10 Tips For Hiring, Engaging and Retaining New Employees

Recruiting and retaining new employees for small business owners is both an internal and external challenge, especially in today’s everchanging business environment. I will share some of my top tips for how to be successful on this journey.

First, you need to be aware of your own leadership style and personality type. As your business grows and evolves, recognize the imperative need to delegate, trust and let it go.

Here are ten steps for hiring an A-player employee and retaining them.

Start by looking inward: Create your organization (business) chart to map out what and how objectives need to be completed, specifying who will do what.
Plan and budget: Plan cost effective budgeting, using your network and trusted sources to find your avatar (or ideal) employee. Applicants searching for remote roles will find an abundance of options today – far more than were available in 2019. But it’s crucial to know that not all remote work opportunities are equal. Just because an employee offers remote work does not mean they have an effective remote workplace; nor does it mean that you will enjoy their approach.
Put processes and metrics in place: Set up clear processes and policies that reflect your company mission, strategy and action plan. This way when you are ready to hire, you have proven hiring processes, onboarding framework and retaining methodologies already in place. Educate a hiring manager or yourself on candidate engagement and provide personalized interview questions. Track hiring metrics to measure, manage and improve success.
Qualify candidates: Before you setup an interview, search the candidate’s background check and referrals. Make a three step interview process to ensure you make an educated decision on the candidate. Be aware at what generation falls your new employee so you can tailor your management style.
Prepare for onboarding: Prepare a human based needs welcome package so your new employee understands, from the first day, at what environment will work. Communicate clearly and consistently your business policies, initiatives, and challenges so that everyone is clear, concise, and placed into context of it being based on the best available evidence and information currently.
Cultivate trust and motivation: Build a sense of accountability and competence at the highest level of the business. This will initiate a dialogue with your employees within a context of trust and motivation.
Make employees part of the transition: Engaging your employees in the planning process and ensuring participation and engagement with support from you or your management will guarantee a successful transition. Employees don’t just want managers to make decisions; they want managers to demonstrate competence in making decisions that positively affect work outcomes.
Develop the employee experience: Performance management has always been important for the company leadership. The first is what employees want from their experience with an employer over the course of their career. The second, and quite possibly most important and overlooked, factor is the role of the manager/you in influencing employees’ career experiences.
Define expectations around remote working: Remote work can be excellent for professional fulfillment and work/life integration. However, many companies are offering this for the first time and there will certainly be many examples of both effective and ineffective remote work. Ask the right questions to make sure you have a complete understanding in terms of whose version of remote or hybrid work is right for you. What are your company’s core values? How often are they expected to come to the office? What percentage of employees are remote overall or on my team? How often do people get together in person?
Implement a mentorship or professional development program: Use mentoring for personal achievements in any category of your business/profession, require years of preparation, effort and individual work. Take the opportunity to share what you have learned during life and your career with your mentee. Invest part of your time with your mentees in order to develop a good relationship based on honesty and your own credibility. Be able to offer a judgment and a constructive critique of the reality of the employee when it is necessary.