Jeff Bevis in his recent article in Forbes stated that as many small businesses are leading in this New Year, there are many challenges that come across the way, which are required to be solved to grow the team at different levels along with competing with the large companies to attract top talents. As a small company, there is always one disadvantage of competing with much larger employers in our area who may offer higher salaries, more robust benefit packages, and larger offices.

However, there are various employees whose perspectives are changing in the 2020 pandemic year experience. Employees at all levels are articulating a cumulative desire and value placed on culture, time with family, work-life balance, achieving greater productivity, and purpose on their occupations. With these new employees perceptions in mind, deliberate these four perceptible ways to entice even stronger applicants to your small business and help you win the talent war with big companies.

1. Offer More Vacation Time and Personal Time Off to the Employees: Expand and review your policies for employees to give them more time off. You can easily attract talent by offering more days and weeks for new employees while improving the value to your existing employees. Today, employees are giving much more importance in having more time away to spend it with family and getting involved with the personal causes and charities of their interest. This can be costly, but if you create balance, you can easily retain your employees. It will definitely make a difference with candidates which will help in joining your small business.
2. Consider Fascinating a Higher Percentage of Healthcare Benefit Costs with Abridged Employee Contributions: For many small businesses, it is difficult to select, review, and provide health benefits packages to their employees as it cost them a lot. Usually, the cost percentage fragments between employer and employee differ widely, particularly between small and large employers. You should consider differentiating your small business by offering competitive healthcare benefits package along with providing employees and candidates with a reason to join and stay in your team. You can also want to consider providing day care or family care grant as part of your complete healthcare benefits to support set you apart.
3. Enable Increased Flexibility for Work-From-Home: We all have experience working from home in these last 10 months. It was compulsory in each state that many small and medium business required to work from home. The year 2020 has shown us that we can work from home and can also maintain a high level of productivity and company standards. So learning from this experience, you should give your employees a solid work from home offerings to add flexibility to the work. In this regard, you are required to trust your employees, along with a supportive management structure. It will help you in retaining the existing employees and attracting the new and efficient candidate for your company.
4. Invest in Training and Professional Development Plan: Initial training to your employees will definitely make a difference in recruiting top talent, creating your retention, culture, and recognizing employees career interest for potential development. Many employees have stated that they would stay in a company for a longer period if the company invests in helping them learn new techniques. You are required to set aside an investment to help each employee in learning new skills, expand their current skills, and develop new abilities that can drive the business towards success. If it is necessary for you to do not underestimate the impact of training and professional development as it will take your small business towards success.

As an owner of a small business, you can easily win a war on talent and beat the big companies by following these four ways. By implementing them and ensuring flexibility while maintaining the productivity of your company, your business will come to an optimal position in attracting and retaining your employees.

Source – Forbes