When you are a lone business owner, working by yourself to grow your business, things can be tough. It’s not that it’s hard to get started; that’s something that most people are able to do when they put their minds to it. What’s hard is growing the business. This is what many people have trouble with, and what causes a lot of small businesses to fold before they really have a chance to get anywhere. That’s why you need to know the benefits of hiring experts to help you with your business.
What’s the key to a productive employee who stays with your company for the long haul? It’s how you onboard them. New hires are an organization’s most significant potential for future growth and success. They bring fresh ideas, new perspectives, and untapped potential—if properly nurtured. A recent Gallup poll found that only about one in four new hires in the U.S. succeed at their job within 18 months of hire. So what can you do to set new hires up for success?
There are many benefits to hiring experts for your business.
If the problem happens to be that you just don’t have the expertise to do all the jobs within your business, hiring the right experts can save you and your biz.
Here are tips to supercharge your onboarding process, so you have happier, more productive employees from day one:
Make the Onboarding Process a Priority When Hiring Experts
First, you’ll have to make it a priority. This is a critical time for your new hires, but it’s also essential for the rest of your team. With new employees coming on board, other employees will feel extra pressure to pick up the slack.
They’ll feel stressed and anxious, and you’ll have a higher turnover rate. So, onboarding must be a priority if you want to increase employee happiness. According to the Gallup poll, when hiring managers make onboarding a priority, it doubles the number of hires that succeed.
The same survey found that about 26% of new hires achieve when onboarding is a priority. This shows that it’s not enough to have an onboarding plan. Managers must follow through on those plans. What is successful onboarding?
Successful onboarding is taking care of all the practicalities of registering a new employee within your company and ensuring they have everything they need to succeed. Whether you do this in person or via onboarding software, successful onboarding can determine how well an employee starts at your company.
Assign a Buddy
When you hire a new employee and set them up for success, assign them a buddy. A buddy can be someone from inside or outside their department who is trained to act as a guide, mentor, or reference. A buddy can highlight the best ways to navigate your office culture while avoiding potential pitfalls.
Buddies can also be a source of encouragement and inspiration when a new hire might need it most. Furthermore, buddies can help new hires feel more connected to the organization and ready to tackle their work.
Buddies can also help new hires develop relationships with other employees that can last for years. If you want to provide an environment of support and collaboration, assign a buddy to each new hire.
Assign a buddy when hiring new experts for your business.
Provide Clear Guidelines
Provide clear guidelines for your new hires. This includes an introduction to each team member, the company mission, company and department culture, and company values. If you have a company handbook or similar resource, refer to those.
However, if not put together a written onboarding guide outlining all the critical information your new hires need to know. This will help them feel connected to the organization and get up to speed more quickly.
It will also help them understand what is expected of them on the job, giving them a sense of security and confidence. This is also an excellent opportunity to discuss what’s not expected of them. You can address potential misconceptions they might have or address concerns they might have.
Show, Don’t Just Tell – Benefits of Hiring Experts
Show, don’t just tell, not only your new hires but also your team members. Lead by example and demonstrate how you want things done. Let your employees know that you don’t expect them to follow a set of rules that you don’t follow yourself.
Show them how you respond to various situations, so they know how to react when facing a similar problem.
When onboarding your new hires, show them how you do things by taking them to meetings, walking them through your workflow, or bringing them to the front lines of your work. This will help them get their bearings more quickly and make the most of their time at the company.
Show your new hires how it’s done so they will know first hand.
It will also make them feel like they’re an extension of your team, making it easier for everyone to get along.
Be responsive – and Make Your New Employees Feel Safe to Ask Questions
Make yourself available to your new hires and make them feel safe to ask questions. New employees often feel anxious at work, unsure of how to navigate their office culture or expectations. They may be afraid to speak up about their concerns for fear of appearing incompetent. Help them feel more comfortable by being available to answer questions and make it clear that it’s OK to ask questions.
In fact, it’s expected. Introduce your new hires to employees from various levels of the organization. This will help them better understand the company’s overall culture and ease their anxiety about fitting in.
Let your employees’ questions be an open dialog and encourage them to ask questions as well. This will prevent misunderstandings and miscommunications from occurring later down the road.
Discuss Employee and Workplace Culture
Discuss employee and workplace culture early on in the onboarding process. The quicker you discuss this, the better. It’ll let your new hires know that their job may be different than they imagined. It’ll also help them feel more at ease if they find that their expectations don’t match up with the job.
You can discuss workplace culture at any time, but bringing it up early will help new hires feel more comfortable asking questions and navigating the company. Discuss culture in many different ways. Bring it up in casual conversations with various employees.
Or, bring it up during one-on-one meetings with your new hires. Bring it up when you’re putting together an employee handbook. Mention it up when you’re conducting onboarding training. This will give your new hires a 360-degree view of workplace culture.
Ensure Complete and Thorough Training is Given
Ensure your new hires are thoroughly trained before being sent out into the wild. This includes training on the tools they’ll be using, their job expectations, and their manager’s expectations. If you have a formal onboarding process, use that as a guideline for how much training is needed.
Then, if you don’t have an onboarding process, consider implementing one to ensure that training is thorough. For example, if you have a sales team, consider providing the following training:
- Introduction to the company and the product or service you sell – including your company’s mission and values
- Sales process – including industry terminology and best practices
- Product training – including advantages and uses of your products or services
- Sales tools and resources – including CRM and any other tools they’ll need to do their job.
Allow Them Time to Find Their Feet
Don’t expect your new hires to be completely comfortable in their role from day one. Instead, allow them time to find their feet and get used to the rhythm of their position. Remember that your company is different from their previous company and industry.
Your employees will take time to get accustomed to your company’s culture and way of doing things while getting used to your company’s products and services. Even if your new hires have the right experience and education, they’ll still need time to acclimate. Give them the time to get comfortable with their job and your company.
The sooner you expect them to be completely satisfied, the more pressure you put on them. Provide them with clarity about their role and expectations, and give them time to adjust.
Allow your new hires to find their comfort zone so they can be more productive.
Be Clear About Your Expectations
Finally, be clear about your expectations. This includes your expectations for your new hires but also your expectations for yourself as their manager. It’s easy to put pressure on yourself to be their best resource, be their greatest cheerleader, and be the one who solves all of their problems.
Let go of the need to save the day and be everything to everybody. Instead, be clear about your expectations and make sure your new hires know what you expect of them. Make sure your new hires know what’s expected of them in their role and what they can expect from you as their manager.
Let them know when they’ll be getting feedback or the next steps in their career path.
Benefits of Hiring Experts – You Can’t Do It All Alone
No one should be an island out there in business! No one is self-sufficient; everyone relies on others for something. That can be said for business and for personal as well. Humans are meant to be in harmony with others and interact with each other.
This old saying below comes from a sermon by the seventeenth-century English author John Donne.
There are many benefits of hiring experts for your business to grow and thrive.
However, there will be some things you can do well and to a high standard in your business. There will be some things that you enjoy doing. However, there will just as easily be many elements of running a business that you don’t enjoy, or that you aren’t good at.
These might be hugely important for your business (such as accounting or marketing or as a PDN analyzer, for example) so they are not something that can simply be ignored.
The perfect answer is to hire an expert, either on a full-time basis, part-time, ad hoc, or freelancer. Find someone who can do what you can’t, or do it better than you can, and you will free up your own time to do more of what you are good at.
The Right People in the Right Jobs
At the same time, you will know that your business is running as well as it can, as the right people are doing the right jobs. You may not be able to do it all, but you can oversee those who can, and your business can grow.
The benefits of hiring experts in your business puts people around you to toss your ideas to and have them analyzed by others.
For example, here at Inspire to Thrive I have several expert writers I can lean on to help with writing blog posts for me. I have a couple of others who can come up with ideas for social media posts. I also have one person that can cover if I’m off for a few days and uses Agorapulse to manage all social profiles.
Get A Good Reputation – Benefits for Hiring Experts
Having a good reputation in business is crucial; without this, customers will be wary of using you (especially if you are new to the scene.) The best potential employees won’t want to work for you. Trying to grow a business without the right staff or the customer numbers you need is almost impossible.
When you hire experts to help you in your business, in whatever capacity works best for you and them, your reputation will increase in a positive way.
Customers will see that your business is at the top of its field, and those who you are looking to hire will know that they could be working in a professional, highly experienced business with a great reputation. That is tempting for many, and you will be able to attract the very best.
It’s much easier to obtain clients when they know your work ethic, and your breadth of knowledge. That’s how I obtained most of my clientele at Inspire To Thrive.
It's much easier to obtain clients when they know your work ethic, and your breadth of knowledge. That's how I obtained most of my clientele at Inspire To Thrive.
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Now imagine being able to multiply that with other experts in your business?
Networking for Your Business
When you run a business, networking is important. Therefore, when networking, you meet with other people in your field, or in tangential fields, who will potentially be able to help you in the future (and vice versa).
When you have experts working for you, they will usually be able to help you in your networking efforts. They will know the right people to talk to and will be able to introduce you to them. This will help you to grow your business as well.
It’s much easier to network when there is more than one of you at local events. This is an area I’d love to grow in the coming years ahead. Having someone nearby that understands the business and someone who I can work with.
I may have found this person on Twitter recently, stay tuned!
Save Time For Your Business to Grow
To accelerate the time it takes to transform your vision into reality! Yes, if you have visions for your business and realize you can’t do it all, it’s time to hire some experts to help you along.
Have you hired some experts to help you with your business today? What was the moment that you realized you needed help? What other benefits for hiring experts are there?
I’d love to know more in the comments below.
