As a small business owner, you need to be working on, not in the business. You need to be running around looking for new opportunities to expand your business and not worrying about the employees you have. The demand for various opportunities is high in the country as more than half the people working work for small firms. Over 200,000 new businesses are created every year. They account for about three-fourths of employment growth in Kenya. With only 3 out of 10 small businesses making it past the first year of inception, the risks facing small business are far too many to count.

But you can be on the right side of this statistic. According to Catherine Wekesa, CEO at the International Talent Management Consulting Limited, getting your HR right from the beginning can be a business life saver, and here’s why.

Effective human resource management can be a condition for getting and keeping big customers.

Ten years down the line in any business, you want to see growth. You want to keep the customers you have while you continue to get other bigger customers. The people that can help you do this are the people you hire. Knowing how to manage these people properly could mean the overall success if your business.

When you have the right people, you have recruited them and they are well trained or you have trained them, you’ve got the first step right.

The trend toward international quality standards means that even small business must have robust human resource processes.

The second part is having the right process to manage these employees. The same way you have process of managing your business, is the way you need to have a proper structure of managing the people in your organization. When you have the right people, the right process and the right practices then your business is well on its way to success.

So you as an entrepreneur should equip yourself with the right human resource knowledge so that you have the freedom to work on your business while your employees work in it.

Catherine Wekesa was a facilitator at Un.thinkable masterclass (our quarterly 10X Growth Leaders Workshop) in November 2020. Click here to apply for membership in Un.thinkable.