The Importance of Staff Recruitment

It is a well known business truism that one bad employee can undo the work of two good employees without even trying! They can be your worst nightmare or they can be almost as valuable to your business as you are and sometimes more so. Controlling them and directing their energies is a demanding and challenging task and one that has baffled and concerned me on more occasions than wish to remember.

The problems with employees are varied, overstaffing, understaffing, disputes, low morale, misdirected enthusiasm, delegation, job suitability, hiring, firing etc.

Right about now you’re thinking “I don’t need employees they’re too much trouble!”. Wrong, if you are going to expand and grow you will eventually need help, employees provide that help. As I have found over the years, some of my employees have saved “my bacon” on more than one occasion and literally can’t do without them.

Many successful companies regard their employees as their most valuable commodity and even some countries will claim their most precious resource is their people, Japan for example. This is a philosophy that you should adopt, because if your customers are treated well by your staff the profits will look after themselves, because remember, it doesn’t matter how cheap you are, if you treat customers badly, you will never see them again. And disgruntled customers have big mouths – remember that.

Again with anything, it requires planning and employees are no different. A staffing plan should consider the following:

 

• The present and future requirements of the business.

 

• The business functions required to meet your objectives.

 

• The number of employees required to perform these functions.

 

• The type of people needed (skills, qualifications, personality type).

 

• Where are you going to find these employees (competitors, friends, family, advertise)

 

• Do the jobs allocated have a practical and worthwhile purpose.

 

• Can the jobs allocated, be done in a more efficient way.

 

• Holiday staffing requirements, which employees can go on holiday at the same time without throwing the business into total chaos.

When considering these issues remember you should always find the person to fit the job not the job to fit the person. The trickiest part of employment issues is hiring. One of the main contributors to staff turnover is poor staff selection by employers.

The lesson here is to be careful, be very careful when it comes to selecting the right people and at the same time make yourself aware of the anti-discrimination legislation otherwise you may find yourself on the losing end of a dispute.

I’ve heard that 80% of employers lose these disputes and must pay damages or offer the person the job – great isn’t it? – your idea, your business, your risk, your personal choice., your money and “they” dictate who you can and can’t employ!

Here are a few tips to help you through the “staff selection minefield”:

 

• Before placing an advertisement, ensure that it is clear and straight to the point as regards experience and job description.

 

• Leave personal preferences out, don’t mention age, sex, marital status, race or anything like that – it’s not allowed.

 

• Define the job role on paper stating very clearly the functions to be performed including any menial tasks as these are the ones that seem to cause the most problems. Also, state things like hours and any unusual conditions and experience and/or qualifications required. so there can be no dispute on what was agreed to at the interview. Give a copy to each interviewee.

 

• Pre-plan the interviews by listing relevant questions to ask each interviewee so you get an “apples v’s apples” comparison.

 

• Always reference check, ask questions about personality, attitude to work etc.

 

• One thing I always thought worked well was asking a few technical or test questions. If they were offended by your asking these questions then they should be avoided at all costs as they are probably people who are too tightly wrapped or can’t handle a little pressure and you don’t need employees like that. If they answer the questions and get them wrong they were obviously either nervous or they didn’t know the answer.

 

• If you think they were nervous give them a little longer and reassure them that being nervous won’t harm their chances at getting the job and this generally produces positive results.

Once you have completed the interviews and made your decision, advise the successful applicant by phone and then send a letter of confirmation with details like salary, starting date, position etc. Also, send each unsuccessful applicant a letter thanking them for applying and for their effort. Courtesy goes a long way to building goodwill within a business.

For Mackay Bookkeeping, Townsville Bookkeeping and Cairns Bookkeeping, contact Dollarwise Bookkeeping. Dollarwise have a remote MYOB bookkeeping service for all types and sizes of business. STDWB230309

Training You Can Use to Learn How to Advance Your Short Term Memory

You know that you should exercise to keep your body fit, but did you know that you should also do some exercises for your brain to keep your brain in shape? Your brain is like a muscle and it must be worked out every so often so that you can stay as bright as possible. One of the ways you can work your brain is to do some exercises for short-term memory. Short-term memory is what we use to hold onto information for just a short time. Some examples of information we use short-term memory for include phone numbers, addresses, names of people we just meet once, and so on. Short-term memory is so called because once we have it we lose it. This keeps our minds open to absorb more information so that it’s not all jumbled with useless nonsense. By doing exercises for short-term memory, however, we can increase the amount of information we can hold in our short-term memories and we can even increase the time in which it remains there.

The Peek A Boo Picture Game

A great way to train for short-term memory is a game where you look a picture. This can be any picture you choose. It can be one you pick out from a magazine, it can be one of you and your family at your family reunion, it can be anything at all. Look at the picture for a few minutes and then cover it up. Using a pen and paper, try to write down every detail you can about that picture. Then, look at the picture again. Did you get everything right? Did you get some details wrong? By doing this over and over, you will work your short-term memory and this will increase your capacity for holding information. This is a fun exercise for short-term memory and it’s one the entire family can play. Yes it is even great for improving children’s short term memory.

Audio Exercises

Just like the picture game, you can use audio clips to help exercise your short-term memory. You can use anything at all. You can use a top ten countdown on the radio, you can use talk radio, anything at all. However, make sure you can rewind whatever you’re using so that you can go back and check your work. Attempt to remember all the details you can by jotting them down after the clip is over. Then, rewind and see how many details you got right. By practicing over and over, you will increase your short-term memory power and this will increase your capacity to remember things you hear.

These are just a few of examples of ways of improving memory, or more specifically, how to exercise your short-term memory. These can be practiced anywhere, anytime and the more you practice, the more significant your short-term memory will be. That’s great news for anyone who hears something and it goes in one ear and out the other. By doing exercises for short-term memory, hopefully you’ll be able to hold onto that information a little longer.

Internet Business Finally Explained

Internet marketing or marketing on the Internet is no longer the mysterious world it once appeared. Internet marketing is the process of promoting a product or service via the internet. Internet Marketing is the opposite of what you’ve been taught at school.

Basically, Internet marketing is about finding the right customers online and convincing them to buy. Fairly similar to other forms of marketing, the goal of Internet Marketing is to satisfy the wants and needs of customers. Internet marketing can also mean that you undertake blogging activites that make you money, which is called blogging for money.

Internet marketing is a broad term that refers to any promotional activity over the Internet designed to attract more customers for a business. This includes paid advertising, such as banners ads and pay-per-click ads, and traffic-increasing activities such as search engine optimization and blog marketing.

The advantage of internet marketing is you can directly target customers that are actively searching for the services you provide and point them directly to your website. Apart from that, one of the many benefits associated with Internet marketing is also the availability of information. Please go to my blog about make money online and work from home and peluang usaha site to see for yourself what Internet Marketing really is about.

By creating an Internet marketing strategy that uses your specific business and product as well as acknowledges the customers that want what you offer, you will be able to create an effective campaign. It can be far less expensive and far more effective than many other forms of popular marketing. You need to choose the customer that is truly interested in your business in order to get the maximum ROI (return on investment) that you can.

The first step of marketing a business or service online is building a website. If you want a truly successful business, you need to put in a lot of hard work and effort. If you really want to successfully build an online business, you must find out the problems your customers have, and then develop products and services that specifically solve these problems. When you do this, closing sales is fairly easy.