For an entrepreneur, few things are as fulfilling as taking a great idea and turning it into a profitable business. But most business owners know that many steps are necessary to get to this point.
However, while spending time innovating new product and service ideas or putting together a solid sales proposal are important parts of this process, putting together a great team for your business is essential.
Unfortunately, it can be challenging for modern businesses to quickly source and lock down a collection of skilled individuals whose passions mirror the qualifications they list on their resumes. Still, there are some effective strategies startup businesses can apply to significantly improve their recruitment efforts and help them drive their company forward.
Common Team-Building Challenges New Businesses Face
All businesses want to make sure they have a great team working for them. Unfortunately, this isn’t always easily achieved by organizations with limited bandwidth and available resources. Before a business can become successful, it must first navigate the many challenges that often arise when attracting, hiring, and retaining a winning team of individuals. Many of these challenges include:
- Limited Resources and Time – As startup businesses begin to prioritize various new company initiatives, it is often hard to devote the time and resources necessary to establish their teams. This is especially the case considering how competitive specific industries are today, making attracting a large talent pool difficult.
- Deciding on In-Office vs. Remote Working Arrangements – With remote work becoming a popular method for running a business, entrepreneurs often need help deciding on the most effective model for their business. While having employees together in an office can be important, especially for organizations still establishing mission-critical operations, restricting your hiring to only one format could make it harder to find job candidates.
- Establishing Trust and Credibility – At the early stages of a business’s development, organizations don’t have the long-standing reputation that makes it easier for other companies to bring in great talent. Lacking credibility or trust in the industry can be a major roadblock to startup companies need to face to start building a great team.
Effective Strategies for Creating a Great Team for Your Startup Business
Although new businesses often experience more roadblocks when establishing their teams than organizations with pre-established reputations, several practical strategies can assist in this effort.
Spend Time Designing Your Company Vision
An important foundational element of business development is creating a company vision that can be shared across all departments. A company vision should define an organization’s core purpose and help establish shared values that each company member can support.
When your business has a clear sense of purpose, everyone working in it can move toward the same goals and objectives. This will often influence employees’ attitudes and behaviors while empowering them to make smarter decisions when handling their daily tasks.
As you begin to search for potential job candidates, having this company vision well-established will make it easier to find individuals who not only fit into a pre-established culture but also can add more value to the business.
Create a Brand People Get Excited About
Today’s job market is highly dynamic and often filled with competitive businesses all trying to get the attention of highly skilled job candidates. As a new company coming onto the scene, this can be an intimidating environment to navigate and present several challenges when trying to stand out from other organizations.
Your business’s image can significantly influence whether or not potential candidates are willing to explore the job opportunities you present. This is why it’s so important for new businesses to invest the time and resources necessary to create a compelling business story.
You should focus your marketing efforts on highlighting your unique value proposition as an organization while working to maintain a professional image on your website and when creating social media profiles. This will help to set the right tone with individuals looking for potential employers.
Be More Strategic During the Recruitment Process
Startup companies have a unique opportunity to set themselves apart from other businesses before job candidates even have the chance to speak with a hiring manager. The format of your business’s job descriptions will often play an important deciding factor in whether or not individuals will apply to work with your company.
Because of this, organizations should pay careful attention to how they format their role descriptions and the language and tone they use when marketing new opportunities.
Rather than simply copying and pasting descriptions from other organizations hiring for similar roles, businesses should inject their personality into job descriptions while clearly outlining the responsibilities and expectations of the job.
However, rather than just focusing on things the company requires from individuals, you should highlight how the business works to support its employees. This includes providing context into the benefits provided and any opportunities for continuous learning and career advancements.
Investing in Developing Your Team
While it can be exciting to find and secure quality talent while watching your team grow over time, your efforts shouldn’t stop there. To maximize the value your employees bring to the organization and minimize employee turnover, showing that you’re invested in their long-term success is important.
To create a passionate and motivated team, businesses should look for various opportunities to help them learn and develop their skill sets through company workshops or formal educational courses. These allow employees to develop the necessary skills to perform tasks more efficiently, and they can also be a great way to improve their resumes when looking for new career opportunities down the road.
Businesses can show their commitment to their employees’ futures by offering complimentary subscriptions to online learning platforms or varying employer-funded benefits associated with different education programs.
Place a Higher Value on Performance Reviews
Startup businesses often have several essential initiatives they need to tackle. Because of this, finding self-motivated and driven employees who require little direct oversight can be a valuable asset.
However, the desire to find individuals who don’t need constant micro-management can also lead business owners to limit their day-to-day communication and even avoid individual performance reviews.
While every business has its own preference on the level of formality assigned to employee performance reviews, they can be highly valuable and encourage interactions between an employer and their employees. Rather than forgetting or ignoring these sessions, startup businesses should create a consistent format for having annual or semi-annual discussions with employees on their current performance while also looking for areas of improvement.
Creating this level of transparency with employees is vital throughout the year and helps ensure everyone in the organization remains aligned with the company’s short – and long-term objectives.
Establish the Right Team to Help Your Business Grow
Developing a dynamic and successful team for your startup business is very important. By following the strategies discussed, you’ll improve the attractiveness of your brand while helping to create a company culture conducive to sustainable business growth.
Author Bio Below:
Michael Bollinger, a Lexington, Kentucky-based entrepreneur, has left a lasting mark on the tech and software landscape. As the founder of LegFi and File990, Michael launched PayHOA.com in 2018 after Togetherwork acquired his first two ventures.
PayHOA is an affordable community management software for homeowner associations that streamlines payments, communication, and vendor management. Beyond his entrepreneurial pursuits, Michael finds fulfillment as a devoted husband and a loving father to his three children.
