Adding a team member to a small business is not something that should be taken lightly. Not only will it change the dynamic of the team, it may also change the culture of the team – if you allow it to happen.

As a small business owner, finding and hiring the right people can be challenging. Very often small business cannot compete with large multinational in terms of wages and benefits so we are often tempted to allow new employees to join too much leeway as we fear they will leave again.

This is mistake number 1.

When a new employee agrees to join your team, it is important to do the following every time:

• Plan their induction and training properly, ensuring that every team member that you currently have is introduced properly and understands what their role in the induction should be.
• Standards and Norms – this is a critical part of the induction where you take your new employee through your standards and normal procedures. What you expect from them and how you would like them to behave
• Vision, mission, and culture briefing – very often we assume that new team members will just assimilate themselves and understand what the business is all about. This is a mistake. We need to explain clearly what the vision and mission of the business is. We also need to explain the culture of the business. At ActionCOACH, we have 14 points of culture. We work at being as close to these as we go about our business every day.
• KPI’s and performance measurement – while not every role can be measure on a daily and weekly basis, it is important to have some form of measurement in carrying out a new role. KPI’s can yield excellent data in subsequent appraisals and reviews.
• Feedback and Team Engagement – explain to the new team how you communicate, the guidelines for communication and feedback.

At ActionCOACH we also use profiling to assist us in assimilating new team members. We can use profiling to explain how relationships may develop and we can also use profiling to ensure that we communicate with the team members in a way most suited to themselves.