GRAND RAPIDS – How will you manage your company? How many staff members will you hire and in which roles? How much money will you spend? What are your goals for staffing?

Estimate the costs and benefits of full-time, part-time and contract employees. How will new employees be trained? Critical areas include Operations, Sales, and Finance, and each function needs to be defined. How will decisions be made? Where are your greatest strengths? What skill areas and team members need to be added? You may want to highlight the following elements within this section:

Management team

Staffing objectives

Organizational structure growth for 3-5 years

Key individuals to be recruited

Human resource budget

Board of Directors, Research Advisory Board (if appropriate)P>

Sample Text:

Edna?s Floral currently employs four full-time individuals and six part-time staff. The full

time employees include design, sales and delivery. The part-time employees include drivers, customer service and design. Full time employees work forty hours per week and two are salaried while the other two are hourly. Benefits include health and dental benefits, paid vacation after one-year service, and company discount on all purchases. The employees also attend FTD dinner meetings and seminars and training held in the area. This allows the designers to learn new techniques and trends in the industry. Edna?s Floral prides in using unique flowers in its designs.

Edna is the owner manager, and most of the other employees are cross-trained. This allows flexibility in scheduling, vacations and getting the work done. Upon the expansion sales volume is expected to expand 25 percent. This will necessitate the hiring of one additional full-time designer and two telephone customer service individuals to strictly handle all in-coming orders via the phone, fax or e-mail. The floor sales personnel would then be dedicated to handling all walk-in traffic and other questions.

The Michigan Small Business Development Center provides counsel, training, research, and advocacy for Michigan?s new business ventures, existing small businesses, expanding new businesses, new technology companies, and innovators. The MI-SBDC is housed at the Grand Valley State University Seidman School of Business in Grand Rapids, Michigan. As host of the MI-SBDC State Headquarters, the Seidman School of Business oversees the 12 region MI-SBDC network and over 60 satellite and affiliate offices.

Entrepreneurs and small business owners may access the services of their nearest MI-SBDC by calling 616.336.7480 or clicking on mi-sbdc.org