007 - How To Get A Resilient Tech Team, Fast!

Rewired For Success

A resilient tech team is crucial to scaling a business quickly and efficiently. People often assume that full-time staff are integral to success, but that isn’t always the case.

Creating a team of highly skilled and knowledgeable part-time workers who can flex with your growth is an innovative way of realising your business vision fast.

Let’s have a look at 10 ways that you can achieve your resilient tech team in the quickest, most efficient way.

1. Don’t worry about cultural fit

People often worry that a part-time employee might not fit into the culture in the same way that a full-time person will.

The truth is, the culture of your company will exist for all – part-time or full-time. For most corporate companies and small businesses, staff are already a great cultural fit - it’s why they were hired in the first place – and the workforce will vary considerably in terms of work arrangements.

Businesses thrive on the people who work in them. Your staff will be the people that you resonate with, who you want to work with and who see your overall vision whether full-time or part-time.

2. Be family-friendly

Retaining staff is crucial to a resilient team and being flexible improves morale and loyalty. You could offer part-time work to suit people’s lifestyles, support working from home, or provide other family-friendly opportunities.

3. Don’t confuse ownership with productivity

Hiring a full-time person doesn’t mean that they’re going to be shackled to your business! People often think that hiring full-time is the only way to get full commitment. However, I would argue that if you hire the right person they’re going to be dedicated regardless of their contractual arrangement.

It’s not about owning people – people will respect you more for giving them their freedom. By feeling free, they can appreciate what you do, grow your business and help you in the ways you really need.

4. Assess risks

What happens if your full-time staff member turns out not to be the right fit for you?

Hiring full-time can be a risk. Whereas, if you structure contracts appropriately and in a more flexible way, there’s much less risk. If someone is taken on for a short term part-time role, you can quickly decide if they are someone that you want to work with for the longer term.

It’s all about reducing your risk, creating a resilient team and using part-time staff to your financial and growth advantage.

5. Access niche skills

A full-time person may be a good all-rounder but consider the option of having a number of highly skilled part-time staff with expert knowledge in different niche fields. You can leverage those skills in a flexible way and this will give your business real expertise.

Even if you need to get a project manager in place to coordinate everything, you will have a highly skilled, efficient and resilient team.

6. Always build in flex

Businesses grow and scale back all the time. There’s no need to feel guilty about hiring part-time people for fixed periods of time to work with your business’s needs.

There should always be the opportunity for people to move around and many part-time workers will move on quickly and happily if a contract ends.

7. Explore fixed fees

If you hire someone on a fixed fee everyone knows where they stand. Knowing your fixed costs can help you to budget more effectively.

8. Embrace experience

Part-time people can often offer deeper, richer knowledge of the industry and the different ways in which businesses work because they’re usually working with other client. This experience can give them a richer understanding of the industry.

These people may be starting up themselves, productising their business, making their teams hyper- productive and looking at a way to scale. Whatever the situation, use this knowledge to your advantage to scale your business.

9. Manage peaks and troughs

By increasing the ability for your business to change in a seamless way, you’re making yourself much more resilient. Using a combination of part-time and full-time staff can help to manage the peaks and troughs of a business on a day-to-day and longer-term growth vision.

I’ll go into this in more detail in a future blog posts, videos and podcast episodes.

10. Reduce workloads

Part-time staff can assist with work when full-time members are working at capacity. This will reduce overtime costs, prevent negative stress and the fatigue of staff. Remember that a strong, happy team is a resilient team.

In Conclusion

A resilient team can consist of part-time and full-time team members. Don’t feel that you need to hire full-time only. You may even want to hire only part-time members of staff when you are starting out, and that is okay.

Please do take the time to understand the tax implications of hiring staff and the labour laws and rights that you need to abide by.

For more information on hiring a resilient tech team click here.

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