Business First Family Business, Accounting, Finance, Investing, Marketing And Management
As an entrepreneur, you’ll have to make some hard choices that will literally ‘make or break’ your business. Don’t forget that hard choices are the ones where neither option is better than the other. This means to make the right decision about hiring or firing, you have to realistically evaluate all options. In the end, you pick the one that’s has a better potential for success based on the available data. Here are the hardest staffing choices for an entrepreneur to make.
1. Should You Expand Your Business And Hire Or Keep Doing It Alone?
Running a one-person business is less risky and easier in many regards. It’s also efficient as you’ve managed to succeed thus far. Expansion, on the other hand, is wrought with risks and a lot of extra work. Taking this step can increase business’ profits overall. However, you will lose some measure of control over it and you’ll be forced to delegate some tasks.
Yet another matter is that staying on your current level forever means very limited growth. If your business becomes stagnant, the risk of failure increases. Therefore, expansion is usually the right way to go on this matter. You should think of taking this step only after you start getting enough business that expansion becomes a necessity.
2. Which Method Should You Use For Hiring?
You can hire employees to work for you directly, use a PEO (Professional Employers Organization), or outsource some tasks to freelancers. This decision will affect the structure of your business, taxes, and risks.
Hiring directly allows you to build a team you can supervise in person and see how it grows. This limits your options to local experts or those willing to move. This also means you’ll pay more taxes for every employee.
Using a PEO gives you the same level of control as hiring directly, but with extra benefits. PEOs will be the official employers, so you get to avoid taxes. Some of these services also allow you to offer benefits to prospective employees or help you find the best people for the job. You can get a professional service to research and compare top 10 PEO companies for you. This will allow you to see what the best options are available for your business. You’ll be able to see whether this option is truly the best for your situation.
Online outsourcing expands your options because you can look for professionals all over the world. This also makes it easier to find highly qualified experts you can afford. That’s one of the reasons why online outsourcing is getting bigger by the day. However, hiring freelancers is risky. You can’t be sure in their reliability and could lead you to avoid outsourcing. You can also face many issues due to cultural and even geographical differences (time zones).
To make the right decision on this matter an entrepreneur has to make some calculations. You should get a fair idea of how all these options will work out for your business.
3. When Should You Fire Employees?
Firing employees that break the rules is a relatively easy decision. They broke the rules, so you have a good reason to do it. However, how do you decide whether to fire them, and who to fire exactly, if the business faces a downturn?
In this case, you ask:
- Which employees are necessary to continue business operation?
- Who can be excluded?
- Who do you need to get out of this bad situation?
Answer those and you’ll know whom you have to fire.
