Lose weight, get organized, save money, learn a new skill, find true love. Sound familiar? These popular New Year’s resolutions are among the pledges made by more than 40 percent of Americans every January. While they are the reason health club memberships spike and dating websites see a flurry of activity in the first month of the year, neither treadmills nor meetups will always lead to lean bodies and love. That is because only eight percent of us are successful in meeting the New Year goals we set for ourselves. Can businesses do better? They can if they set realistic goals, have the right resources on hand to execute plans and focus on what they do best. 

Set Realistic and Achievable Goals

No sooner are holiday decorations whisked away when businesses rush to lay out goals and strategy for the coming year. According to Statistic Brain, “people who explicitly make resolutions are 10 times more likely to attain their goals,” so establishing clear goals and a blueprint for action are critical first steps for any business. Realistically assessing resources is also smart. Did you ever notice how business plans tend to be heavily front loaded? Everyone wants to grow fast, so plans are filled with first-quarter launches of a whole slew of new business initiatives. As critical and energizing as these may be, how realistic is it to assume that current staff can focus on so many different projects at one time, while continuing to address those ongoing responsibilities that keep the lights on day to day? 

Avoid the Inevitable Crunch

Just like most New Year’s resolutions that fade into the mists of winter, business plans can go awry when too much work is heaped on already full plates. In addition to work carried over from one calendar year to the next, there is a flurry of new activity as every manager from IT to marketing puts plans in motion that set the stage for growth in the coming months. When limited resources are stretched to cover both old and new work, the inevitable happens: first-quarter deadlines bleed over into April or May, leaving team members defeated before they reach their first major milestone. To ensure both the engagement and productivity of core staff, the answer is to bring in new resources to supplement their efforts. 

Hire the Right People

A quick scan of January headlines in the business press offers a treasure trove of strategies for success in the New Year. Relentlessly repeated are references to talent. There is a reason for that. Without the right people on the team with the skills needed to execute plans, those New Year resolutions will fall by the wayside. Whether flexible or direct hires, new staffers can be deployed to free up regular staff to focus on new projects or they may bring specialized skills required to successfully execute new initiatives. The fastest way to secure new resources is to work with a recruiting partner who can tailor a recruitment strategy to the business plan. With recruiting experts handling recruitment, the organization can spend more time and resources focused on core business priorities.

Focus on Core Skills

Once the decision is made to add new resources to the team, there are two alternate paths to follow. The “do-it-yourself” route tends to be a bit self-defeating. It pulls team members off task to focus on hiring activities with which they may be unfamiliar and for which they are likely untrained, such as sourcing, recruiting, interviewing and background checks. Even after hires are finalized, on-boarding activities become another distraction for business managers. The alternative is to work with a recruiting partner who specializes in finding the talent needed to support business success. A recruiting specialist who understands your industry and is familiar with your business challenges likely already has an established pipeline of talented candidates, ready for your consideration. Their business is candidate sourcing and recruiting. They know where to find the skills you need and how to showcase your opportunities. They offer powerful technology, highly efficient practices and an in-depth understanding of the workforce and the issues that drive performance. 

Working with a recruiting partner allows business managers to concentrate exclusively on core business priorities. It means your business will have the right resources on hand to execute every plan and achieve every goal by focusing on what you do best.

Local Spherion owner Michael Chalmers leads a team that has been serving the recruiting and staffing needs of Middle Georgia employers for nearly 20 years. Founded in 1946, Spherion is a staffing leader with more than 150 offices nationwide. Individually owned, each Spherion office offers clients and candidates the personalized service of a local business, along with the resources and expertise as part of a $2 billion workforce leader. To find out more about how Spherion connects people and jobs, call 478-956-1700 or visit spherion.com.