With a whopping 70 percent of small businesses struggling to find and retain skilled employees, attracting and retaining talent is the leading challenge small business owners face. This was the key takeaway at Goldman Sachs’ 10,000 Small Business Summit: The Big Power of Small Business.
The Challenge of Attracting and Retaining Small Business Talent
The two-day Summit is the largest gathering of small business owners from across the United States. This year’s assembly found the top barrier to small business growth to be failure to attract and retain skilled talent. As a result of failure to recruit and retain skilled workers, small business owners are having to play a significant role in training their employees, which is proving time-consuming and costly.
Training employees means small businesses are using energy, time and money to bring employees up to scratch. By contrast, attracting the right talent and keeping them can save small businesses valuable time, money and effort as no or little training is required.
Offering perks to prospective talent, particularly to millennials, such as flexible working conditions, can be an effective way to attract and retain skilled workers. So can offering business awards and recognition.
In the release about the event, Steven Strongin, Head of the Global Information Research Division at Goldman Sachs, spoke of the findings of the Summit and the need for there to be more relaxed lending requirements for small business owners so they can adequately train staff.
“Our research illuminates the unique dynamics of small business ownership and the common challenges entrepreneurs face across a range of industries,” said Strongin at the Summit.
Strongin commented on both the importance of employee training and easing lending requirements, saying:
“Based on our analysis, in order to invigorate small business growth, lawmakers should consider legislative initiatives that ease lending requirements for small business owners, reward the training small businesses provide their employees and create a central repository of local, state and federal regulations and a common certification standard for meeting requirements across these levels of government.”
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