Services for small organisations (<50 staff)
Selection
Selection is often a problem for small companies. It is something people tend to assume they can do. After all, most people who run a business both need and possess pretty good ability to judge people, so it is easy to assume that selecting staff is just a question of having “a bit of a chat” and using experience to tell whether they are suitable
Unfortunately, this approach often doesn’t work out very well because;
- The job isn’t clearly defined, in a small organisation it is often necessary to be able to perform a wide variety of tasks. So without somebody to ask the right questions about the company and what is needed, the abilities the new person needs to have aren’t clear, the details you need from the interview are too vague, and the new employee doesn’t turn out to be able to do what you want them to.
- Attracting applicants, the recruitment side, is quite easy in the current climate. This means there are lots of people to choose from and it is difficult to distinguish them and work out who is actually the most suitable. So you end up choosing somebody who looks good on paper and whom you like at first sight but who doesn’t work out. At the same time, you turn away somebody that might have been really useful because you couldn’t dig deep enough to find out who was really best for your organisation.
- The requirements are rapidly changing, so that as businesses grow and develop, role descriptions have to change too. When you’re trying to run the business, keeping up with those details and all the issues like equal opportunities without professional help is difficult. So you get people who would have been great last year, but who can’t cope with what comes up over the next six months.
- Applicants can often "interview well", but not be able to do what is required. Unless you’re professionally trained to do selection interviews (as distinct from sales, information gathering or any other type of interview), it is hard to tell who can “walk the walk” rather than just "talk the talk".
Added to this, there is usually nobody in a smaller company who has professional experience of selection and who can dedicate a lot of time away from their normal job to deal with it. So however good you are, it is difficult to spend the time you know it needs – but that means you don’t get the right people, so you can’t delegate to them and save yourself any time.
We design simple selection systems, with the support and training for you to use them. This means that you can spend your time in the business, but build your knowledge of selection so you have your own resources for the future.
Many people assume that professional assistance is too expensive and that the only choice is to run everything yourself. We usually find that a simple system is no more expensive (when you allow for all of the senior staff time interviewing), and is far more accurate. The accuracy saves on the costs of rapid turnover, the consequences of the wrong people being appointed and the waste of time and budget in "getting it wrong" and having to start again.
Contact us to find out more
Typically we’ll make an analysis of the job, by means of interviews with existing staff and looking at your systems and organisational structure. We’ll then design a simple system such as a psychometric test or a simulation exercise and a structured interview, and provide training for staff in how to use the system and to evaluate the results. This is both economical and accurate, gives you a system to use in the future and improves your in-house resources.
We can obviously also provide expertise to handle the selection entirely, if you really don’t have the time and resources in-house to handle selection.
Coaching
With the changing nature of business, it is important that managers and senior staff are constantly developing their abilities. One way of doing this is individual or group coaching. Learning and continuing to apply new behaviours and managerial styles is not easy – frequently managers know what they are trying to accomplish and what they need to do, but have trouble doing it! They may have even more trouble in keeping on doing the things they need to do until the new ways of thinking and behaving become second nature.
Even a small organisation is complex, with the needs of the company as a whole, the management, the individual staff member and their direct reports all being affected by changes in behaviour. We therefore take time at the start of a coaching contract to establish the precise objectives, reporting lines, aspects of confidentiality etc. You may wish to contact us to discuss your situation and discuss how we can help, or look at our notes on Executive coaching.