Human Resources for Small Businesses

Your best person just handed you a notice. Do you know why?

You hired fast because you were drowning. You paid what they asked because you couldn't lose them. You trained by saying "watch me." Now the good ones leave, the wrong ones stay, and every week you're the one holding it all together.
People problems aren't bad luck. They're missing foundations. This book teaches them in order, in four jobs: Hire, Train, Pay, Retain.

In the Fabled Forest, a squirrel can't keep a helper past Friday because she can't say what the job is. A monkey hires his cousin for the Saturday chair, and the line walks out the door. A fox finds out his best cook makes two coins less than the register. And a bee loses her best helper to a hawk who offers six coins more and nothing else. One by one, the owners find their way to Doctor Owl, a careful old consultant who asks the question nobody else does: why does your best creature stay?

• Part One, Building the Team. Job analysis, workforce planning, hiring bias, hiring for fit, behavioral interviewing, reference checks, compensation structure, total rewards, the employee handbook, and employment compliance.
• Part Two, Keeping the Team. Workplace culture, employee voice, performance reviews, managing underperformance, termination, partnership agreements, employee turnover, decision rights, training and development, and bench strength.

• 20 foundations every owner and manager should know, sorted into Hire, Train, Pay, and Retain
• Stories you can read in about fifteen minutes each, with small, whole-coin numbers you can follow in your head
• The Talon Way: seven hiring and pay shortcuts that fill a seat fast and empty it just as fast, and what each one costs
• A plain-language glossary of about 45 people and pay terms
• The Owner's Scorecard, to decide what to fix first