly making a total hash of their people hiring and management, and, as a result, creating unnecessary management overhead and seriously damaging their prospects.

An early New Year’s resolution

If you don’t want to be in that situation or if you’ve just been putting off getting to grips with your employee issues perhaps it’s time to make an early New Year’s resolution.  There are certain mistakes, it seems to me, entrepreneurial managers tend to make again and again and just paying attention to these few areas can pay big dividends.

The first is reactive recruitment.  Typically, in entrepreneurial firms little attention is paid to staff planning.  People are hired in a panic after a contract is secured.  But getting the right people into the right positions at the right time should an ongoing process.  Recruitment must be done by fully thinking through needs going forward and planning accordingly. This is vital in a market that is perpetually short of talent and for securing the resources that are mission-critical for any business that wants to grow successfully.

Getting started

But getting it right needn’t be complex, a few simple rules apply.  The starting point both for the employer and the candidate in successful recruitment is the development of an accurate and up-to-date job description and candidate specification.

Creating these should not be neither onerous nor time consuming. A job description should be no more than a sheet of A4 and only needs three components.  Firstly, there should be a clear job title that reflects the level of seniority and the responsibilities inherent in the job. Secondly, there should be two or three short sentences or bullet points that summarise the purpose of the position.

The third and final section should set out the key tasks.  It doesn’t have to contain everything required of the potential executive, just the essential day-to-day responsibilities that define the job. Of course, given entrepreneurial firms are by their nature regularly `all hands to the pumps` make sure you specify that the job holder must also `carry out any other reasonable request from management` or words to that effect.

Trust existing employees

You can then use the job description and candidate specification to start to communicate both internally and externally that you are recruiting - together with details of the hiring process, how to apply and including closing dates.  It’s always worth offering a recruitment bounty to current employees.  It’s not only cheaper than using recruitment consultants but also says important things about the trust you place in your existing people.

You will need to supply this to any chosen recruitment specialists too.  You should also take the time to talk them through both the documents and the context of the position – why you are hiring, the culture of the firm, characteristics of employees that make for successful recruits, career progression examples and so on.  This will enable them to act as seamless extension of your firm, identify the best fit candidates and preferentially `sell` your opportunity against positions open in other companies.

Ensure any recruitment consultancy adds real value by tasking them with pre-interview selection based on your briefing.  For candidates that apply directly use pre-interview screening by phone to try and determine whether the candidate is worth meeting face-to-face or simply route all applications through the recruiter if you are happy to pay their fees.  In any case, the requirement for a CV and a cover letter, for instance, will quickly reveal whether a candidate can present information and use language correctly together with the maturity and emotional intelligence they show in justifying their application.

Ensuring company fit

Whatever their skills on paper, any hire will need to fit well within your firm, as in small companies the impact of poor hires is much greater than in larger enterprises. No matter how formally qualified for the job the candidate may be don’t hire them if you have the slightest doubt about whether they’ll fit in, particular if they have a chequered job history.  But beware the temptation to hire the same type over and over again – that won’t build effective teams.  

Interviews can be made more effective by using a competency-based approach.  That means asking very specific questions about relevant skills and asking for detailed examples of how those skills have been put to use by the candidate in the past or are being deployed currently.  Make sure the questions are open – this means they are impossible to answer with a straight `yes` or `no` and couple this with objective testing for key technical skills to make the selection process more valuable.

Walking the talk

Once the person is on board the daily business of ensuring good performance should involve a managed settling-in or probationary period.  This should be accompanied by the setting, communicating, demonstrating and the living of standards – `walking the talk`.  Also the giving of regular, objective feedback, praise and reward where due and targeting improvement or correction as necessary should start from day one.

Even if this is achieved one of the other things that can quickly end up biting entrepreneurs is poor - or even non-existent - record keeping.  Good record keeping should simply be part of your day-to-day routine and if you are in certain industries or grow big enough to be subject to external compliance then you’ll be glad you got into good habits from the outset.

Writing it down

Recording activities such as training, feedback, performance or behaviour issues is especially important, particularly if things start to go wrong with an employee.  Unless you have clear and accurate evidence, it’s impossible for you to have objective authority about a particular matter let alone a grown-up discussion - especially if a situation to be discussed occurred some time before.

In particular, ensure anything during a person’s employment that involves responsibility for actions on either side is agreed, written down and dated. Even recording informal discussions about performance or behaviour is necessary if only by an email confirming your conversation because it proves that you have taken reasonable steps to correct under-performance or poor behaviour.  

Doing it quickly

It’s a reality that even the smallest firms have people employed whose performance falls well below that of their colleagues.  Not targeting poor work performance is the surest way to spread the cancer of disillusionment and resulting poor performance throughout a firm. The most important thing is to take appropriate action as soon as you notice that the employee is not performing work to the standard required.

If addressed early it’s not the end of the earth and so doesn’t have to become a big deal. Start by investigating the cause of the sub-standard performance directly with the employee.  If you can quickly identify, remove or reduce the cause of the problem, the employee's performance is likely to improve just as rapidly.

One of the reasons poor performance is not addressed quickly is because managers fears they will be disliked for their actions. Also that the employee concerned may get defensive or aggressive when presented with the situation or the manger themselves will end up saying something they regret or that can be used against them.  

Sticking to the facts

If things get sticky take a deep breath and focus on the facts and remind them that you have a right and a duty to care for, manage and encourage an employee to do their job to the standard required ethically and in their contract.

Remind them that the discussion is about business, it’s not personal.  It’s not about whether the employee is liked or not, it’s about whether they can do the job to the standard required.  If you have been keeping records then you will have clear evidence of poor work performance to support your case or good performance to help balance it.  You’ll then look like you mean business too and are intent on getting to the bottom of the problem for the benefit of both parties.

Hiring slowly, firing quickly

After you’ve had a discussion with the employee and everything is on the table, the next stage is to create a performance improvement plan.  Agree and set down precise targets which are capable of being measured (SMART applies in spades here) and meet regularly to identify and agree progress.  If performance doesn’t improve then a justified and managed exit procedure will have to begin.

Finally if you think none of this yet applies to you, remember at least the maxim when it comes to entrepreneurial people management; everything should be based on hiring slowly and firing quickly!

 

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