Staff decisions can make or break an SME. Get the mix of people and hours wrong and you run the risk of too many or too few people being underproductive or stressed, impacting customer service and prompting clients to consider alternative providers.
Beverley Edmondson certainly thought it was a sign of progress for her millinery business when she took on staff, but found there can be complications if a startup opts for one full-time person – and so she now relies on several part-time helpers.
"You need to be very careful, particularly if people have a customer-facing role," she says.
"My first employee only lasted a morning and then I kept finding wine bottles hidden around the shop and in the toilets. Then another time we had maternity-leave issues we had to work out. So, I've decided to spread my risk across a Saturday assistant and another lady doing two days per week split across four half-days. I've also got my mum in for a day a week. That way, I've got cover across the week and everybody's fresher and more energised to serve customers than if I had one person in permanently."
Young and keen
This notion of getting the mix right is at the heart of a radical step Jonathan Fell took with his identity badge printing company, Digital ID. Like many employers, he wanted to have enough people in to cover busy periods but he did not want to have people with little work to do at other times. The key, for him, has been apprentices.
"We'd constantly have one or more managers looking stressed because they needed extra resources," he says.
"Problem is, you would get someone in but then they'd be twiddling their thumbs on a large salary when things quietened down. The key for us have been apprentices because they're not costing us a fortune when things are quieter and they're also just such a breath of fresh air to any business."
From a standing start two years ago, around a fifth of Fell's 37 employees are now apprentices, while four people work flexible hours around the school run.
"With people who need to reduce their hours for their families, that's fine with us because we'd rather keep the skills in the business than lose people," he says.
"The other key factor for us is that after our apprentices have worked for a year and attended their college courses, they're qualified and they've all so far stayed on for a full-time job so their wages have doubled. It's not a problem for us because if we advertised for their jobs on those doubled salaries we know we'd get people who aren't as career focused and, of course, we'd be training them up. We don't need to do that with people who've been our apprentices."
Online resources
There are other routes to taking on staff without an SME having to dig deep on salaries. At online learning platform Quipper, marketing director Takuya Homma uses a mixture of interns and people recruited online for short-term contracts. There are several sites, such as eLance and PeoplePerHour, who provide access to skilled freelancers who can bid to take on projects under contracts that can either be allowed to run out or, if both parties agree, renewed.
"Around two-thirds of our 20 people are highly qualified engineers because we're an online learning platform and so need the best people to keep on developing," he says.
"For the rest of our staff, though, we have lots of interest from bright graduates who want work experience and so we can offer them placements for a few months. The main thing is, we get people who want to work really hard to get a good entry on their CV and a reference but we don't have to commit long-term to employing extra people.
"For specific skills we'll go online and set up short-term contracts with, say, PR and marketing people or individuals with deep knowledge of the areas we need new content for. We get what we need and there's been no need to employ somebody full time. It works really well for us."
Train to retain
All of these part-time, full-time, contractor or freelancer variants should be considered as a daily means of getting the right people working at an SME, according to Hayes recruitment director, Chetan Patel.
"Part time works really well for companies starting out because they don't always have enough budget or enough work for a full-time person so it's a bit like getting someone on a pay-as-you-go basis," he says.
"You need to bear in mind as the job grows you will likely have to get a different person in full time or get a part-time person in to make up the other hours. Staff working part time normally can't or don't want to work full time. If you get the mix right, though, you can have people who can cover for each other. You often find you have people who are trying to get a better work and life balance, who are prepared to work for less than if they were full time and concentrating solely on their career."
Getting the balance right is crucial, as is maintaining it. Chetan advises this is best done through training people and paying them at least the going market rate.
Crucially, SMEs also need to look very closely at anybody added to their work force because SME teams tend to be smaller and so anybody who does not fit in with the work culture will stand out and might upset existing staff members. Hence it is better for SMEs to get a good person fit and train someone up than get someone who is well qualified who simply does not fit in.
Sign up to become a member of the Guardian Small Business Network here for more advice, insight and best practice direct to your inbox.
