Hiring a staff vs. building a team

A common complaint or issue of discussion among business owners is the difficulty of finding quality staff.

Is this a true reflection of the labor market or is there something more fundamentally wrong with this general situation?

How is it, with thousands of people looking for jobs, that business owners find it difficult to recruit good candidates?

In most cases, the problem will lie with business owners rather than with candidates. Out of the necessity to have help, a business owner will tend to look for someone to relieve themselves of time-consuming work rather than recruit employees as a team building process to create the most effective way to build a productive work force.

Over many years of observing businesses, I have noted an overriding concept -- you get the staff you deserve.

Does luck play a role in getting good employees as some suggest? Do good businesses attract good people while average businesses attract average employees?

Business reflects owner

A business will be a reflection of the owner. A number of owners want to control everything ("no one else can do it as well as I can") and they wonder why their staff never wants to take the initiative or take responsibility for their actions. It's not just the people you attract in your personal life who are a mirror of where you are in your life, this concept equally applies to the people who you employ in your business who will also tend be a mirror of the business owner.

The starting point when setting out to put together your dream team is to take a reflective look at both the company and at your own leadership style as the business owner.

Review fundamentals

Many business owners lose sight of the bigger picture as to why they are in business as their focus is on day-to-day decisions. Every year in planning the goals for the next year's business, the owner should step back and review the fundamentals of the business, the mission, the core values and the ideals for building the business -- the underlying culture of the business.

This positioning of the business should be communicated and understood by the company's employees, by customers, by the community, and, consequently, by potential employees looking for an opportunity in that type of environment.

Questions to ask

In recognizing that your business will be a reflection of you as the business owner, and to help you build a team of employees, here are some guideline questions you need to ask about your business to match up both your current and candidate employees:

• What are the most important characteristics each team member must have so that the business can fulfill its business mission?
• What must we as an organization focus on to be our very best?
• What qualities must we look for in the people we hire? What qualities do you as the business owner want each team member to value the most?
• What are the values that would conflict with the organization as it fulfills the business mission?

Answers to these questions must be consistent with your own core values and the culture that you reflect as the business owner. If you build your team in this context, you will certainly treat them differently than you would if they were just staff.

Team concept essential

The overall feeling in your business needs to be togetherness and inclusiveness. Everyone in the company needs to be recognized as having a unique and important role as part of a team (if they don't, then the structure of your organization should be re-examined).

Beyond each team member fulfilling their particular function within the organization, they must also be selected through a recruitment process to fit in with the rest of the team for compatibility.

By building a team rather than just employing staff, you will be building a powerful foundation for long-term business success.

Iain Macfarlane is the president and founder of BizCOACHING & Associates in Madison, a franchise of ActionCOACH Business Coaching. He was named "Coach of the Year 2005."