Starting up a business and growing it can be an epic journey. Entrepreneurs rarely undertake these tasks alone. At some point, the prospect of adding to the workforce arrives for every business owner, giving rise to several daunting questions.
Can You Afford A New Employee?
Try to forecast your sales figures a year or two ahead to see if you can afford a new employee. Making predictions can be difficult, though. The state of the economy offers few clues, with labor demands usually out of sync with current economic trends. There’s a danger of over hiring, which can lead to employees becoming disengaged by not having enough to do.
Taking on a new hire involves more than just paying another salary. There are taxes and insurance to consider too. You might need to rent extra office space to accommodate more staff and more furniture.
Can You Hire the Right Person?
Choose the wrong newbie and it might end up costing you in the long term. Finding someone with the right skills can be expensive.
Hire someone unsuitable and you might end up paying for their poor performance through shrinking profit margins.
If you get it right, however, your new employee can become an asset, returning significantly more than your investment.
Is the Time Right?
So when is it a good time to hire?
One sign is when you find yourself doing many low-skilled, manual tasks, such as packaging and delivery. These might be performed more cost-effectively by a new employee, leaving you more time for selling and networking.
And some work tasks don’t need to be fulfilled by permanent, full-time employees. Web development and marketing can be performed remotely during a set period. Even accounts can be handled part-time, or outsourced entirely.
What are Your Goals?
A lot depends on your business goals. Are you happy with a small business, or do you want to reach skywards? Hiring might trigger a shock to your business continuity. It may even restrict your growth at first.
The benefits of an extra employee will take time to appear, but a good hire can lead to real growth.
It might be time to hire when one or more opportunities threaten to pass you by because you can’t handle the workload. By getting some help, you can dedicate yourself to steering the company the right way, or mining that revenue stream you’ve had on hold. With your workload shared, your customer service is likely to improve. Also, your business will be less prone to mistakes caused by overworked staff.
Running a small business can be like pushing a car up a hill. It takes a lot of effort to keep things moving, and who has the wheel while you’re pushing?
Get back in the driver’s seat where you belong. Speed to success with some help from a new recruit.