Onboarding Contractors: Nurturing and Retaining Good Talent – Part 2
Being an entrepreneur requires late nights and early mornings – but being your company's CEO, product developer, inventory manager, marketing manager, accountant, shipping department, and customer service representative is simply not sustainable!
One of the most important parts of being an e-commerce fempreneur, is recognizing when it’s time to outsource. But before you can bring any new additions to your team, you must ensure the fundamentals are there to be able to nurture and retain them – and it all starts by creating a company with good culture.
Why?
It’s currently an employee market. Your candidate might be considering several opportunities. When you’re interviewing candidates to see if they’re a good fit, they’re interviewing you, too! They’re interested in how inclusive you are, what your company culture is like, whether they’ll be heard and appreciated, how you create work/life balance, and how transparent you are about work expectations and pay practices. Being clear on your company culture, defined by examples and actions, helps bring in a more diverse group of applicants – and ensures you hire and retain the top talent you need to scale your business to its fullest potential.
Creating an Inclusive Environment
Being diverse is one thing; being inclusive is another. Regardless of background, age, race, sex, and nationality, everyone within your organization needs to feel welcome, safe, and free to be themselves.
Creating a culture of inclusion starts with you and your leaders. Creating and writing down a company culture description will ensure everyone is on the same page as you grow. Include your culture and values in every aspect of your operations, including when you create SOPs (standard operating procedures), so everyone is aligned with the direction from the beginning.
When onboarding an employee or contractor, they should feel and understand your company culture, defined by your actions, not just your words.
Putting inclusivity at the core of your company culture (and understanding why it’s important):
Encourages authenticity, which fosters a healthy work environment
Increases employee engagement and productivity
Leads to more innovation and creativity
Diversity and inclusivity are vital if you want happy employees and a thriving work environment, but how do you follow through and make inclusivity a natural part of everyday work life?
Here are a few ideas to get you started:
Create and provide safe spaces. These can include unisex bathrooms, support groups to help employees connect with shared experiences, and hosting casual get-togethers.
Connect with your employees on a personal level. Be appropriate, but be transparent and genuine about your own life and struggles and encourage leadership to do the same.
In addition to building a company with good culture, offering comprehensive benefits beyond the typical health insurance and 401K can attract a more diverse and talented pool of applicants.
Creating a Company with Good Culture
Your employees will appreciate an environment where they can share ideas, speak up, and be heard.
If you're a standout company with good culture, you'll benefit from:
Increased job satisfaction
Stronger employee loyalty and retention
Improved work performance
Less stress
Increased employee morale
A collaborative environment
But don't just be a company with a mission statement you don't back up! Be better. Be different. Take time to genuinely invest in your team's well-being and happiness.
Here are a few ways you can create that kind of positive work culture:
Be positive: Lead by example. Smile often, remain optimistic during difficult situations and express genuine gratitude to your employees.
Listen: Everyone wants to feel heard. Create opportunities for open discussion, ideas, and feedback. Listen, digest, and follow-through.
Create fun goals: Working toward something other than a work project encourages playfulness. Providing fun opportunities offers mental breaks and brings people together.
Promote employee wellness: Employees need to feel at their physical, mental, and emotional best to contribute. Part of your company’s perks could include local gym memberships, yoga classes, and therapy.
Celebrate: Acknowledge birthdays, anniversaries, and accomplishments. Your employees are real people –not just production task machines.
Sometimes the simple things have the most significant impact. Streamline a process for leaders to routinely check in with employees. Ask for feedback on how you and your leadership team can improve, but don’t end the conversation there. Talk to them about life outside work. See if they’re taking advantage of the benefits and perks you offer and ask how you can help them create a better work/life balance. Taking the time to get to know your employees and connect with them will go a long way toward creating a positive work culture – and retaining your best and brightest team members.
Creating a Proactive Work Environment
A company with good culture is proactive and not reactive. Constantly putting out fires is chaotic and exhausting for everyone. If this is how you operate, leadership consulting can help you create ownership and accountability and demonstrate how to lead more proactively.
Here are some tips on creating a proactive work environment:
Train respectful leaders: Part of leadership consulting involves evaluating and developing skills so that those in charge encourage and build up their team. Encourage leaders to step up and actually lead!
Don’t play the blame game: Mistakes happen, and failures are inevitable. Instead of blaming, streamline a process to improve and move forward.
Broadcast every success: Don’t reserve praise for the big stuff! Recognize and reward even the smallest of behaviors and tasks. Celebrations, no matter how minor, can mean a lot more to your employees.
Show respect: That means respecting your team's work hours and boundaries – don't expect them to be available around the clock.
Be realistic and transparent: When looking for experts to help you grow your business, be reasonable about your expectations and budget. Someone who is experienced cannot be hired for minimum wage. Find the balance between what you can afford and what skill set is needed. Transparency is becoming more and more critical for business owners.
Creating Clear Expectations
When you’re onboarding an employee, make your expectations clear from the beginning. Tell your new employee about deadlines, processes, and project management tools you use, like ClickUp or Asana. Let them know how often you’ll check in and how your company manages team performance. Explain how they are evaluated and what happens if expectations aren’t met. This way, there aren’t any surprises, and leadership can address concerns swiftly and professionally.
Whether the employee is working remotely or on-site, the sooner an issue is addressed, the sooner you can resolve it. Here are some tips for discussing your employee’s performance:
Avoid pointless small talk and get to the point.
Don’t make it personal.
Keep everything unemotional, specific, and factual.
Listen and consider every side.
Clarify expectations.
Outline an action plan and clear deliverables.
Document everything!
Let’s Get Intentional with Your Company Culture and Onboarding Process
Scaling a business and onboarding employees can be an amazing yet scary time in your journey. There’s so much to consider when creating a company with good culture that makes people feel safe, heard, and included. Creating a fun and satisfying workplace that’s motivated to achieve common objectives is truly the ultimate goal.
With my Virtual Sidekic Leadership Consulting package, I can help you elevate your leadership potential while arming you with the processes you need to build, onboard, and manage your team, freeing up more time to continue scaling your business. Set up a discovery call, so we get started building your dream team today!