by Kulani Shiluvane, Founder and Chief Consultant at Shiluvah
What are the key driving forces behind your business? Is it your product? Your service offering? Is it your price offering on your product or services? NO! What drives your business and the real success behind your organization is your TEAM. Therefore, if you want a growing and successful business, a business that is profitable and thriving, it is crucial that you have the right team driving your business. So, how do you go about recruiting and retaining a winning team?
When recruiting personnel for our businesses, the prevalent mistake that we entrepreneurs tend to make is trying to find the best candidate with the appropriate educational credentials and experience, without taking into consideration that this person is not only a sum of the above. However, who they are over and above their education and experience will have a great impact on the overall growth and success of our businesses. Therefore, when recruiting to try and build and retain a winning team, take the following factors into consideration:
Education and experience aren’t everything
While a candidate’s education and work experience play a significant role in your interest in them, those factors should not be the only reason they join your organization. Who the person is, over and above their education and work experience, should be of great interest to the recruiter. Why? Well, because who a person is as an individual will determine if you can work with them, whether they will fit into the organizational culture, and what attributes (both professional and otherwise) they will bring to the table that will drive growth and success in the business. While an MBA from a leading university and the right kind of experience might look good on a CV, the actual person could be a different story, a story you will regret reading. Get to know the person, take your time listen to your gut, and make sure that over and above education and experience the person you are recruiting is the right person in all expects. After all, hiring someone is easy, but getting rid of them is a different story.
Money isn’t everything
Yes, money is important. However, money is only one of the factors that a candidate would choose to join or leave an organization. The key here is self-actualization. Your business may pay well, and I mean very well, but if there is no space in your business for people to self-actualize, your chances of recruiting and retaining a winning team will be very limited. People need to feel like they are valued and what they bring to the table is also valued. Another big part of this is the need to feel like the individual is harnessing their potential to the maximum and that there is room for growth and advancement within the organization.
Organizational Culture
The culture within any business setting or organization plays a huge role in the kind of talent it attracts and keeps around, therefore it is vital for business owners to create an organizational culture (environment) that is conducive is to such. How?
Be a team player – lead by example, get your hands dirty with your team and do not expect your team to do anything that you would not do yourself.
Communication and openness – effective communication, which includes listening, is vital in all good relationships. Openness allows for freedom that nurtures the organization, the team and the individual.
Embrace diversity – diversity breeds creativity and innovation, all of which leads to growth.
Recognition and reward – always recognize and reward good work.
Fun – work needs to be Fun – with a capital F – no-one wants to leave home and drive in traffic to a place and people that aren’t fun.
“Great things in business are never done by one person. They’re done by a team of people” – Steve Jobs. Listen to Steve Jobs and recruit and retain a winning team because the success of your business is in the hands of the people that make up that team.
Kulani Shilivane is the founder and chief consultant at Shiluvah. She is an accomplished business development professional with a post-graduate qualification in Management from the University of the Witwatersrand. She is a skilled operation, logistics and strategic professional with experience in strategic planning and implementation, stakeholder engagement, human resources and public relations. Kulani served as Chief Operations Officer in a medium-size organisation in Johannesburg for 9 years and in 2017 she started Shiluvah. Kulani has a keen interest in conflict resolution, problem solving and organisational relations and development. Accredited as a mediator by Conflict Dynamics in 2018, her mediation interest areas are: commercial dispute, workplace, management and labour. www.shiluvah.co.za | Facebook | Instagram
More articles by Kulani
