Good people can help you lift your business to the next level so when you buy a franchise you’ll need to hire top staff.  Lee-Anne Hunt and Tegan Rose of HR Dept Ringwood share their top tips for recruiting great staff.

4 tips to hire top staff

1 Know what you want

This means understanding your business and the type of person you want in each role. Start with defining the values of your business that all employees will need. This could be qualities such as team work or accountability.

Next, think about the role in detail; as an example, it would be important for a customer service operator to be a good communicator, confident and friendly whereas as a kitchen hand would need good attention to detail and to be unphased by repetitive tasks.

Think about the absolute bare minimum you need in qualifications and/or experience.

Our top tip: would be to hire the person with the right qualities and then train or teach them the skills they need.

2 Do it right

Ensure your contracts/employee agreements are compliant and use them! We know it’s nice to hire a friend or their children but doing it legally will save confusion, heartache and friendships if it all goes wrong at the end of the day.

Know the Modern Award that covers your staff and the applicable pay rates. The Fair Work Ombudsman site www.fairwork.gov.au can assist you with this or hire a HR consultant to take the hard work out of it.  

3 Have a recruitment process

Think about the steps you need to go through. A typical process involves placing an advertisement, shortlisting, phone or video interview followed by a group or personal interview. And most importantly don’t forget to referee check.

Our top tip: ask a referee if they would hire the person again.

4 Induct new staff

Again, it’s about the processes, make sure everyone is on the same page regarding your values, workplace health and safety, bullying and harassment and your day to day work instructions.

This is particularly important if you are hiring young people who have never held a job before – they don’t know what they don’t know and that could cost you and your business.

Induction should include some initial ‘on the job’ training. If you’re not conducting this yourself make sure you have a written process/checklist for your managers to follow and employees to sign off that they have received the training.

Lee-Ann Hunt and Tegan Rose are the HR Dept Ringwood franchisees. They have more than 20 years in HR, change, learning and development nd communications for small to large organsiations.