Larger businesses invest a lot of money and time attracting employees. Once they have them onboard, they’ll focus on Employee Engagement and Employee Retention. This can extend to providing support with Employee Assistance Programs (EAP) but begins with making the workplace itself a comfortable and safe environment or simply making the employee’s experience as enjoyable as possible.
The list, if you have a big enough budget, is almost endless.
For small and micro businesses however, the choices are fewer, but they are also a lot simpler, in most cases.
In this series, we’ll look at ways and means for a business at the truly ‘small’ end of the small business spectrum – micro businesses with 0 – 8 employees – to position yourself as an Employer of Choice, in a tough recruitment market.
Micro businesses usually need staff for one of three reasons:
• To do what the employer cannot do – they are simply overwhelmed with work. This also applies when adding extra staff to an existing team.
• To do what the employer doesn’t want to do (usually admin/VA services, but often social media posting as well)
• To do what the employer is bad at doing – and they finally realise it!
Two significant problems arise, especially in a tight job market (as of July 2022).
• There are simply not enough people who are able to or who want to work in the roles you are seeking to fill and,
• Because of this, you are in danger of losing existing staff who may be attracted by higher wages, better location, better career prospects etc.
Back to basics
A chat with a recruiter recently provided the following anecdote about one of their clients:
• Small business, with an owner and 6 existing employees, located in the St Kilda Road precinct in Melbourne
• Administration Assistant needed – approx. salary $60K
• Recruiter searches online and finds that there at over 200 similar positions available in a 1klm radius
That story is repeated everywhere at the moment, across a range of industry sectors. Those we hear about and probably notice the most are in the hospitality sector, but trades and services are also feeling the pinch.
So, how to make your business more attractive that the competition, when you’re looking for employees?
You may have heard about the ‘4 P’s of Marketing’ – Price, Product, Place and Promotion. We can relate to these when making our business one that employees will want to join and stay with.
Price = wages/salary. Is it competitive or, even better, ‘generous’? Are there opportunities to earn more through a bonus or commission structure?
Product = your business itself. What’s the culture in your business? Is your brand strong, well-know, likeable? What is the work environment like (open plan? cubicles? etc) ?
Place = location. Are you near public transport? Is parking available if employees drive to work? Can they go to shops, cafes etc in their lunchbreak or after work?
Promotion = how do you sell your business to prospective employees? What does the job ad say? How are you using social media to let people know about a vacancy? Does your network assist you?
In future posts, we’ll cover each of these in more detail. Our next post though, will cover some of the aspects that every business should consider when taking on a new employee.
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