Skills and training for directors and owners

Skills requirements for a growing business

As your business grows, the skills your business needs to access will grow too. For example:

Financial skills

As your finance arrangements become more complex, you'll need staff to manage company accounts and find and manage outside investment.

Marketing skills

Your marketing may need to be more sophisticated - therefore you'll need to understand advertising, the media, and digital marketing such as email marketing, social media and pay per click and paid search advertising.

People management skills

The number of employees may increase to a point where you need to hire HR professionals, who may also help your business comply with employment law.

Health and safety knowledge

If your business is involved in a sector where health and safety is particularly important, eg construction or manufacturing, you may need to hire health and safety professionals.

Technical skills

New equipment and/or processes in your business may mean that you need to hire technical specialists.

IT skills

as your IT system becomes more complex, you may need to have in-house IT knowledge.

Knowledge of export markets

If your business expands into export markets you will need a unique set of skills for selling in various countries with different ways of doing things and different cultures - see basics of exporting.

As the owner or director of a successful growing business, it is essential that you recognise when new skills are needed and you take the right steps to meet them.

Meeting the skills gap

You are unlikely to be able to find the time or have the ability to meet most of them yourself.

You could consider:

• building a management team
• delegating responsibility to other staff
• recruiting to fill a skills gap
• outsourcing the work to a specialist contractor
• training existing staff to meet your skills needs