- How to hire employees for a small business
- What happens after you hire?
- How do you retain your best employees?
Q: How can I make good hires for my small business? Then, what can I do to retain the various employees I hire?
A: Learning how to hire employees for a small business is as simple as learning how to create an environment where individuals want to work. This doesn’t mean that you have to pay the highest salary or provide the biggest bonus, it means that you need to treat your employees well, provide open lines of communication, and incentivize creativity and innovation.
- How to hire employees for a small business
- What happens after you hire?
- How do you retain your best employees?
- Small businesses and remote employees
How to hire employees for a small business
If you want to know how to hire employees for a small business, you’re in the right place.
Below, we’ve created an actionable guide that details each step in the process of learning how to find good employees for a small business.
- Cultivate a healthy environment
- Utilize general job boards
- Consider freelancers and contractors
- Set clear expectations, right out of the gate
- Remote interviews
- In-person interviews
Cultivate a healthy environment
The key to understanding how to hire the right employees for your small business is to create a company that attracts excited, passionate employees.
Some research has suggested that approximately half the U.S. workers employed are unhappy in their current position, with a staggering 25% claiming to have considered quitting.
Often, this unhappiness stems from feelings of frustration or burnout, and as an employer, you can provide healthy outlets and a welcoming community to help eliminate these feelings.
E-commerce sales are booming, and barring a global depression, that trend doesn’t look to be slowing any time soon. Leveraging the proliferation of e-commerce and remote work is a great way to not only find the right employees but also scale your business.
Utilize general job boards
Knowing how to hire staff for a small business means knowing how to utilize free job boards and other cost-efficient methods of finding employees. Platforms like Indeed and Monster are excellent places to start.
Indeed
Indeed, according to the September 2021 Comscore results, is the number one job website in the world. With Indeed, you have more competition in the hunt for employees, but the high traffic on the website gives you a better chance than some lesser-known platforms.
Monster
Created almost 30 years ago, Monster is another popular job search network.
While Monster isn’t ranked as high as Indeed, it’s still one of the most used job-searching platforms around, and the smooth user interface and intuitive website design makes it easy to figure out, even if you’re someone who considers yourself technologically illiterate.
With both platforms, you can set your distance preferences, so you only pull talent from the area you want.
Consider freelancers and contractors
Depending on your business, freelancers and contractors offer an excellent way to save money on onboarding and training costs.
Sure, if you’re searching for long-term positions or positions that require niche knowledge, these professionals might not be right for your business.
That said, an understanding of how to hire employees for a small business will help you understand when you should look for a full-time employee, and when you should look for a freelancer.
Platforms like Upwork are an excellent way to connect with freelancers and contractors for specific jobs.
On platforms like Indeed and Monster, you’re typically searching for an individual to fill a full-time position — after necessary and company-specific probationary periods, of course.
On Upwork, however, you can search for individuals to complete specific tasks for a predetermined payment.
For instance, if you want to build a website that stands out from other sites, you may consider searching on Upwork for an web designer to build your platform.
In this case, the freelancer or contractor will build the website, you will pay them, and the relationship ends. Because you’re only hiring these individuals for specific tasks, you aren’t responsible for offering benefits, insurance, or other extras associated with traditional employment.
Set clear expectations, right out of the gate
The key to realizing how to hire employees for a small business is being crystal clear with what you expect from your workers. With remote employees especially, setting clear expectations immediately goes a long way in preventing burnout.
By doing so, you’re letting potential employees know exactly what is expected of them and the outcomes you hope to see. Knowing the desired outcome will allow you to set your criteria for evaluating resumes.
Sifting through resumes takes a lot of time that could be better spent on your business’s operations.
Once you know exactly what you’re looking for, going through applications and resumes becomes considerably less stressful and time-consuming. Namely, because all you have to do is evaluate based on the predetermined criteria to narrow down your list of applicants.
Another benefit of setting clear expectations is that you now have an easy metric by which you can grade new employees.
Identifying problem employees immediately, before they’re able to affect your business’s infrastructure or culture, allows you to make the necessary changes to find an employee that will be with your company for a long time.
Remote interviews
Remote employees are all too familiar with the struggle of remote interviews, and for remote businesses, this part can be particularly tricky.
Conducting online interviews from home can set the wrong first impression, making you seem less professional than you are and sending the wrong message to incoming employees.
While remote interviews often lack the personality and physical connection of traditional interviews, they provide a wider variety of workers to interview for your business, giving yourself access to a more diverse talent pool.
In-person interviews
Although in-person interviews are naturally more personable than their virtual counterparts, they too require a clean space to meet and conduct the interview.
Without a dedicated space, this can be difficult.
For the most successful interviews, remote, in-person, or otherwise, a virtual office is the ideal solution.
With Alliance Virtual Offices, you can access an office equipped with meeting rooms perfect for conducting online interviews, allowing you to avoid conducting the meetings from home.
Similarly, for in-person interviews, you can use the same, easily reservable, meeting rooms with a designated space for these meetings.
Now that you’ve got an understanding of how to hire employees for a small business, let’s take a look at the actual logistics of hiring and what you need to provide for your employees.
- EIN
- Your Employer Identification Number. It acts as your business’s social security number and is used for any business credit you might receive. It’s also used for your employee’s tax returns and various other documents.
- Determine if you need state IDs or local tax IDs
- This is state-specific. Use the U.S. Small Business Administration website to determine what state-specific regulations you need to be aware of when hiring.
- Make sure your employees complete their W-4 forms
- Failing to file W-4 forms will result in fines for you or your employee and can lead to bigger problems with the IRS.
- Decide how you’ll handle payroll
- In the modern world, convenience is king. Several payroll platforms automate the process entirely for you, like Paychex or Gusto.
- As you grow and hire more employees, ensure that you’re keeping good books.
- Platforms like Intuit Quickbooks function like payroll applications but focus on bookkeeping rather than payroll.
Remember, as you begin to hire more employees, your bookkeeping will be considerably more complicated. You must be careful with your accounting so that you never find yourself on the receiving end of a surprise audit.
Read more: Leveling Up Your E-Commerce Operations? These Are the Most Effective E-Commerce Tools Imaginable
How to keep employees motivated
Now that you’re familiar with how to hire employees for a small business, it’s time to determine what to do to keep your employees motivated.
The key is to provide them with everything they need to love what they do.
We’ve put together a brief list of methods you can employ to keep your workers content, motivated, and productive. Keep reading!
- Provide open lines of communication
- Give and receive feedback
- Create a flexible environment
- Focus on collaboration
Provide open lines of communication
You don’t necessarily need to give your employees total access to your cellphone number 24/7, but you should try to create multiple lines of communication.
You want your small business employees to feel heard. Ensuring that they always have multiple avenues for any questions or concerns goes a long way toward cultivating a healthy working environment.
To foster this sense of communication, start with small things. Try to start conversations before starting meetings , engage employees with jovial yet professional aphorisms, and frequently remind your teams of your open-door policy.
Give and receive feedback
Giving your employees the chance to give feedback will help you optimize infrastructure and grow as a business owner.
The effectiveness and legitimacy of the feedback will undoubtedly vary, but keeping an open mind and being willing to make changes to improve your operations will help prepare your company for long-term success.
Conversely, you should also be giving your employees feedback fairly regularly.
Regular check-ins and brief updates help workers understand they’re doing well, where they can improve, as well as help them learn and grow with your business, inevitably making them exponentially more productive.
For the feedback you give, consider short, bi-weekly notes for your employees about their performance.
For feedback received, set up a virtual drop box where employees can leave suggestions, comments, or concerns. Also, send monthly feedback requests to your employees about your company’s performance over the past 30 days.
Remember, feedback doesn’t have to be something that you or your employees should do better.
Your employees need to feel appreciated, so outside of the regular feedback requests, try to remind your employees that their work is valued and recognized.
Create a flexible environment
Knowing how to employ staff in a small business is a bit different than simply knowing how to hire employees for a small business.
Making good hires is hard, but keeping employees engaged and productive takes continued effort to create a flexible, creative, and driven workplace.
The most efficient way to keep your business as flexible as possible is through the use of a virtual office.
A high-quality virtual office allows you to register your business with a professional and well-known address, without being forced to pay for lengthy commercial space leases.
Better yet, the best virtual offices are backed by physical space, so you have access to a private and professional workspace when you’d like to switch things up.
Focus on collaboration
Collaboration and decentralization go hand in hand.
Focusing on collaboration means delegating responsibilities as effectively as you can.
Rather than having one decision maker, give several employees the ability to make small, low-level decisions while you focus on expansion.
To create a successful, collaborative environment in the workplace, have your employees work directly with one another. Streamline content creation, HTTP requests, or any other projects so that your team members are communicating with one another to meet deadlines.
Once your traditional or remote employees are collaborating, you can focus on acquiring more work, scaling your operations, or exploring new markets.
Read more: Time Away From Work? Set Your Business Up So You Can Step Away
Recognizing how to keep your employees motivated and recognizing how to hire employees for a small business are separate issues, but if you make good hires, you stand a much better chance of motivating your employees.
At the end of the day, you can’t motivate an employee that doesn’t want to be motivated. This is why it’s so important to make good hires and cut your losses when an employee isn’t working out.
Taking the time to find individuals that are passionate about the work they’re going to be doing will help you to hire employees that are willing to stay with your company long term, while hiring any applicant with the resume requirements you’re looking for may not last as long.
Additionally, cultivating an environment that welcomes innovation and friendly competition while still feeling safe allows you to easily motivate your teams.
How to keep employees in the long run
Knowing how to hire employees for a small business is essential to reducing turnover. Your key players will help your business thrive.
With solid hires, your employees will build new infrastructures within your business and expand them to help you grow over time. To do that, you need to keep them around as long as you can.
In the past, management was authoritarian.
Teams had one manager that made all major decisions. Any ideas or deadlines were handled by that one individual and going above that person for help was seen as an act of insubordination.
Now, businesses have evolved past this authoritarian style in favor of a collaborative style of management.
To foster this sense of collaboration, you need to view your employees as collaborators rather than servants. Make space for their ideas and feedback.
Give them the chance to experiment. If you hire individuals that you trust, you should trust them enough to let them take the reins occasionally.
Giving them this freedom will add perspective to your business and build personal investment in your growth across your entire business.
Small businesses and remote employees
Building a small business means adding employees to your team. Remote businesses need a quiet, professional place to conduct interviews.
With a Virtual Office, you can do just that while also supporting your whole team in their remote work.
Thankfully, you know how to hire employees for a small business. Now, it’s time to take a look at some of the virtual tools you can use to increase motivation, improve retention, and continue expanding.
Virtual offices are a modern answer to the e-commerce boom.
Instead of being forced into expensive leases that start at a 3-year minimum and include utility charges and general upkeep, you can register your business in any state you’d like, with plans starting at an easy 6-month minimum.
Alliance’s Virtual Offices allow you to register your business without using your home address, which means you don’t have to enter personal information into the public domain. This protects you from constant badgering by spam companies and allows you to retain a better work-life balance.
Because all of our offices are backed by physical space, you have access to a professional business center whenever you want a break from your daily routine. For any client meetings, investor presentations, or new-employee training sessions, you have a stable location you can use whenever necessary.
Alliance Virtual Offices also provides virtual phone numbers to help keep your company connected and private.
Having a dedicated business phone number lends legitimacy and professionality to your business. With our virtual phone services, you can easily onboard new employees while building brand credibility and increasing consumer trust.
We provide unlimited extensions so you can streamline the training process and quickly connect with new team members.
There are many digital tools that you have at your disposal. Learning how to hire employees for a small business is a great step, but you’ll need to determine the best way to integrate various virtual solutions into your business’s operations for the best chance of long-term success.
Further reading
- Leveling Up Your E-Commerce Operations? These Are The Most Effective E-Commerce Tools Imaginable
- Time Away From Work? Set Your Business Up So You Can Step Away
- How to Set Up a Virtual Office
Alliance Virtual Offices provides a suite of virtual services and tools for established entrepreneurs, solopreneurs, and new business owners.
It doesn’t matter if you’re brand new to the world of e-commerce or just starting to get your feet wet, we’ve got you covered.
Check out our website for more information about the digital solutions we provide. Our Virtual Office setup is uncomplicated, and quick, and allows you to focus on cultivating a collaborative environment so you can focus on expansion.
Outside of our Virtual Offices, we have several other tools that you can use for determining how to hire employees for a small business and how to keep these individuals motivated for the long term.
Contact us today to see how Alliance can help your business make hires that last.
