Against the backdrop of the Great Resignation and an increasingly competitive market for employers, research from The Accountancy Partnership has found recruitment issues listed by almost one in six (13%) small business owners as their greatest challenge.
With the potential to stifle growth if resource gaps are left unfilled, 60% more business owners found recruitment a challenge versus those who expected it, equating to as many as 737,000 SMEs that have found staffing stressful. The Expectation vs Reality report by The Accountancy Partnership, sought to reveal the disparities between what entrepreneurs anticipated and experienced when running their businesses, with finding reliable suppliers, and honing their leadership skills also listed as top challenges.
On average it takes 42 days to fill a vacant position, however this can be longer in some industries that have longer notice periods. The process of employing staff and meeting the various legal and HR requirements of doing so can also be time consuming for entrepreneurs.
Lee Murphy, managing director of The Accountancy Partnership, said: “As start-ups grow, employing good people to support the extra work and aid further expansion is critical. Without being able to hire well, there is the risk of the business stagnating or the founder becoming overloaded as they can’t manage the workload on their own.
“By making the basic steps to hiring employees more readily available to small business owners, the headache of compliance can be minimised. Owners should also view recruitment and the costs that can be associated with it as an investment to support the future of their enterprise.”
The Accountancy Partnership’s research also revealed that managing staff once employed was an unexpected challenge, with more than a fifth (21%) of entrepreneurs experiencing it as a challenge than those who thought they would.
Lee continued: “Hiring doesn’t end when the employee is onboarded and there is the ongoing role of ensuring these people are properly trained, managed and supported so that they are getting the most out of being a start-up employee and in turn committed to and working hard for the business.
“Just as being unable to hire can be counterproductive to small businesses, poor management, an unhappy team and high staff turnover can also be incredibly damaging. If SME founders do decide they need and want to hire, they must ensure that they understand how this changes their role and the responsibilities that come with having employees. For those who have never had to manage people before, a management course would be a great place to start to give them a foundation of skills to be a good leader.”
