Ideally, you want your business to run smoothly, but issues can and do arise. Whether there are external factors affecting your business or internal problems that you’re trying to fix, every company goes through rough patches at some point. The important thing is that you push through these struggles as a team and maintain a strong company workforce and morale. In order to do this, be sure you learn how to hire and manage staff members during critical times and adopt a few effective techniques.
Tips for Hiring During Critical Times
During times of business crisis, continuous hiring is crucial to keeping up with work and maintaining the inflow of revenue. In fact, depending on the type of problem your business is facing, an increased rate of hiring might even be a potential solution. Unfortunately, handling the immediate issues requires the majority of your attention—making it difficult to devote resources to filling your positions. But with a few key strategies, you can make this goal easier to accomplish.
Determine the Positions to Fill
Before you can begin any hiring process, you must have a clear understanding of what positions need to be filled and how many employees you will need for each. This involves carefully assessing your company’s current need for workers and analyzing what work isn’t being completed as sufficiently as necessary. In knowing where your business is currently falling short, you’ll gain a better idea of where there’s room to grow. Then, when you have an ideal number, you can begin publicizing your call for workers and tackle the screening process.
Promote From Within
It’s important to remember that promoting from within is a viable option when you need certain roles filled fast. Since these individuals already work for you, it saves time by skipping the initial application and interview processes. However, this doesn’t mean that just any of your employees can handle the new job they’ve been given. Before moving one of your employees to a new department, make sure that they’re the right fit for the position and can handle the responsibilities that come with it.
Get Outside Help
If your hands are tied with maintaining your business affairs, you can always bring in outside help to better facilitate the hiring process. There are several types of staffing services and staffing agencies that specialize in finding you the right hires for any of your vacant job openings. Not only can these services find you candidates fast, but they can also spend the time screening them to ensure they match your requirements. This way, your needs are being fulfilled by qualified individuals who want to help your business succeed.
Management Techniques for Critical Times
But if anything’s more important than hiring more workers, it’s managing staff members during critical times and maintaining a stable work atmosphere for all your current and newly hired employees. After all, they are the backbone of your company and the ones keeping it going with their hard work and dedication. So you owe it to them to keep them informed as well as provide them with the resources to continue doing their work during this trying time. These are a few effective management tips:
Create a Crisis Plan
While business owners don’t typically want to think about what to do when their company falls on difficult times, you must know what to do. This way, you can respond in the most effective way to mitigate the situation and put both your customers and your employees at ease. The first step to this process is developing a solid crisis management plan, which involves diagnosing the problems, determining the overall impact on the business, and choosing the appropriate actions. Among these things, your plan should also determine which individuals will handle the problems, and then you must train them to address the situation properly.
Keep Communication Open
Keeping your employees in the dark is a sure way to make them feel more anxious and isolated from management. Over time, this collective nervousness and uncertainty can lower their morale and prevent them from performing at their best. It’s for this reason that communication during these critical times is more important than ever. You can do this with frequent update emails as well as keeping your office door open (literally or figuratively, depending on where you’re working and your work-from-home situation) for them to ask you questions. Supplying your employees with answers and reassurance that you’re acting will cut down on the amount of panic in the workplace and keep your workers on track with their projects.
Regularly Check-in and Be a Good Listener
This turbulence in your business isn’t only affecting you. In fact, your workers will, no doubt, feel some anxiety about the situation and want to express their concerns to you. This is why maintaining a compassionate and understanding atmosphere is key to keeping worries under control. Best of all, taking the time to listen to your employees promotes additional trust and helps maintain a positive company culture. Then, once the issue has passed, they will have a deeper respect for you and be more open to communicating problems.
Take Appropriate Action
However, it isn’t enough that you make the plans and listen to your employees’ concerns. You should also be taking action to fix the problems at hand. This involves accepting responsibility for your role in the issues and beginning the steps to correct them and get things under control. Be sure to also regularly supply your employees with updates regarding the situation, as this will help them see the progress being made. By doing this, you’re not only showing them that you’re up to the task, but that none of their jobs are at risk.
No matter the current state of business affairs, it’s our mission at Burnett’s Staffing to provide you with the hiring assistance to weather any storm. Our staffing company in Dallas, Texas, is equipped with the latest industry knowledge and highly trained professionals who can navigate the job market and find the best possible candidates. This way, your efforts can continue to go toward leading your business out of its trials and tribulations.
