Employees are a critical component of nearly all businesses. From hiring your first employee to your 100th, dealing with employee-related issues — human resources — can consume many hours of a business owner’s time.
Common mistakes business owners and managers make are:
• No employment-related documents. Employment contracts or letter of offers, employee handbooks, etc. Outline the expectations for both parties. If you don’t put the do’s and don’ts in writing, you’re asking for trouble.
• Know your competitors. Just like you need to differentiate yourself from your competitor’s product and services, it is the same with why your employees want to work for you.
Your competitors will try to lure your best employees; it’s your responsibility to be sure they aren’t tempted to.
• Withholding employee praise and constructive criticism.
Failure to recognize stellar employees and make poor performers aware of their deficiencies is a common mistake.
• Hasty hires and slow terminations. Poor hiring can lead to a host of problems for employers.
Before you even consider hiring someone, take time to flesh out exactly why you are hiring. At termination, be aware of your legal obligation, but don’t delay the decision.
• It’s easy to ignore the HR side of your business when you are just starting out or things are flowing smoothly. After all there are far more pressing concerns nagging us each day.
Relations with employees can be enjoyable and fulfilling or time-consuming and terrifying, depending on the situation.
Being proactive and recognizing and rectifying employment-related issues before they become serious problems, can save countless headaches and protect your business against costly direct and indirect expenses.
By Glen Grant, Principal, HRfx Consulting. The company provides effective and efficient human resource solutions to small businesses. Ask your Chamber for more of this member benefit.
