How to Establish Your Small Business in a Competitive Tight Labor Market
And the 3 Types of People You Want Sitting With You
Summary:
It's most likely time to hire support but trying to find and keep the best employees is hard. You need to offer a competitive salary, but that's not all.
There are a lot of things you need to offer employees in order to get them to say yes - competitive salary, benefits, good work/life balance, etc. But what if there was a way to boil it all down into one easy-to-understand value proposition?
Find out the 6 components of a compelling employee value proposition so that you can make it easy for you to establish your small business in a competitive tight labor market.
Plus, say ROCKSTAR down below to to get free access to the 7 Steps to a Rockstar Team Download!
How’s your business doing lately?
If you’re like many service-based entrepreneurs, you’ve likely seen a boost in success this year!
…And you know what? You could be doing even MORE with just this one change:
Hiring employees!
We’re talking about gaining those rockstar team players who can help you take your business to the next level in all the ways you’ve been shooting for!
Remember: Gaining quality employees is one of the most important scaling strategies.
As mega-successful entrepreneur, Reid Hoffman once said: “A team will beat out someone working for themselves, every day of the week.” So, we know that building the right team is important. But that doesn’t make it easy. It’s probably one of the most challenging tasks you’ll take on at the beginning of your entrepreneurial journey. No matter where you are in the world, what industry you’re in, or what era we’re in, this will likely never change. So the only thing we can really do is arm ourselves with all of the confidence, info, and strategies that we can to make the process easier for ourselves.
And the first step to doing just that?
Understanding the importance of an “employee value proposition.”
Why An Employee Value Proposition Is Important to being in a Competitive Labor Market
Competitive salaries are important, but they are only one-third of the equation. To have your business stand out among the competition is to have something called an employee value proposition.
An employee value proposition works the same way that a customer sales pitch might work. It communicates exactly what you’re offering and why they should care about it in a concise, compelling, and thoughtful way.
The different elements of this kind of proposition (which we’ll henceforth refer to as an EVP) lie under one of three categories:
Three Categories to An Employee Value Proposition
1. Emotional
When you first start your business, you can get away without a mission statement (i.e., a declaration of your business, how it shows up in the world, and why your work is important). However, once you start building a team, all things need to become clear.
Your team needs to understand why their contributions matter. A shared goal keeps them fulfilled in their position, inspired to create new ideas, and motivated to put forth their best work. How do you achieve it? It starts by building an emotional connection.
2. Experiential
The “experiential” aspect of your employee proposition involves helping your employees succeed professionally and personally. Seeing as we’re in the wake of “The Great Resignation,” and “Quiet Quitting” being able to relay this information to a potential candidate is more important now than ever before.
When in the process of bringing on more team members, it’s crucial that they fully understand how they can learn, grow, be challenged, and lead healthy and fulfilled lives through this job.
Ask yourselves: “How can our company help Person A see why working with us is in their best interest?”
If you’re able to get skilled in doing this, you can easily blow away the competition.
3. Contractual
I know we said that compensation and benefits aren’t always the NUMBER ONE draws to a potential employee, but they certainly still matter.
When coming up with a quality EVP, you must understand where you stand within your industry and market so that you’re able to at least match the baseline.
I know this doesn’t always seem like a possibility (“Hello, we’ve got a budget to adhere to!”), but I promise that there are more ways to increase
your salary capacity if you simply keep an open mind. If you’ve designed your business to create predictable profits (something we do very well btw) then it is easier to get than you may think.
I’ve talked to many benefits brokers who tell me about some amazing programs they’ve put together for small teams that they’ve never actually gotten to help execute. Why? Because business owners get locked into this mindset of lack filled with “No ways” and “Nuh uhs” and “Definitely can’t afford thats”.
This is why, here at YBR, we talk so much about
1) the power of positive thinking
2) profitability strategies that help support our scaling businesses. (Need some tips about improving cash flow in ways that nourish your growing team? Head over here.
Last Thoughts
In the same way that employees are more than just their skills, you are more than just your salary. Take time to think about why employees should want to work at your company (in ways that go BEYOND just finances), create a pitch that makes these benefits crystal clear, and hire, hire, hire!
And if you need any guidance along the way, we’ve got you covered!
Download “7 Steps To A Rockstar Team,” to find tons of tips and tricks of the trade for building the kind of team your business deserves!
>>> Www.yourbizrules.com/rockstar