This week is back to school week for a lot of parents, including me. I went away on holiday for a couple of weeks, worked the rest of the school holidays, and I am now getting back into a normal routine and looking ahead to autumn.
But actually in my experience it’s not just parents this feeling applies to – there’s definitely a back to school feeling more generally in business, which is worth exploiting in your marketing if you’re an HR consultant working with small businesses, or indeed working with SMEs in any advisory/problem-solving capacity. Many business owners either take some time off over the summer, or reduce dealing with employee issues down to immediate problem situations only.
This is partly because staff will also be on holiday, so problems seem less impactful in the office, or employees who need to be involved in dealing with a particular issue are absent. But also I think there’s a general summer mindset thing that goes on during July and August, with less impetus to roll up sleeves and crack on with employment stuff. Keeping business ticking over becomes the priority, not starting new management processes, introducing new employee procedures or tackling difficult issues.
But come September, many business owners are refocused on work. They are more open to new initiatives, to addressing longer-term problems and to getting their house in order with contracts and policies. If they’ve had something niggling for a while which needs sorting at some point, many of them will choose to do it now.
You can exploit this by tailoring your discussions and comments both in person and on social media to these trends, and also by considering upping your networking rate, and getting back in touch with contacts you’ve perhaps not spoken to for a while. Anything which ensures you are definitely “top of mind” when those back to school business owners are looking for recommendations for someone to sort out their employee concerns, provide training they need, or get their documents up to scratch. Make sure you are the first person they or the person they ask for a recommendation from think of!
If you’d like to run your own HR consultancy and want to discuss becoming a partner, do get in touch.