Practical HR Tips For Small Business Owners

Hiring and retention best practices business owners can implement to build diverse teams and create an inclusive workplace

Small businesses make up 99.9% of U.S. companies, employing 46.4% of people across the country¹. These businesses face the same challenges as their larger counterparts: how to hire and retain the right people to build and sustain a prosperous business. While the impact of great employees on the business is clear, the impact of management’s HR practices on employees is often overlooked. And with labor ranking among the highest costs for businesses, accounting for upwards of 70% of spending² and costing approximately $4,700 for each new hire³, managing the employee experience is vitally important. Added to all of this is the impact of building a diverse team, engaging new generations, and fostering an inclusive workplace.
 

Managing the hiring and retention of talented employees is a large investment and no simple task. The employee experience encompasses everything from the moment a potential applicant views a job description all the way to someone leaving the company. The resources necessary (both internally and externally) to create equity and inclusion at every stage are often beyond the resources of small businesses. More often than not, these critical processes are informal, if they even exist.

Given current economic conditions and shifting market trends, getting the right people on your team and getting them to stay are two of the biggest challenges facing small—or any—businesses today. While you may not have the resources to do a complete overhaul of all of your HR practices, there are steps you can take today to make immediate improvements in your existing systems to increase the quality of your talent pipeline and create an inclusive workplace where employees will flourish.

Getting People on Your Team

Building a great team is often difficult under the best of circumstances. Casting a wide net, being transparent about role expectations, and maintaining good relationships throughout the process will ensure the right people apply and stay engaged with your company, even if they don’t get the job (this time around).

• Include a salary range.
• Include a start date and other relevant details of the hiring process.
• Clearly and accurately describe the role’s responsibilities and expectations.
• Check your language. Guides can be found here, here, and here.
• Determine which specific work, education, and certification requirements are necessary. It is very common for employers to use boilerplate language, which often includes a college degree as a requirement. Generic requirements can greatly reduce the number of qualified applicants from applying.
• Clearly detail existing policies. Do you have PTO or parental leave policies?
• When choosing where to post the job, consider numerous channels to ensure you’re reaching a diverse audience.
• Include any relevant details a potential applicant may need to know in order to apply. Is there a busy season, will there be on-call shifts?
• Ensure you’re in compliance with state and federal guidelines, including EEOC and ADA.
• Standardizing the interview process is incredibly important. Determine the structure of the process, create a scorecard, develop a set of questions, and train everyone involved in the process how to properly participate. There’s a lot of room for bias at this stage of the process; however, by standardizing each step and the interviewer’s feedback, you can take steps to ensure an equitable experience.

Keeping People on Your Team

Engaging employees to encourage commitment and productivity is challenging for organizations of any size and spans so many aspects of the workplace experience that each company will need to understand and leverage its own unique strengths.

● Set employees up to succeed. Schedule ample time to:

• Train new employees in their roles and standard operating norms.
• Get individuals comfortable using the everyday platforms necessary to do the job. Do not assume everyone is familiar with Slack or a specific POS system.

● Meet everyone on the team and get familiar with the structure of the company. At the very least, ensure new employees meet everyone they will report to or work with directly.
● Create a career plan from the start. Clarify the frameworks and expectations for advancement and bonus opportunities, and provide realistic, actionable goals. For folks just starting out, this can and should include goals around getting acquainted with their role and the company.
● Set regular check-ins for the first 30-90 days. This might start with daily 1:1s for the first two weeks, and taper to bi-weekly.
● Identify regular opportunities to recognize employees and acknowledge high performance, values-aligned behavior, and efforts made toward company goals, regardless of the outcome.
● Performance reviews should be regularly scheduled. These meetings should include sharing feedback, assessing progress toward goals, and if or when they are eligible for a promotion, raise, or bonus.
● If resources don’t allow for a raise or bonus, consider non-monetary rewards.

Beyond achieving immediate business goals, small businesses can create change in their communities and serve as pillars of their industries by developing and implementing strong HR practices built on a foundation of diversity, equity, and inclusion. What’s best for employees is ultimately what’s best for business.

Notes

1. https://www.forbes.com/advisor/business/small-business-statistics/
2. https://www.paycor.com/resource-center/articles/closer-look-at-labor-costs/
3. https://www.shrm.org/resourcesandtools/hr-topics/talent-acquisition/pages/the-real-costs-of-recruitment.aspx

Author Bio

Jessica Lambrecht is the Co-Founder and CEO of The Rise Journey, an HR and Workplace Culture consulting firm, and recently launched a new membership platform One Person Human Resources, OPHR, to support small teams in their People Operations.