The Benefits and Drawbacks of Working in a Small Business
Throughout my short career, I have worked for both small and large companies. Currently I work at a small company, GKS Lifting and Moving Solutions. When I tell people that I work at a company that is only 4 people, they tend to wonder how that works and what it is like. I wanted to outline some of the benefits and drawbacks I've seen working in a smaller company environment.
Benefit #1: More Say
When you’re at a smaller company, the reality is that hiring one new person can radically change the complexion of that company, at least internally. They bring a new perspective on how things should work and be done—it’s hard not to have your voice heard when there is only 4 people. It’s said that one person can make a difference, and that is even more true at a smaller company.
Benefit #2: Less Bureaucracy
At larger firms, decisions tend to be made slowly and can be mired by politics. At a smaller company, decision making is quick and easy. We gather everyone in a room, make a decision, and make it happen. It’s a really refreshing thing to see a problem, propose a solution, and be able to act on that solution, all in a period of an hour. Given the small chain of hierarchy, we’re able to have that luxury.
Benefit #3: Different Experiences
At such a small company, each employee has to wear different hats and do many different things, which makes you more versatile and give you different experiences. As an example, marketing is something that was far from a passion of mine before joining GKS, but I recognized that it was an area that needed improvement. I’ve not only re-designed our entire catalog and made extensive changes to our website, but I’ve also generated some quirky content on our LinkedIn page that I would have never pictured myself doing before (click here for an example).
Drawback #1: Bandwidth
My co-worker Don likes to say, “There are no shortage of good ideas at GKS, just not a lot of people to make them happen.”. This is so true it hurts. Probably the biggest pet peeve that I have are those conversations where someone says “Yeah, we should do this” or “This is a goal for this year” and then nothing is actually done. It annoys me, because oftentimes the only thing stopping those ideas from becoming a reality is not being disciplined enough to execute. In the case of GKS, a big factor in things getting done is the limited manpower we have. As an example, there’s a really cool website project that I have scheduled for Q4 of 2020. When we had a meeting about our goals for 2020, everyone got really excited about it and wanted to move it up to Q1. Unfortunately, I had to bring everyone to reality—what things were we going to push back to move up this project? The reality was that we’ve got so much do to that there was nothing we could realistically put off.
Drawback #2: Upward Mobility
When you only have 4 people, advancement is tough. There are only so many titles and roles that are in a company of that size. I wouldn’t say that promotions and better sounding titles are how I personally define professional success, but I like advancing and making more money (most people do in my experience). There’s not as much room for that in a smaller business.
Drawback #3: Processes and Documentation
At a larger company, documentation and processes are the bedrock—they keep things organized and many people reference them. While less bureaucracy and quick decision making is a strength of working in a small environment, documented processes aren’t typically present in these smaller businesses. This is because they aren’t as useful or as high of a priority—when only one or two people need to know something, is documenting and establishing processes going to be seen as the best use of time?
There are many people who decide to work for a company based off of pay, the name recognition of the company, and the title that they would get. I would recommend looking deeper than that, paying close attention in particular to company culture. Company size is a major factor in the culture of the organization (but not the only factor) and therefore should be something to think about.
There's much more to say on the subject, but these are the main points!