FINDING YOUR NEXT GREAT EMPLOYEES
Workforce quality is the key to long-term success, but competition for top talent is intense. Smaller businesses must leverage their advantages to succeed.
Human capital management specialists at enterprises large and small speak in a unified voice on one critical issue: workforce quality is almost always the single most important determinant of long-term success for any business of any size.
“The issues involved here are not really that much different between small businesses and large corporations,” says Matthew Owenby, senior vice president and chief human resources officer at Aflac, which employs about 10,000 people. “The quality of our workforce is really the difference between success and failure in the long term.”
It’s especially important for smaller businesses that the quality of their workers be high because the impact of each employee on business outcomes is magnified. “You may be able to get by in the short term with just average employees, but it will show massive effects over the long term,” he says.
Steven Benson is founder and CEO of Badger Maps, which has a workforce about one one-thousandth the size of Aflac’s, and he couldn’t agree more. “Productivity and profitability go hand-in-hand. There is nothing more important a business leader does than recruit and hire people who are a great fit for the team,” he says. “If I only get one thing right, it has to be this.”
But getting it right is a challenge for many small and midsized businesses. For starters, they simply don’t have the resources big companies have to find, vet, hire, and retain top-tier employees. Then there’s the issue of the talent pool itself. With the economy growing and unemployment rates shrinking, competition for the best of the best is intense.
Bob Funk, CEO and chairman of Express Employment Professionals, says that leverage in the job market is shifting, and “workers will soon have the upper hand with potential employers.” He cites situations like that in western Michigan, where unemployment is about 3 percent, and inability to hire is throttling growth for some businesses. In Huntsville, Alabama, the local Express Employment Professionals office had to increase compensation even for unskilled workers because turnover is so high.
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