What to do when you can’t afford new hires

QUESTION: I am finally leaving my job to start my business in 2022. It has been a dream of mine to be my own boss since schooldays, and now, the COVID pandemic makes me realise that life is too short to postpone that dream. The problem is that I will be using my savings, and not a loan from a bank. This creates a cash flow issue since I won’t have enough funds to hire staff I need. I know I can’t do it all alone, but I practically don’t have it to pay. I’m about to go into full-blown panic mode because I’m literally confused. Any advice would be very appreciated.

— PT, Kingston

BUSINESSWISE: Congratulations on kicking off 2022 by fulfilling your lifelong dream. This is a time to celebrate, not panic, particularly because as entrepreneurs, we see challenges as opportunities and even the most daunting problems as ‘figure-out-able’, a term you can expect to hear many times on your entrepreneurial journey.

The fantastic news is that you’re launching this business in the digital age, and more importantly, at a time when online business, remote offices, and virtual workspaces are more in vogue than ever before. In other words, this is the best time to have the problems you shared. With that being said, the answer to your human resource challenges may most certainly be found in the digital space and tapping into principles the World Economic Forum, WEF, has for years been championing as the future of work. To apply these principles in your new business to remedy your HR dilemma, it’s important to have a sound understanding of the concept of the future of work. Here’s a helpful excerpt from the WEF:

New technologies, demographic shifts and the impact of COVID-19 on the labour market have been radically transforming the way that organizations conduct business and the type of skills their talent needs to help them thrive in this new age of work. Nearly 50% of companies expected that by 2020, automation will lead to some reduction in their full-time workforce, while more than half of all employees will require significant re- and upskilling. The COVID-19 crisis has exacerbated these trends, increasing the need for large-scale, informed and collaborative action.

Companies have both an opportunity and a mandate to be in the driver seat of this transformation … Through the Preparing for the Future of Work initiative, the Forum aims to promote a positive and proactive approach to navigating the future employment and skills landscape.

I am strongly encouraging you to do your own research and access their guidelines and resources by visiting: www.weforum.org.

Future of work principles

I have tried to simplify how to apply the future-of-work principles in your particular case in five basic steps, which I have outlined below.

The first step is going through your business model and identifying the key activities, mission-critical actions, and essential business functions that need to be executed. This way you have a clear sense of the minimum work required to get the business off the ground in its leanest form. We call this the lean start-up approach.

The next step is to create and document company policies, processes, and procedures related to the specific activities you outlined in the previous step. This is by far where the lion’s share of the work will be because of the brainstorming involved and the level of detail required. For example, customer service alone will have several processes, such as customer communications, managing customer channels, how to place an order, how to make a return or request and process a refund, managing customer complaints, customer recovery, and many more. Then you will need to complete this for finance, operations, social media and sales, among others.

Third, once your company policies processes and procedures have been documented, you can move on to build out the ideal organisational chart, based also on your business model. This will serve as a visual representation of the major human resource functions, job positions within the company, how these functions relate to each other, and any hierarchical structure that may apply.

The key in executing this step is to envision the ideal team for the business, which is not necessarily what the business can afford at this time. In doing so, plan your resources based on priority and at the same time in anticipation of future growth.

Step four is to determine how technology and automation can be used to execute various processes and job functions, and, where possible, entire job positions. This would require a lot of research on your part matching software functionalities to core activities within the business. A few areas that readily lend themselves to automation include accounting, billing and invoicing and general financial management, meeting scheduling, order processing and payment, procurement, customer support, and HR administration.

Once you have identified the software solutions that are best and that are within your budget, you can make the necessary purchases and acquisitions, and then implement them as best as possible with the resources that you currently have. This is probably the most exciting step because you may recognise that there are several positions that can be automated entirely, with a very minimal cost of a few US dollars monthly.

The fifth step is to complete a gap analysis to identify the human resource gaps that will exist after automation and the application of technology. To fill these gaps you can consider employing talent part-time or outsourcing via job sites such as Upwork or Fiverr. This will offer the leanest approach that is most cost-efficient and fitting for your current financial realities.

One final word of advice is for you to strengthen your leadership skills and your team-management skills particularly in leading virtual teams given that you will likely be managing an operation that is largely supported by virtual part-time talent.

I hope that these recommendations will support the execution of your business and help bring your dream to fruition. Best of luck in 2022 and beyond!

One love!

Yaneek Page is the programme lead for Market Entry USA, a certified trainer in entrepreneurship, and creator and executive producer of The Innovators and Let’s Make Peace TV series. yaneek.page@gmail.com