The personnel section of the business plan should cover at least the following items:
- Organizational structure
- Critical roles
- Hiring plan
Organizational structure
This section describes how you will organize the employees working in your business. If you’re a solopreneur, this is easy — it’s just you. If anyone else is involved, they need to know how they fit in. The organizational structure will change as your business grows, and it’s also possible to combine the structures below. In this section focus on what it will be in the first year and how you plan to develop it as the business grows.
Here is a little bit of guidance on organizational structure for a new company:
- Solo. If you are a solopreneur, all work you don’t do directly is outsourced to freelancers or services businesses.
- Flat (one team). Every person you hire is part of the same small team. The limit on this structure is how many people you can effectively manage directly.
- Departments and teams. As more people join the company, you either organize them into multiple departments or multiple teams. You can also organize them into departments and then form teams as needed.
- Divisions. As more people join the company, you can chose a product division or organizational division, depending on what makes sense for your business.
For more information, see organizational structure.
Critical roles
Every business, when it becomes large enough, needs a variety of roles. In this section, you need to identify a few roles in your business that are critical to its success, especially in the beginning.
For example, if you’re starting a recruiting firm, you or someone on your team should be ready to fill the role of recruiter; if you’re starting a bakery, you or someone on your team should be ready to be the first baker; if you’re making apps, you need a developer.
This doesn’t mean the other roles in the business aren’t important, but it’s easy to see that that a recruiting firm won’t be able to survive without recruiters, a bakery won’t be able to produce goods without a baker, and a software company won’t have anything to sell without developers. All the roles are important. You should never hire someone for a role that isn’t important. But a few of those important roles are critical to the success of your company. You need to know which ones.
If any of these roles are already filled, or you know who you would hire for them and they’ve agreed, mention that.
Hiring plan
This section answers the following questions:
- How will you find people for the roles that are needed at startup and aren’t filled yet?
- How will you entice those people to work for your company instead of any other company?
- How will you decide when to hire additional people in the first 5 years?
Compass
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Continue to Business Plan – Information.