Interviewing

When interviewing candidates for open positions, it’s important to constantly have your company culture at the forefront of your mind. You’re not just trying to get a body to fill a spot, you’re out to find someone who brings real value to your business and to your customers. 

By taking your expectations and forming them into questions, it turns the interview into a conversation and requires the candidate to give examples instead of standard cookie-cutter responses. Behavioral questions will have them answering with their own experiences and revealing their real opinions. 

Expectation:

Employees who operate at a your desired skill level

Question: Walk me through every step in this common process…

Expectation:

Customer issues are handled professionally

Question: How do you de-escalate angry customers?

Expectation:

Gives consistent, high quality work

Question: What steps do you take to make sure you deliver high quality work consistently?

Expectation:

Routinely inspect tools, equipment, job site, workspace, etc.

Question: What steps do you take when you are finished for the day, or with the job, to make sure you’re ready for the next?

Expectation:

Accepts constructive criticism as someone who cares about their performance

Question: Tell me about a time when you missed the mark with a job or project. How did you handle it with your superior and what did you do to fix it or make sure it didn’t happen again?

These questions are designed to give you insight into their personality, potential, opinions, and provide you better clarity on whether or not they are a good match with your business. Look for employees who will fit with your company culture!

On-Boarding Procedures

Standard Operating Procedures

Standard Operating Procedures (aka SOPs) make the greatest difference in setting up your new employees for long-term success! SOPs are like a step by step guide, a convenient reference to everyone. Your team can use it as a reference and follow checklists for common tasks and responsibilities. New employees can also use it as a guide, forming good habits right from the start.

With SOPs Your team can stay productive and consistent even when an employee is absent or replaced because SOP’s make it simple for someone to fill in and complete the responsibilities on their own because just by following the steps and procedures in your SOP. 

It’s important to have a written document detailing what your expectations are. Employees prefer to have expectations addressed. Having the procedures documented gives a reference to both you and your employee about what is expected and what the standard is. This way you can minimize the misunderstandings. This also enables your existing staff to easily train new employees, thus reducing a huge amount of stress from you, the business owner. 

Make your SOPs even more beneficial to your team by making them accessible to everyone at any time with digital SOPs! 

Digital advantages:

• Accessible at all times to all staff  

• Easy to update 

• Guide and reference for employees

• Uniformity in performance

• Prevents misunderstandings

• Keeps rules and expectations consistent 

• Checklist for tasks 

• Useful in Performance Evaluations

Videos

As part of your new hire onboarding process, consider adding training videos to ensure that your new employee is ready for work starting on day one! Having short videos for your potential hires or new hires to go through is helpful for them to know exactly how to do their job. But you could take it a step further and create a quiz for them to take after they watch the videos. This will ensure their level of proficiency and help you filter out candidates who are not qualified without your money and you and your team’s time on training those who aren’t a good match. 

Video at each stage of onboarding makes learning engaging. With content that’s understandable and captivating, new hires are prepared and excited for their work. You can help employees grow even more after onboarding by creating and sharing new training videos. Have your staff create their own training video, this will further reinforce their own training by having them instruct someone on how to do the job correctly.  

With videos you get a personal touch that’s perfect for onboarding and welcoming to new employees. You can recognize new hires for the hard work they’ve done and make them feel appreciated. And with all of the videos you’ve created for onboarding, your current employees have all the resources they need to refresh their knowledge.

Shadowing

Having your newest hire spend time shadowing a designated employee who is a high performer and fully understands the ins and outs of the job is some of the best training they could receive. The new employee sees how things are done the right way. Job shadowing also enables new employees to actually engage in work activity – the very same work activity they’ll be expected to perform in their new positions.

Hearing how a job functions, and seeing how a job functions, are two distinct and different types of learning. The more enriching approach is seeing AND participating in daily job activities as soon as possible to get good habits in place, and have your new employee up-to-speed faster.

What should your new employees do while shadowing?

• observe work routines
• perform work-related tasks
• attend relevant staff meetings
• tour the facilities to learn where “things” are kept and how to find the break room
• attend special training seminars for new staffers
• assist the mentor with task completion
• visit or talk to company clients and customers

Tax documents

New employee forms are a staple of the onboarding process. Before an employee can legally begin working for your business, they need to fill out required forms. When you add a new hire to your payroll, you need to know how much money to withhold from their wages for federal and, if applicable, state income taxes. To know their withholdings, you need to collect two new hire tax forms: federal and state W-4 forms. These are the forms the government requires from new hires, but there are other documents that are necessary ones you need for your business. 

The federal employment eligibility form employees must fill out:

Form I-9

Employees also need to fill out income tax forms so you can accurately run payroll:

Form W-4

State W-4 form

A list of potential business forms you might require new hires to fill out:

Emergency contact form

Employee handbook acknowledgment form

Bank account information form 

Benefits forms

Culture for Retention

Morale

Morale includes the overall outlook, attitude, satisfaction, and confidence that employees feel at work. Employees with high levels of morale are happy, more productive and long lasting employees — and companies with happy employees have been known to out-earn and outperform their competition.

Employees with good levels of morale have a better outlook regarding their work. They also feel more secure in their role and invested in your company, making them motivated to work hard and accomplish more as a team. After all, content employees don’t want to jump ship; they want your company to thrive. They have a shared vision and know teamwork is the best way to ensure your organization’s long-term success.

When morale is high, employees tend to exhibit fewer negative behaviors and experience less workplace stress. This high morale ultimately results in improved workplace relationships between employees and with management. When employees have a better relationship with their managers, they feel more confident to ask for training and clarification on their work and objectives. This relationship can make all the difference in terms of engagement, performance, and productivity, which in turn has an effect on the workplace environment. When you create this “team centered culture” then your employees start to look to one another for assistance and rely on each other’s strengths, rather than coming to the business owner for every little thing. 

Make it Personal

Host team lunches to boost employee morale and relationships. Buying your employees lunch once a month or every other month is a great way to show your appreciation and bring everyone together to bond as a team. Providing your team with snacks and coffee is another perk to your employees that they’ll enjoy and will help create a more accommodating environment in the workplace. 

Celebrate your employees birthdays with something special, like a treat for everyone, or a small gift for them. It will make your employees know you care and that they are celebrated with their work family. Consider having gifts for your employees to thank them on their anniversaries with the company. 

Nontraditional Benefits

Have you thought about offering medical, 401k, or other benefits but your business isn’t at that financial tier yet to be able to give that to your employees? You can still impress candidates, and offer non-traditional benefits to your team when you get a little creative. For example, rather than offer a full health package, many small businesses have found health care alternatives online, , like offering zoom calls, prescriptions, and general practitioner services at drastically reduced rates as opposed to traditional health care benefits.

Not ready to offer full health care benefits? There are many alternative benefits to give to your employees to enhance their health and well-being. With the ever growing popularity of Zoom, you can offer employees online healthcare, with access to doctors, prescriptions, therapists, psychologists, and more, all from their phone or computer! Amazon just launched their version of online healthcare called Amazon.care, and HealthiestYou.com, established in 2017, provides healthcare for small businesses through TeleDoc video conferencing. Both are affordable solutions to give your employees healthcare benefits, but without breaking the bank! 

There are other creative additives you can offer your employees that will make your company more desirable. Some great ideas include providing employees with streaming services subscriptions, like Netflix, Hulu, or pay for Amazon Prime for your team, or maybe a music subscription like Spotify or Pandora for the workplace. Unlike traditional benefits that just end up costing business owners a major chunk or their revenue, these benefits also act as tax write offs for the company. 

As their leader you can add even more value to your employees lives by offering them a reasonably flexible schedule, one where they are free and comfortable to request off. Managers who practice understanding with their employees’ time off show that they respect their employees’ needs. This only helps contribute to the company’s great morale when each member feels like they are being treated like an adult. 

To really retain employees for long-term growth, consider giving your employees opportunities to make more money. For example, you could offer a percentage of the sale when an employee upsells a customer, or a bonus for landing big accounts. Anything that is monetarily motivating to your team, works as a wonderful incentive for them to go the extra mile for both the company and the customer. 

There are other alternative benefits you could provide to better your employees health. You could get a group gym membership, or reimburse gym membership up to a certain amount. Your employees will appreciate having free access to a free gym and it can be a great bonding opportunity for your team. You might also think about agreeing to sponsor your employees who participate in 5ks, 10k, marathons, tough mudders, bike-a-thons, etc. Not only will you show your employees that you care about their health, but by sponsoring, your business will be on their shirt, giving your business great P.R. and brand recognition. 

The options for benefits are only limited by your imagination! Below are some ideas to get you thinking about the non-traditional avenues you could take advantage of to give your employees some serious incentive and desire to stay with your business for the long-haul. 

• Employee and family Summer Picnic

• College Scholarship/Saving Program

• Rent Out Movie Theatre for Employees and their families

• Holiday Savings Program (and Matching!)

• New Mom or Dad Welcome Back package

• Free/Discounted Tax Consulting Service On-site

• Yoga at Work, Reimbursement or company discount at yoga studio

• Massage Therapist once per month 

• Stipend for Mental Health services

• Stress Management Courses on-site

• Employee of the Month Recognition/ Reward and Parking Spot

• Credit/Discount for house cleaning/dry cleaning

• Car Detailing or Wash (Free or at Discount)

• Day of Service – company shuts down to do a volunteering activity for the day

• Company Performance Bonuses for All Employees

Rewind: 

Remember when interviewing, keep your company culture at the forefront of your mind. You’re not just trying to get a body to fill a spot, you’re out to find someone who brings real value to your business and will likely have longevity. It’s important to invest the time now into finding the right candidate, rather than just hiring the first person who could do the job. Hold out for the person that fits your company culture, has the right experience, and through phrasing your expectations as questions, has revealed themselves to hold the same standards of customer service and quality that you require. 

Then, once you hire the right person, use your onboarding process to set them up for success with great habits and practices. Utilize video demonstrations, SOPs, and shadowing to train your new hire. But keep in mind that employees tend to stay longer amounts of time with companies who offer many benefits. Knowing your industry, your ideal employees, and your goals for your business, create a benefits package that would most clearly resonate with your team and have the best impact on company morale and culture.