Tips for Hiring

Choosing the right people for your organisation is vital to building and developing a successful business. People provide the framework for any thriving company.

Here are some tips for hiring the best candidates for your business and keeping the employees you already have.

• Be present and engaged in the hiring process, be there during candidate interviews and communicate with HR. 
• Build a culture within your organisation. Have a clear vision of what you want the culture of your organisation to be like and this will help you to build a team to fit it. Once you have decided on your company’s values and culture make it known to all potential applicants. Include these values on your website.
• Utilise social media. Recruiting via social media is more popular than ever. Include links on Twitter, LinkedIn and Facebook to your career page on your website.
• Recruit Continuously. Always be on the lookout for potential employees, even when there are no openings. You can never tell when an employee might leave.
• Know what you’re looking for in an employee. Have an understanding of the skills and traits that will make an applicant successful in the role and write a job description accordingly.
• Interview a broad range of candidates. You may not know the right person for the job until they are sitting in front of you.
• Develop your staff to their full potential. Provide training and opportunities for advancement. Train all new employees in job requirements on hiring instead of a few months down the track to prevent them from forming bad habits.
• Conduct exit interviews. A good way to ensure that you keep your current talent is to find out the reasons why another employee is leaving. An employee who is leaving is often more forthcoming than one who is currently still employed with you.
• Ask the right questions. The job interview is a major factor in hiring the right employee. The questions asked during the interview are critical in defining whether or not the candidate is right for the job.
• Don't Settle. It’s tempting to settle for the best of the bunch, but if the best pick of all your candidates still doesn’t feel right keep looking.
• Offer a three month trial period .It’s expensive hiring new staff but it’s even more so to replace them. Having someone work for you on a short contract is a good way to see if they are the right fit for your organisation.

Improving Morale

Having good employee morale in your business means that your staff are happy to come to work every day and can give you many benefits, including better production, reduced absenteeism and improved teamwork and engagement.

There are many different factors that can contribute to low staff morale within a workplace – job security, limited promotion opportunities, unfair compensation and high employee turnover.

An expensive sign that you have low morale in your work environment is high staff turnover and increased absenteeism – two things that can cost your business a lot of money.

If you are noticing this in your business, here are a few tips to increase morale:

• Good management. Managers can make or break a workplace environment. A good manager makes an effort to understand employee’s abilities and tries to provide challenges to utilise their full capacity. They give praise where praise is due and allow employees the opportunity to grow.
• Make your employees feel special. Celebrate birthdays, weddings, births etc. with a cake or card. Find a reason to celebrate the little things in your workplace. It helps to make staff feel at home and comfortable in their place of work and fosters a friendly team environment.
• Listen to the ideas of your employees. Keep your employees informed and up to date with what is happening with the company and listen to their input. This helps to make employees feel as though they are a part of something bigger.
• Reward good work. Be sure to acknowledge when a job has been done well. People want to feel valued.
• Make the workplace feel comfortable. Nobody wants to be in a completely cold, sterile and uncomfortable environment. Replace the harsh fluorescent lighting if need be and keep the office at a comfortable temperature.
• Encourage regular work breaks. Tell your staff to take a walk around the block or go get a coffee. People are much more productive if they take regular breaks to refresh their minds.
• Have some fun. Engage in some team building exercises. Encourage your staff to get to know one another.  Talk about hobbies or something other than work
• Let your employees vent. Get it out of their systems. Meet with your employees individually or in small groups and allow them to share some of their frustrations and challenges they’re facing on the job. The process can help improve morale almost instantly.
• Promote from within your company.
  When your employees see that there are opportunities to advance their careers within the company it makes them strive to do better. Keep on the lookout for employees with skills that could benefit your business and develop them .A small investment in training can go a long way.