Skip to main content

Edition 513 – The Unbridgeable Gap

Written by Dean Robinson.

Have you ever employed anyone in your small or family business because they had a heartbeat?

Or, were the only individual that responded to the advertisement?

Or were recommended to you by a friend of a friend, but you didn’t test their candidacy, nor suitability, against anyone else?

In recent years, as unemployment has driven to almost historically low levels, I’ve seen more business owners employ new staff simply to fill a gap in their business, rather than spend time finding the right person for the role.

Who do you need in your business vs. who do you accept? And, in doing so, what consequences does that have across the wider business, when that gap-filler turns out to be incompetent, or lazy, or inefficient, or a narcissist?

If you’re having trouble finding staff, you need to ask yourself why. Most small and family business owners will almost exclusively blame external factors such as:

  1. A tight labour market.
  2. Higher salaries in similar industries.
  3. Cost of living pressures, thus forcing people to relocate from the major cities.
  4. A shortage of skilled employees.

Yet, I’d contend first and foremost, that internal factors deserve a higher level of responsibility, and are not investigated enough, nor in depth, by business owners. Internal factors such as:

  1. Why aren’t you an employer of choice?
  2. What your employees are saying about your business in their social circles?
  3. Whether your employees consider their work interesting and challenging, if that’s what they desire?
  4. Whether you, as the owner or manager of the business, are leading from the front, and showing your team where you’re heading in business, and why you’re heading there?

More than 20 years ago, a former metal fabrication client complained to me about staff goofing off on work time, by ducking into the bathrooms, with the newspaper under their arms, to spend 20 minutes off the shop floor.

“I’ve sorted those buggers out” he followed up gleefully. “I pulled out all the lightbulbs in the bathrooms! They can’t read the paper now, can they?” He laughed. I laughed too. I don’t know whether or not we were laughing for the same reasons. My guess is we weren’t.

Is your inability to attract the right people to your business an unbridgeable gap? Is it something you’ve just accepted, but not done anything about, to ensure it doesn’t happen in the future?

There’s an old saying, that if you keep on doing what you’ve always done, you’ll keep on getting what you’ve always got. It’s true, yet so many business owners, at least in endeavouring to make their business a far more attractive place for employees to want to be, seem to ignore it.

This Week’s Tip

“Start with the end in mind – meaning, what do you want your employees to say about you, and your business in one or two year’s time, and then work towards that goal – assuming, the employees you have, are the ones you want more of in the future.”