Staffing

HOW MANY STAFF?

At an early stage, you need to begin to estimate how many staff you may need and how this number will grow – and where you will
recruit staff from. There’s not much point planning expansion if you can’t get the people to do the work.

Estimate your initial staff numbers and how you see this developing within the first 12 months and within the first three years. These figures will help you in developing your Operational Budget  and in making applications for employment grants, if you are eligible. Remember that salary is not the only cost in employing someone. taxes must be paid on their earnings they may be entitled to bonuses, commissions, etc.; they will need training – and there will be other costs you have not thought of.

DELEGATING

Delegating is difficult for entrepreneurs. Theirwhole business, their way of life, is built on their own vision. What should be done, when and how are all determined by the entrepreneur. And now parts of the business, even decisions, are to be handed over to someone else. Ouch!
This is very often the way that entrepreneurs see delegating – in a negative light, as giving up control. But that’s not delegating – that’s giving up control!

Delegating is a specific sequence of techniques that empowers one person (the person to whom work is delegated) while freeing up the time of another (the person delegating). Delegation consists of the following steps:

• Define the task – In terms of resources available and outcome required, not in terms of method
• Transfer a clear understanding – To the person who is to do the work
• Stand back and let them do the work, while being available to help – But only when asked
• Careful, shared evaluation of the outcome. It is critical that achievement of the task is judged only in terms of the outcome – not the methods used to achieve it. You want a store-room tidied and products placed on shelves in alphabetical order. Does it matter whether the person starts by finding all the most popular items first and putting them aside? Or that the alphabetical sequence starts left of the door and not right? Or that he begins tidying at Z and not A? Just because it isn’t done the way you would have done it does not make it wrong.