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As a small business owner, you may worry that having a small team can impede business results. While there is certainly a valuable place for big teams, small teams carry their own merit and value. Manage your small team with the right strategy, and you’ll find it easy to get business results.
Read on to uncover four ways to achieve big business results with a small team!
1. Create Clear Boundaries and Job Descriptions
Small teams sometimes struggle because everyone is wearing multiple hats. The issue with assigning several roles to one person is that this may lead to stress, workplace tension, burnout, and turnover. On the other hand, one of the best ways to avoid burnout among a small team while getting positive business results is to create precise job descriptions with clear boundaries.
Creating Accurate Job Descriptions
The main areas of focus when writing a job description include:
- Position title
- Overall summary
- Responsibilities and duties
- Who to report to
- What success looks like for the position
Keep in mind that creating job descriptions isn’t enough on its own! You should also regularly review the roles and performances of the people in those jobs to ensure everything is running smoothly. This allows you evaluate whether job duties need to shift or if someone else is better suited for the role. Finally, when communicating the job descriptions to your team, make sure everyone is clear on expectations for their role.
2. Recruit the Right Folks
This may seem obvious, but oftentimes, business owners and managers of small teams do not recruit the right way. The best starting point for recruiting is to keep company culture in mind. Someone you hire may be able to adequately perform the required job, but if they’re not the right fit for the company culture, it may create problems. Interpersonal conflict between employees can not only negatively redirect focus away from important tasks but also completely derail business success.
How to Recruit the Right Culture Fit?
When determining whether a candidate is a good fit for your business, you should evaluate how well they fit with your team’s values and beliefs. Some questions you can ask the candidate during the interview process include:
- What is your preferred management style?
- What is your ideal work environment or office culture?
- How do you manage tight deadlines?
- How do you handle collaboration with colleagues?
If the success of your small team requires that everyone can self-manage to some capacity, bringing someone on board who prefers a more micromanagement approach could be problematic. Similarly, if your business requires a lot of teamwork and collaboration, you don’t want to hire someone who prefers to work alone.
3. Use Freelancers
Freelancers are a goldmine of skill sets you may need for a one-off or repeat project. Some benefits of working with freelancers include:
- They tend to self-manage well
- There are typically clear-cut expectations and milestones
- They bring specialty skillsets members of your team may not possess
- They can be cost-efficient
There are many reasons why small business owners might bring on a freelancer. In some cases, you may need someone who has knowledge in a specialized field to help with a project. In other cases, you may need someone to offload work onto because your core team is at capacity.
It can be more cost-efficient overall to hire a freelancer vs. trying to have a member of your team spend time learning a skill. Keep in mind that time is money, so the more time a member of your core team is focused on learning something new without delivering an output, the more money is potentially wasted.
Working with freelancers can enrich your team and bring you more small business success. Idea Financial lines of credit and business loans can help you finance a qualified freelancer who can bring your business greater success.
Contracting the Right Freelancer
First things first, you may be wondering where to find a freelancer to begin with. There are many avenues you can pursue to find freelancers, including:
- Freelance job sites and communities
- Your network or colleagues
- Research
When contracting the “right” freelancer for the job, there are a few key considerations to remember:
- What is their timeline for the deliverable?
- What is their experience in both their field and your industry?
- Do they have past examples of work they’ve done?
- Can they provide any references?
If you’ve never worked with freelancers before, it’s understandable that you may feel somewhat apprehensive. However, freelancers, in many cases, are specialists who can bring valuable experience to your team to help you get better results.
4. Evaluate Individual Performance
When managing a small team, it can be hard to keep track of everything and everyone. However, it is crucial that you track individual performance for every team member to ensure everyone is meeting expectations.
You cannot afford to have underperforming employees when you have a small team. For small business owners, underperforming employees can completely derail your company's success – not to mention they’re a significant waste of money.
Tracking Performance
How you track performance will mostly depend on your management style and the type of business you have. Maybe each team member has three major quarterly goals they work toward, and at the end of every quarter, you check in to see their progress. Or perhaps monthly one-on-ones with each member of your team are a better fit for your company’s culture. Either way, tracking individual performance is crucial for business success.
Benefits of Working in Small Teams
Having a small team is not a bad thing. The advantages of working in small groups include better collaboration, superior results, and higher-quality team culture. To learn more about how your business can be successful with a small team, check out Idea Financial’s Business Resource Center.
Do you need working capital to invest in any of our strategies to accomplish business results with a small team? Idea Financial offers flexible term loans and lines of credit of up to $250K with 9- to 36-month terms. With Idea Financial, you:
- Control what you draw, when you draw, and what day you pay
- Can make repayments early without penalty
- Get same-day decisions and next-day funding
- Pay minimal interest rates
Apply for business funding today or call our line to learn how Idea Financial can help charge your business forward!
