Knowing when to scale

Knowing when to scale up your team of employees can be a hard decision to make. If you think that now might be the right time to grow your business and hire more employees, ask yourself these seven questions:

1. When was the last time you had to ask a client to extend a deadline?
   Missing client deadlines can be damaging to your business. Look back at the last few times you had to delay a deadline, what was the reason? Was it down to lack of skill, so a task took longer? A lack of time, as you had too many projects?
   
2. Have your overtime costs rapidly increased?  
   Are employees coming in early, skipping lunches and working longer hours to complete their work? A productive workforce is a happy workforce. If you need your team members need to work out of hours on a regular basis this can foster discontent.  Are the reasons for the overtime valid?
   
3. Are employees cancelling their vacation?
   Don’t lose sight of the need for individuals to have their own work/life balance. If employees are repeatedly delaying or cancelling paid time off it is a clear sign that, although you have a dedicated staff, they need more help.
   
4. Are you relying on external vendors and contractors?
   Using contractors and vendors to cover extra work as your business grows, can be a great stop gap, but they can also be costly. Analyze if the amount of money you are paying a contractor could be used to employ a full time staff member at the same skill level or higher.

PATRICK LENCIONI EXPLAINS HOW TO BUILD A HEALTHY TEAM

Last week Patrick Lencioni, author of national best-seller ‘The Five Dysfunctions of a Team’, spoke at the Art of Leadership where he outlined his thoughts on how to build a healthy business.

At the conference he explained that there are two requirements for success:

 

1. Be Smart 
   Have a clear strategy, structured and accurate marketing and financial plans and use the right technology.
    
2. Be Healthy
   Have minimal politics and confusion, a high morale and low turnover and a high level of productivity.

He commented that although many companies have worked hard to be ‘smart’, the key way to diversify your business is to build a ‘healthy’ team.  There are four disciplines in building this type of team:

1) Build a Cohesive Team

• Trust
  A great team is one who trusts each other implicitly.  This trust can only be earned when all cards have been put of the table.  Each member must openly disclose their weaknesses as well as their strengths and know that those weaknesses will not be used against them.
   
• Conflict
  It is important to realise that conflict is not a bad word.  A team will never think the same way about everything; the important thing is to discus those disagreements instead of letting them fester in the background.  However it is important to remember that without first establishing trust, conflict becomes politics.
   
• Accountability
  By being open, trusting and unafraid of conflict allows team members to hold each other accountable for their behaviours and actions.  This accountability allows teams to commit to decisions and push forward together as a unit.

2) Create Clarity

Many disruptions in business are created when team members are not clear about who the company is, where it wants to be and who is responsible for getting it there.

 

Confusion can be minimised by clarifying: why you exist, how you should behave as a brand, what your goals are, how you will achieve these goals, and who is responsible for what. 

3) Over-Communicate that Clarity

It is not just about you and your team being clear about who the organisation is and where it is going, you must also communicate it to the rest of your employees.

 

Make your messages simple, and repeat often.  By repeating the message it demonstrates that there is still a commitment to that same direction. Don’t fall into the trap where leaders communicate a 'plan' but do not support it or ensure it is completed. 

 

That communication doesn’t to just be verbal; there are many different mediums you can use.  Posters in your staff kitchen, notes on payslips, in team meetings.  The messaging can be applied to anything; it just needs to remain consistent. 

4) Reinforce the Clarity

That messaging can also be reinforeced by applying to processes in your business.  The way you hire new employees, how you evaluate your employees, how you recognise the employees who do a good job and how you dismiss those who do not.  These processes must be designed in a custom way to intentionally support and emphasize the uniqueness of your business.

 

The biggest reason that people reject organizational health is that it requires courage. Courage to take a step back and realise that we all have weaknesses, that all businesses have some dysfunction and that not everyone is truthful.  By recognising this and committing to walking straight into uncomfortable situations to address issues that prevent you from achieving your potential, you will achieve a healthy team.

Are you products or services increasing in number or popularity?

1. If your business is growing in popularity, take time to understand why. Is it a positive trend? Or is the growth in reaction to a campaign or a (good) blip on the consumer radar? By analyzing the reason behind the growth you can better assess if increased staffing is needed for the long or short term.
    
2. Are you looking to enter into a new or related industry?
   To successfully grow your business, you need expertise and you need manpower. Take time to assess the types and number of tasks that will be required to expand your business, and the type of employee you need to complete them. Apply this knowledge to assess your current employees. Do they have enough time to complete these additional tasks and do they have the skills required to complete them?
    
3. Is your revenue at or above target and positioned to grow?
   Investing the revenue you have acquired into growing your team benefits both your business and your staff. Productivity levels will rise and existing employees will have time to learn new skills or more capacity to complete tasks. 

It is important to remember that although understaffing leads to unhappy employees, overstaffing can lead to unnecessary costs. Take time to answer the questions above and assess if a staffing problem exists. Then take time to look at your finances. A useful metric is to look at your staff/sales ratio.  Does your revenue increase with each employee hired?  Use benchmark industry to assess what others in your industry are achieving.  

Want to Hire a new Employee?

Check out our How to Hire your First Employee article for tips and tricks of how to employ the right person for your team.  

 

You may also be intrested in our Attracting and Hiring Top Talentseminar presented by Sandra Miles, CEO and Founder of the Miles Employment Group Ltd and author of our  StartUp HR Kit.

 

Alternatively, if you have some more specific HR issues you’d like to resolve, you can also check out our Ask an HR Expert. These 30 minute consultations allow you to sit down with a BC HRMA professional to discuss the specific issues relating to your business.  Whether that’s recruitment, compensation and benefits, performance reviews, succession planning, leadership development or dealing with difficult employees.

HIRE A YOUTH AND EARN A $2,800 INCENTIVE

Did you know that you could receive hiring and training incentives, if you employ a youth aged 15 to 29?

The Get Youth Working! Program

The Get Youth Working! Program is funded by the Canada-British Columbia Labour Market Agreement.  Through the program you could receive $2,800 by hiring (up to three) eligible youths.  Not only that, you can add to this funding by requesting an additional training incentive of up to $1,000 to purchase training for those newly hired youths. 

Your Business Criteria

To be eligible for the Hiring Incentive program your business must:
 

• Be in business for a minimum of one year
• Be in good standing  with WorkSafe BC
• Adhere to all BC Labour Laws in the hiring and employment of the participants
• Not be filling a position of a laid-off worker awaiting recall or a displaced worker
• Employ the new hire for a minimum of 3 months and 30 hours/week
• Have applied for, and be approved for, the incentive before the new hire starts

Training Criteria

To be eligible for the Training Incentive program the training must:
 

• Take place in British Columbia (either in the place of work or off-site)
• Be formal, structured and delivered by a trainer not related to you, the business owner
• Provide a certificate or recognized credentials
• Provide skills relevant to the position
• Be completed within the term of the Hiring Incentive Agreement

How to Apply for the Incentive

The application is easy. Simply conduct your recruiting as normal, and when you are ready to hire, complete the online application. When the program coordinators receive the application, they will assess if your hire meets the criteria and if you are eligible for funding.

 

Once approved, the incentive will be sent to in three equal payments over the first three months of employment.

Design

Design 

Selection criteria must include all aspects of the job Then rank each criterion as being either ‘essential’ or an ‘asset’ to performing the job.  

 

Two Questions to ask as you design your selection criteria

1. What level of talent is required to give us the bench strength we need to deliver on our business plan/strategic direction?
    
2. Will this role meet the employee’s need for autonomy, mastery and purpose?

Specifics of the job description should include:

• A list of  essential and asset skills; and the level to which tasks must be performed (expert, intermediate, junior)
   
• A description of accountabilities and desired outcomes
   
• Inclusive language that encourages the greatest diversity of candidates 

Essential = must have
Asset = nice to have

3. Align

Next, align the job description to your business plan and the individual’s performance plan, and be linked to any incentive or recognition program.  The goal is to clearly demonstrate how individual effort contributes to the manager’s and senior leaders’ performance goals; and ultimately to the success of the company overall.  

 

Two Questions to ask as you align your selection criteria

• What are the essential qualifications that will help someone be successful in this role? (I.e. Teamwork skills, consensus decision-making, other?)
   
• What are the attitudes and behaviors that will have the greatest impact on customer satisfaction and retention for our business?

4. Deliver

The next phase is to sit in across from a candidate, and in effect, deliver on your plan. Throughout the process, you’ve demonstrated a commitment to selecting only the most qualified candidates.  To deliver the results both you and the candidate really want, your final selection should be on the basis of best fit with the job.  That means selecting the candidate with the competencies and capabilities the job demands.  It’s somewhat subjective; however, this is where you can use a little of your intuition. 

 

Two Questions to ask as you deliver your selection criteria

1. Are we seeing the full potential of this candidate in addition to their current competencies?
    
2. Are we attracting an employee who can see possibilities in our business? 

The Bottom Line

It doesn’t matter whether you make machinery or doughnuts, sell business services or wood products; you have a customer and a company reputation to protect. Having the right selection criteria is the first step toward eliminating a poor hire. 

What are Goals?

What are Goals? 

Goals, in Google Analytics, are something that you as the site owner can set up as an event such as someone performing an action that is desirable and that you want to measure.  Goals enable you to measure when a visitor has landed on a certain page on your site or visited a sequence of pages.  

 

For example, if you have an online store, you can set up the order confirmation or thank you page as a Goal.  Now each time someone buys something from your site you will see that Goal increase, allowing you to measure it over time.  Of course you probably have other ways of measuring a sale, but having it as a Goal allows you to do further analysis and ask questions such as: where do most of the customers who complete a transaction come from - search, direct to the site, referred from another website etc.

 

Where can I find this information?

Select Conversions, Goals, Overview to view data on goals you have already created.

 

To create Goals select the Profiles screen, select Goals and Add Goal. Follow the steps to create your goal. Once you have defined your goal(s), verify that it is working by selecting the appropriate goal report from the Conversions section of your analytics.

 

 

 

Adjusting the Time Range

Timing is everything when comparing your analytics.  By default Google will display a month long range, ending the day before you are viewing the report e.g. if you are looking at the report on July 26th, it will display June 25th July 25th.

 

To adjust the date range, click on the date range box on the upper right hand corner of your analytics page, this will display a calendar pop-up.  Use this to select the date range you are choosing to review. 

 

If you want to compare your data to another time period, e.g. compare March 2011 to March 2010, select the Compare to Past tick box under the Date Range field and select the dates you wish to compare.

Sharing your Findings

At the top of each report, just below the title, you will see an Export button, next to Advanced Segments.  You can export data from Google Analytics as a PDF, Excel spreadsheet, CSV or TSV file.  You will then be able to share these report with your business partners, staff or whoever you want.

Benefiting from Analysis

Google Analytics is about more than just collecting data.  By tailoring these analytic reports and reviewing them on a frequent basis you will be able to fine tune your website, bringing in higher quality prospects to your site who you can convert to customers in the future.  

Need Help?

Want to find out more about Google Analytics or how to optimize your website for conversion?  

Small Business BC will be running an Ask a Web Expert on September 22nd, 2011 with Mark Tempest of Deepnet Media.  

Book now for a one-to-one consultation with Mark at our offices in Waterfront Station, Vancouver or via Skype.  Consultations are 45 minutes long, are by appointment only and must be booked in advance. 

To find out more about this Ask the Expert or to book an appointment contact Client Sevices at 604-775-5572 or 1-800-667-2272.