ENT 600 Blog #5

Hiring is a constant theme and task when running a business. Founders have many dilemmas in the hiring process. One of those being whether to consider relationships in the hiring process. In addition, you must take into account the stage that your start up is in. In a fairly new business you are faced with many uncertainties and hiring the right people is at the forefront of those uncertainties. The obvious choice is to choose people that are already in your networks. However, as your business grows, and you gain investors you are faced with yet another dilemma as who you want to hire may not align with who investors want to hire. Once the investor tries his hand at hiring this can lead to more issues as the hire the investor chooses may side more with that investor and their lies potential loyalty problems. Hiring also comes with firing and the creation of new positions. It is really hard to let people go or address conflicts with people you have drawn from your own network or even your family and friends. The same holds true for positions. A small restaurant in my hometown is family owned and mostly ran. The time came for the owner to retire and he has 2 children but he could only choose one to be his successor and manage the business. When he made his decision of course the other child was not pleased and left the business altogether. So not only was he faced with the dilemma of choosing a Manager (CEO) but he also lost a valued employee that will need to be replaced.

So how do you keep top performers? Top performers believe that their success is tied directly to the success of the company, hence one of the reasons that they work so hard. A good founder has to find ways to communicate to these employees that as a founder they are thinking about the longevity and ways to build their business. The company I work for recently went through a name change. This scared me, I immediately thought that we were being sold or there was some sort of ownership change. My employer is a very large company tied to a bank, so I assumed that they were ridding themselves of the insurance business. The CEO sent a message publicly and even internally reassuring the future of my company and the future of the employees that work there. Another way to keep top performers is to make them feel valued and set apart. Growing up as the eldest child my parents would sometimes call me in on their family discussions and even sometimes asked for my input. They would let me know how responsible I was and how they valued my opinion. This in turn was incentive for me to be on my best behavior and an example to my younger siblings. This same principle can be applied to how you should treat the top performers in your business.

2 Replies to “ENT 600 Blog #5”

  1. I would agree that making top employees feel as if they have a voice in the company is one of the best ways to keep staff. But, is it enough to ask for input?

    In my experience, some company’s ask for input then do nothing with it. That approach serves to devalue the employee. However, I have seen others enable employees to tackle challenges that are important to them. In one such example, several employees were concerned about sustainability. So, the employer asked them to serve on a team to evaluate ways the company could reduce its impact on the environment.

    The team identified several areas where they could have an impact and proposed solutions including, replacing all the lighting in the warehouse with LED bulbs, implementing a paper Recycling program, replacing paper towels in the restrooms with had Dryers, and similar ideas. The employer implemented every idea the team offered up. That set the standard for employee input throughout the organization.

    All the best,
    -David

    Like

  2. Hi,

    I think hiring can be less of a constant thing (theme as you put it) if you spend the time hiring the right people ahead of time, and then use the best practices to keep your top talent. Your post got me to think about hiring as a best practice, and as we have read in this course, it is one that can’t be pushed to the back burner, or the company will suffer the consequences. Thanks for the writing on this topic, giving me a better idea of the do’s and don’ts I will employee in my personal business!

    Merida

    Like

Leave a Reply

Fill in your details below or click an icon to log in:

WordPress.com Logo

You are commenting using your WordPress.com account. Log Out /  Change )

Facebook photo

You are commenting using your Facebook account. Log Out /  Change )

Connecting to %s

%d bloggers like this: