The chances are that when you launched your business, you most likely didn’t expect to need to take on a team. Or, at least, need to take on a team at such a fast pace. However, now you’ve found yourself in a position where your business is thriving and you have a real need to take on a team, which means that it’s time to start thinking about what the process of taking on a team really means.
It’s not just a case of advertising for a set number of roles and selecting the best candidates to fill them, there’s a lot more to the process of becoming an employer than you might think. It’s not as simple or as straightforward to build a team as many people assume, there’s a lot more to the process than you may realise – at least, there is if you want to be a reputable and successful employer.
If you’re going to build up a team of employees to help support your business, there are a number of factors that it’s important to be clear about, from how each team member fits with the company’s overall strategy to how you can engage effectively with each employee. The truth is that there’s a lot to take into account and consider.
Understanding that the time is right to take on a team to help support your business is both extremely exciting and rather nerve-wracking. It’s a big deal growing your business and bringing new people on board to help support that growth, so getting your approach right from the get-go is important.
Wondering how you can ensure that you get things right when it comes to taking on a team of your own? Below is a guide to some of the ins and outs of building a team to support your company and the best steps to take when doing so.
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Understand the importance of offering fair pay and benefits
The reality is that when you take on a team, you need to be clear about the fact that it’s highly competitive. Every person you interview for each role most likely has interviewed for a number of other roles as well, which means that you need to be able to compete with the benefits and pay those roles would offer. Taking on team members is a competitive process and if you want to gain access to the very best people for the roles you’re hiring for, you need to be clear about the importance of offering fair pay and benefits.
Never simply meet the minimum requirement when it comes to pay and benefits, instead aim to exceed those requirements. If you’re unable to exceed the pay amount due to financial limitations, instead focus on how you can offer your team members advanced benefits. If you’re unsure on the kinds of benefits that they would like and appreciate, do your research to see which benefits seem to be the most popular options – from medical care and days off for their birthdays to flexi working and spending a day with their chosen charity, there are plenty of benefits that you can offer.
Ensure that the admin side of things in order
Taking on a team isn’t just a practical task that revolves around finding and interviewing potential candidates, it’s also a process that requires a lot of admin. So, it’s important that you don’t make the mistake of failing to get the admin side of things in order, because this is a key aspect of running a successful business and being a good employer. Admittedly, there’s a lot to think about, from types of timesheets to pay structure management, but if you can ensure that you stay on top of the administrative side of things, you will find that everything runs more smoothly.
Don’t feel like you can deal with the administrative side of taking on team members yourself? Then, it might be a good idea to take a look at what your options are, such as hiring a personal assistant (if you don’t already have one) to help you manage the administrative side of things or you might want to opt to outsource the task to a virtual HR support desk. There are plenty of options, it’s simply a case of knowing what they are and how to utilise them.
Understand the cruciality of an ideal working environment
When you’re in a well designed and planned out working environment it’s easier to focus, isn’t it? Well, it’s the same for your team members – if you want them to be able to give their roles their all, they need to be situated in the ideal working environment. This means taking the time to think about what constitutes the prime working environment for your new team members.
If you’re unsure what a good setup looks like, take the time to do some research. Take a look at the layouts that your competitors use to gain an insight into what works well. In most modern workspaces, having a combination of co-working spaces, dedicated desk spaces, and meeting rooms tends to work well. This gives people the opportunity to decide how and where they work and is also extremely useful for the various tasks that a team member might need to work on throughout their time at your company.
If you’re not sure about what your new team members would like to see from their working space, take the time to ask them their thoughts. Speak to each new team member and ask what they feel they need as a priority to work in an effective and productive way.
Be clear about your legal obligations
As an employer, it’s important to remember that you have a range of legal obligations to take into consideration. It’s your job to make sure that when it comes to each and every team member that you have done all of the necessary legal paperwork. You need to ensure that this is made a priority, as without the right legal steps in place, from paperwork to insurance, you could end up in a lot of trouble.
If you feel like you’re not in a position to deal with this side of taking on team members yourself, then it might be worthwhile outsourcing any tasks to a reliable legal service that can offer ongoing support.
Know how to reward your team
Offering your team members a good rate of pay and a number of benefits probably isn’t enough to make them feel rewarded for all of the hard work that they do. Particularly when so many competing companies have a whole host of employee perks and rewards available to their team members. With that in mind, it’s a good idea to have a clear structure in place for how you can reward your team for their hard work, beyond their pay and base benefits package.
A good starting point is understanding the benefit of a simple ‘thank you for all your hard work’ and company employee awards, such as ‘employee of the month’. These might be small gestures but they can go a long way in showing your team members how much your appreciate what they do to support your business.
Another great option is to create a structure of rewards – a structure is important so that the reward system feels fair to all. The structure could offer financial perks for meeting certain targets, for instance, or it could offer additional time off when certain targets are achieved.
There you have it, a guide to what it takes to build a successful team for your business and a number of factors it’s important to be clear about.
