By Steve Saah, Executive Director of Finance and Accounting Permanent Placement, Robert Half
With just a few months left in 2024, many of us are already starting to think about the new year that lies ahead — and perhaps even setting goals. But for many small business leaders, it’s hard to focus on the future when more immediate challenges demand your full attention.
One challenge is the need to compete effectively for skilled talent to address near-term hiring needs. Robert Half’s workplace research shows that more than half of small businesses (54%) are expanding their teams and have plans to hire talent for both new and vacated roles before the end of 2024. Sixty percent of small businesses need to hire in response to company growth.
However, 85% of hiring managers at small businesses in the U.S. report that they are having at least some difficulty finding skilled candidates. Nearly a third (31%) say it is very challenging.
Thinking about present challenges actually brings us back to a discussion about the future. Small business leaders can take four critical steps in the months ahead that can help them shoulder through the tight labor market, support growth and position for what’s next.
You might be inclined to take these four steps one at a time, but a better approach is to tackle them together — at a pace that aligns with your current priorities and available resources, of course. In many ways, these steps are interlinked, so it’s important for your small business to make meaningful progress on all fronts simultaneously.
Let’s take a closer look at what’s involved.
This approach can be highly beneficial for small businesses because it helps them to nurture and retain talent. Essentially, it requires you to create a talent management strategy that supports your business objectives while keeping employees’ career growth and professional development front and center.
This process includes identifying the skills and roles that are critical to achieving your firm’s goals and prioritizing them in your talent development plans. It also prompts you to create a talent pipeline that includes potential leaders and critical skill holders which, in turn, helps you become more adept at anticipating and managing future talent needs for your small business.
Employers who take a holistic approach to talent management typically focus on, among other things:
Promoting continuous learning and development, including offering tailored training programs that address individual career goals and align with company needs.Prioritizing employee well-being, from encouraging work-life balance to providing access to health and wellness programs that support physical and mental health.Engaging in proactive succession planning to determine which roles are critical to business success, lay the groundwork for smooth leadership transitions, and more.
These and other actions can help you manage their talent more effectively. It can promote higher employee satisfaction, better performance and stronger outcomes for your small business overall.
Many organizations continue to resist the permanence of the hybrid and remote work. But if you want to attract talent to your small business, you need to offer remote work arrangements — or at least, be as flexible as possible about the “where” of work for your employees. It also helps with retention: In a Robert Half survey, 37% of U.S. workers at small businesses said they wanted to stay with their current employer because they didn’t want to lose flexibility in where and when they work.
You should also consider taking a more flexible approach to how you staff your small business, generally. The “shamrock organization” model that business expert Charles Handy introduced decades ago has perhaps never been more relevant. By using a mix of core employees, flexible workers like contract professionals, and outsourced resources such as managed services, your business can become more agile, flexible in adapting to change, and cost-efficient with staffing processes.
Importantly, a scalable talent model, if it suits your firm’s needs, can give you access to specialized skills and expertise that may not be available in-house. And it can help you to focus your internal resources on core competencies and strategic initiatives — the kind of work that makes the most of your team’s skill sets and that they likely find more fulfilling.
We’ve seen explosive growth in the use of generative AI this year, and we can expect more of the same in 2025. Even so, it can still be challenging to grasp how AI can fundamentally change the way your small business operates — and impact your decision-making processes. But the reality is that your firm may already be falling behind your competitors if you aren’t using AI-powered solutions in your day-to-day operations and experimenting with it in other ways, too.
Depending on the size of your organization and your clients’ needs, you may not yet feel the pressure to invest in emerging technology like AI or even advanced data analytics tools. If that’s the case, this is actually an ideal time to step up your embrace of new technology because you can take time to choose your tools wisely and give your teams the space to gain the skills needed to work with AI effectively.
You will need AI to compete in the future — but it can also increase team efficiency today. It can help your firm overcome skills and staffing gaps by allowing you to automate routine tasks. And with the right solutions in place, you can improve work quality and accuracy. It can have a positive impact on talent attraction and retention, as well.
Managing a multigenerational team can be challenging due to differences in values, communication styles, work preferences and expectations among individuals from the various age groups represented in today’s workforce. If your firm has a mix of baby boomers, Generation X, Millennials, and Generation Z working side-by-side, you are familiar with these complex dynamics.
However, these challenges are also opportunities. If you take the time to understand what your team members from different generations want from their work experience, it can help your small business to retain valued employees. And it will help you to make the most of that talent, too.
When you know what workers want, you can create meaningful career pathways for all staff members and create more effective succession plans. You can make adjustments to help employees achieve a satisfying work-life balance at every stage of their career. You can foster a more positive and inclusive corporate culture that’s designed to engage everyone. And you can find the right approach to help your staff reskill and upskill so that they, and your firm, can compete more effectively in the future of work.
The four steps outlined above are far from simple. In some cases, your work will never really end. But if you want to position your small business for the future, it’s necessary to take them all sooner than later. In upcoming posts in this series, we’ll take a deeper dive into each step to underscore its importance — and equip you with practical tips to help you make progress on every front.
Contact Robert Half. Our recruiting specialists can help you find and hire the skilled talent you need to help your small business meet today’s challenges and position for the future.
