Your business is reliant on other people, and no matter how much you wish you could control everything yourself, that’s just not possible. What you can do though, is make sure you work with people who will bring the knowledge, expertise, drive and talent to help you take your business to new heights. Your staff, colleagues, and everyone who you sub-contract to or work with needs to be working for you in the most effective way possible, and finding the right people is something you can control.
Finding the right staff
Whenever you have a vacancy, you need to think carefully about exactly what you need from whoever fills the post. How can you maximize their input and achieve the best returns on your investment into the role? Make it clear through your adverts, job description and person specification exactly who you are looking to employ so that you appeal to the right kind of candidates. This means not just lists of qualifications and experience you’re expecting candidates to have, but any other abilities and facets of their personality that could be beneficial. Their attitudes, interests, how they can add value to their role, what they can bring to the business that you may be lacking, how they will fit in with your existing workforce and the culture of your working environment, how their skills match the company philosophy; all these can help you select the best people for your interview shortlist.
Finding the right independent specialists
These could be accountants, IT specialists, web-hosting services, or anything that you delegate to an outside agency to complete on your behalf. If you can get recommendations from people you know, this is a good way of selecting reputable and reliable people who you will be happy to work with. You can also look for reviews and testimonials on the company website and on independent review sites to find out what other clients of theirs have said about them. Try to weed out any malicious postings from people with an ax to grind, or those who simply enjoy disrupting other people’s lives and businesses, so that you get a clear view of the overriding feeling about a company. One of the benefits of having access to the Internet is that you can choose from a far greater number of possible partners from all across the world. You could have your web hosting in Canada, your content writer in Australia, and your marketing experts in Ireland; where they are doesn’t matter, but what is important is whether they can do the work you need doing and whether you will find them agreeable to work with. Building up trusting relationships is largely down to the quality of the work produced for you, but finding the people you work with easy to get on with certainly helps.
Find the right people to work with, and you will be happy to have them around you, just as they will be happy to be working with you. Most importantly, happy, productive working relationships create better, more successful businesses.
