This is the second post in a seven-part series on anticipating and handling growth in the second half of 2011.
Is your staffing business ready to meet the needs of businesses experiencing growing demand? Being able to handle growth isn’t an accident; it’s the result of a step-by-step plan that puts your business in the best possible position to deal with any change in the economy.
Step 1: Start with the Basics
Make sure your business is on solid ground in every facet of its operations, and set up practices and systems to keep it there. Yesterday, we looked at your financial and technological resources. Today, we’re looking at your management basics: communication and employee engagement.
Communication
Now is also a good time to work on strengthening your communication with your employees. This is especially important if the financial analysis we talked about last week has revealed any gaps between your perception of how your business is functioning and the way it’s actually running.
Make an effort to ensure that everyone in your business knows what’s expected of them in their job duties. An up-to-date policies and procedures manual can make communicating those expectations much easier. And don’t forget to communicate when a job has been well done; constructive feedback lets people know what to keep doing and what to do differently.
Employee engagement
Keeping feedback constructive is crucial not only to help employees do their best work but to retaining them as well. Another aspect of the growth that’s expected in the economy is a potential “talent exodus”; a recent CareerBuilder survey of 1,400 workers revealed that a full 95 percent of them were at least thinking about leaving their jobs in 2011.
If you haven’t examined your management practices to make sure they include employee engagement and motivation, now’s a very good time to do so. Let your employees know you appreciate their skills, their efforts and their loyalty, and listen to their ideas and their feedback to you as a manager.
Many of your employees might have suggestions for how to streamline your business operations. Consider these ideas and implement the ones that make sense. As growth places increased demands on your offices, the more streamlined your business is, the more responsive and flexible it can be.
In the coming weeks, we’ll talk about your business’s foundation for growth, issues on the horizon that pertain to staffing and how to market your staffing firm without breaking the bank. If you have any thoughts or questions, please don’t hesitate to leave them in the comments!