You take that leap to start a business and before you know where you are you need to recruit. Its an exciting time, except suddenly you have employees and that comes with a raft of legislation and responsibilities. You are passionate about your business, its your baby and your livelihood, your brand new employees probably won’t feel as excited and committed about your business as you do and that’s ok. However, you do need to manage them and make sure that they add value to your business and that you have a good working culture. If you find yourself in a position of management with no experience, you can suddenly find yourself faced with several challenges, so what can you do?
Training new staff.
You’ve found the perfect recruit, and they’ve joined your business, so far so good. Except now you need them to do the job you’re paying them to do. It sounds easy, right? And in theory it is, however, you need to be clear on what you expect them to do, so they can be clear on what you expect them to do.
Step 1 – write a clear job description. Now a lot of managers struggle to write job descriptions, it sounds easy but knowing in your head what you want them to do and then writing it down can be harder than it sounds. In the first instance just write a list of tasks, it doesn’t have to be perfect to start off with and you can refine it as you go. It also doesn’t need to be exhaustive, think about the core tasks and skills, it should be clear bullet points.
Step 2 – Training them, you should know how to do the job and be able to write down each step. Go through the steps by completing the task yourself to make sure you haven’t missed anything out. That way when you’re training them, they will have a guide to help them and to refer back to.
The art of delegation.
Many business owners struggle to delegate and there are several reasons for this. Firstly, as a business owner you are used to doing everything yourself. Secondly, it can be hard to trust anyone else to do it, particularly if you’ve had things go wrong in the past. Passing on responsibility especially if it involves decision making, can feel risky. Having thing written down, see above, will help to be clear on levels of responsibility and accountability. Make sure your employee knows what they can and can’t do, schedule regular catch’s up so you are aware of how they are getting on and what they are struggling with. When they first start you may need to catch up for half an hour each morning, as they settle in you can move to weekly check in’s and then monthly.
If you don’t learn to delegate, you will be paying someone and still doing the tasks yourself, you will risk burnout and likely hinder your business growth. If everything goes to you, it will bottleneck and nothing will get done.
Feedback!
Many business owners avoid feedback, not the good kind -that’s easy. Many people struggle with conversations involving negative feedback, you may worry that the feedback will cause a bad atmosphere, or that they’ll leave. Avoiding giving the feedback means that the issue will persist and how can they learn if you don’t give feedback. Tackle feedback in a constructive way, give examples and let them know what they need to do instead. You’ve probably heard of a shit sandwich, give two bits of feedback with the bad bit in between. I am not a fan of this, people will only hear the bad feedback and any good comments will be lost. It is much better to sit them down, discuss the negative feedback and make a plan to fix it. Give good feedback as it happens so they know when they are doing the right thing.
Becoming a leader
Quite often when people find themselves in a management position they struggle to move from a hands-on worker to a more strategic role. In part this often why owners struggle to delegate, we all like to do what we know and what we feel comfortable with. Moving outside our comfort zone can be scary.
Your employees will look to you for guidance and support, you will need to set clear expectations. Often good management is about coaching employees, it is easy to give your team the answers however, if you can adopt a coaching style and encourage them to find the answers themselves, they will learn more. This does take more time in the first instance, but you will reap the rewards later down the line.
Here are some tips, when they come to you with a problem don’t just give them the answer, ask them what they think they should do. If it’s what you would do, great, off they go. If not ask them why they think that’s the answer, probe as to other solutions and gently lead them to the answer you want. You might need to take this approach a few times and yes it is quicker just to tell them but they will never learn if you do.
Difficult conversations.
I have written a blog about this see here https://www.bdhr.co.uk/post/why-you-need-to-be-brave-and-have-difficult-conversations This is similar to feedback but is more focussed around dealing with conflict or performance issues. You will need to approach this in a structured and formal way. Feedback by comparison can be less formal. You will have to have the conversation at some point and the earlier you do it the better and easier it will be. Letting the little things slide can create a bad culture, one of perceived unfairness or lack of structure. This will lead to bigger issues, so nip it in the bud.
HR pro tip, when you are having formal conversations with employees make sure you follow up in written communication, by email or letter. If you don’t write it down then to all intents and purposes it never happened, you may need to refer back if the behaviour doesn’t improve. Keep a record!
Structure your business for success.
Working with many of my clients, I tend to see that what happens is, as the business grows, the structure doesn’t change. Many business owners end up with all the employees reporting into to them. If you don’t have many employees that might not be a big issue, however, it does mean that you will end up getting involved in the day-to-day employee issues. If you are scaling your business, then you will need to be focussed on growth and getting involved in the minutiae of everyday issues will be distracting and take you away from what you should be doing. I am not advocating having an elaborate structure but think about one layer between you and the majority of the team. That way you just get an overview of the issues or are only involved in the important decisions. Having a formal structure in place will also provide opportunities for growth and development for your employees, this can support with retention and your growth plans.
Growing a business and stepping up can be a challenge. For support with this and to make sure you have the foundations in place contact me at bev@bdhr.co.uk, I have several cost effective packages which you can choose from to provide the support you need saving you time and setting you up for success.
