As an entrepreneur with a dream to start up your own business, you should be already well aware of the fact that you need a team to work alongside you, and together, to turn your dream into a reality. Today, we’re going to look at the seven key things you need to remember when building this team, so you can drive each other into the realms of business success.
Find talent in the niche
The first thing you need to do is to make sure that you’re hiring specialists in the roles that you have vacancies for. For example, if you need a graphic designer, get a graphic designer. If you need a copywriter, get a copywriter. Where possible, try to choose people who are multi-skilled because you can easily reduce labor costs and increase productivity.
Creating a company culture
While you want people in your startup team who are going to work hard, it’s also vital to your success that you find people that are going to fit into the culture of your company. Hiring employees who don’t share the same values as all your other team leads to low productivity, job satisfaction, and insufficient job results. Otherwise, according to study, hiring employees who fit company culture have greater job satisfaction and superior results.
Daniel Taylor, an HR specialist for Academized, shares, “As a startup team, there are going to be a lot of challenges and obstacles ahead of you. To overcome these, you need a team that can get on well with each other in a professional and social sense. Create a company culture where positive energy is promoted, and high morale exists”.
Avoid meetings where possible
You might have an idea of how you want your business to run, for example, having meetings once a week or every morning to make sure everybody is on track with what they are doing. However, meetings are massive killers to levels of productivity, especially when your team is just excited to be getting on with what they are doing. Let people do their thing, keep things on track, and you’re sure to succeed.
Giving your team freedom
Already throughout this article, I’ve explained that you should let your team get on with what they do best. This is true. You can create work policy and checklists using tools like Trello and State of writing to help them in their work but give them the ability to be creative and offer different ways to do their job.
Whether you’re referring to your marketer, your graphic designer, your web developer or anybody in your team, they are doing what they do best so try to avoid micromanaging them, set them a project and let them get on with it for optimal results.
Implement team-building exercises
You might have heard about, or even been involved in, a team-building day of sorts. Whether you take your team to do an activity, or even just go for a work meal, this is a great way to build the social aspect of your team members, pulling them together to achieve something great.
Become a competent leader
It’s vital that you lead by example when it comes to your startup team. Since this is your company and you know what you want, you need to make sure that everybody is motivated from leaders to employees, well-informed and on the same page. If you experience any kind of problems with your team, don’t let them slip by, address them and move forward.
Jason McDonald, the founder of Paper Fellows startup, explains, “A leader is potentially one of the most important aspects of a team, the glue,if you like, that holds everyone together. Be a competent leader by respecting people, listening to what they have to say and letting people get on with the work they love to do”.
Celebrate milestones together
As a startup, you’re going to reach a lot of milestones on your way up to the top. Whether you’ve reached 1,000 followers on your social media accounts, 10,000, made your first sale, made a hundred sales and so on.
According to Employee Recognition Report, employees who are eager to contribute to bottom-line metrics of the company they work for can create more healthy and productive culture and workplace environment. For example, companies like Zappos and Resumention reward their employees by creating bonus programs. These are wins that you’ve achieved together with your team and it’s vital for the integrity of your team that you say well done and celebrate together.
Conclusion
As you can see, there are many aspects that go into making a successful startup team. Leave all expectations you have for your team at the door and manage your team for who they are and what you’re trying to achieve and you can be sure that your business will succeed.