Feeling bogged down by the endless tasks of running a business? You might be suffering from the common entrepreneur ailment called “jack of all trades syndrome.”
Symptoms include an extreme reluctance to give up control and an avoidance of hiring stemming from your intimidation with the employee hiring process.
But here’s the truth: Your dream to succeed requires expanding your team. As a business owner, you must know when to hire employees and how to assign tasks effectively.
CEOs who are great at delegation see a 33% increase in revenue.
The key to growth and success is to hire employees who can take on your workload and allow you to focus on your zone of genius.
In this article, we discuss the best practices for employee hiring, including identifying the right candidates and assigning tasks effectively.
We’ll also explore the signs that it’s time to start hiring employees, how to ensure you’re making the most of your team, and share some hiring tips along the way.
9 Signs That Tell You When To Hire More Employees
1. Turning Down Customers
Hiring employees may seem daunting, but it’s essential to growing your business. One of the most significant mistakes small businesses make is turning down work because you’re understaffed.
Think about it this way: Imagine a new customer wants to give you business, but you have to say no because you don’t have the resources to handle the workload.
Not only have you lost that customer, you’ve lost any other customer that might have come through as a referral from that customer that you lost. If you’re turning away customers, that’s a major sign that it’s time to hire new employees.
2. Customer Complaints
Another point businesses reach that indicates when hire new employees is receiving multiple complaints related to inefficient processes.
Hiring employees is essential to providing excellent customer service. Amazing customer service can help double your revenue, but poor customer service can have the opposite effect.
Only 1 in 26 customers complains, while the other 25 just leave without saying a word.
Take every complaint seriously; you have a chance to address them and keep their business if you take them seriously and act quickly.
There are various reasons a customer could be upset, such as a bad-quality product or service, poor customer service, long wait times, and many more.
These are all issues that you can fix by hiring the best employees. If you can’t address these complaints, your customers will flock to your competition.
Responding to complaints shows your customers that you care about them and are committed to improving their experience.
3. High Employee Turnover Rate
Knowing when to hire new employees also relates to how much help you might need with a growing workload. A high employee turnover rate might indicate that you need help creating more effective processes.
Hiring new employees who can implement new systems can help. Also, employee turnover could indicate that your current team is overworked and they need help by growing the team.
Look out for red flags in your staff:
- Increased stress levels
- Decreased quality of work
- A lack of attention to detail
- Frequent requests for time off because of illness.
These are signs that your employees are stretched too thin. If they need support, it could be time to expand your team.
These red flags are known reasons for a high employee turnover rate in a business. When your current employees are consistently struggling to keep up with their tasks, it can indicate that they’ll likely leave, or their poor performance means you need to let them go.
4. Need For Specialized Skills
Hire employees with specific skill sets to help your company grow.
Nobody is perfect! While you may be a jack of all trades, there’s nothing wrong with admitting your weaknesses and hiring an expert to fill those gaps.
You might be great at employee task management but know nothing about SEO; it’s time to hire an SEO expert. Hiring an SEO expert will help you improve your website’s rankings and lead to more conversions.
Instead of trying to learn that new skill, you can focus on other areas of your business while an expert handles the SEO.
Understanding that hiring employees is not just about filling a position is critical. It’s also about finding the right fit for your company’s culture and your business’s specific needs.
While learning new skills is always exciting, hiring the best employees for those skills will save you time, which you can spend making important business decisions.
5. Your Top Talent is Performing Menial Tasks
Understand the value of your time and the time of your higher-paid employees.
If you find that you or your higher-paid employees are spending a lot of time on junior-level tasks, it’s time to find employees to hire
An easy way to determine whether you’re ready to hire someone is to put a dollar value on your and your high-level employee’s time.
You should understand your and your employee’s value even if you’re not paying yourself or them a large salary.
If your high-value employees are doing tasks that would cost less for someone else to do, you need to delegate them to a new employee.
6. The Increased Cost of a New Hire Won’t Hurt Your Finances
Feel like it’s time to find employees to hire? Before you dive in, make sure you have the cash flow to make it work.
You’ll need to budget for their salary, as well as backend employee hiring costs. Factor in the price of having someone train and onboard the new hire.
Once the employee is hired, consider their insurance costs, payroll taxes, and workers’ compensation insurance.
These costs can add up quickly. So, before you search for new employees, ensure you have the proper cash flow to cover the visible and hidden costs of employee hiring.
It’s worth planning and budgeting for these expenses upfront, so you can focus on growing your business with confidence.
7. Bringing Some Tasks In-House
Many startup companies outsource basic tasks to freelancers or third-party agencies due to limited resources.
We understand the struggle to keep overhead costs low, especially when you are one of the startup companies that is still finding its footing.
Outsourcing certain tasks will help you save on hiring new staff to perform them.
But as your business grows, consider the long-term benefits of bringing these tasks back in-house.
Hiring employees is an investment in your business. When you outsource tasks, they may become more complex. Think about the communication involved, and even things like sharing log-in details and training new people that will often have a high turnover rate, being freelancers.
If you had in-house employees, they could focus on these business needs full-time, and there is more consistency in how the tasks are performed.
In-house employees have a better understanding of your company’s processes, which can lead to more effective workflow. They also generally have a more vested interest in the success of the company.
So, if you understand the value of an in-house employee for crucial tasks, and your business can afford them, it’s a sign to hire employees.
8. Employees are Frequently Working Overtime
Inefficiency in any department of your business can have terrible impacts. Efficiency can be created by regularly assessing your team’s performance, which helps you determine when to hire more employees.
When assigning tasks and roles, speak with your employees to understand their capacity for new work. This can give you a clear picture of who’s overworked, and who might be able to take on more.
You can also analyze data like overtime hours of your employees, and see how that time might have fluctuated over the past months.
If your employees are frequently working overtime, that’s a good indicator that it might be more cost-efficient in the long run to hire employees.
9. You Find New Opportunities for Your Business
When new projects, expansions, and opportunities arise, consider the additional workload that will come with that. If there’s an opportunity to generate 5X more leads coming in, be sure that you have the sales team that can handle that amount of discovery calls, for example.
This increased workload may mean that you need:
- A bigger sales team
- More customer service representatives
- A larger administrative department
- + More
If your existing employees are already engaged with their current responsibilities, hire new employees to help with the increased workload.
How To Assign Tasks To Employees
When assigning tasks, align these tasks with your team member’s strengths. Some employees may excel at certain tasks, while others could struggle. You’ll set your employees up for success and maximize their productivity. Consider your team’s workload, also.
On the flip side, giving too few tasks to an employee can lead to boredom and disengagement from their roles. Find a balance for each team member to have an achievable workload while doing what they are strong at and interested in.
Here are some ways you can assign tasks to team members efficiently:
Train Your Employees Properly
Do you have an employee onboarding process in place? At Scaling With Systems, we use Asana for effective employee onboarding.
If you are unfamiliar with it, here’s a great article explaining why and how to use Asana.
During the onboarding process, you need to train them properly. A new hire employee checklist is super valuable. The training might involve familiarizing them with your company’s culture and setting clear expectations.
Delegate Tasks to Team Members Positively
Just because someone is on your team doesn’t mean they are automatically qualified for every task that comes their way. Assigning the wrong tasks can lead to them consistently receiving negative feedback, which really harms their confidence, morale, and ultimately, their enthusiasm for their role.
Take the time to review who might be the best fit for a particular assignment.
Your team members look to you for guidance and inspiration. A little positive reinforcement can go a long way in encouraging your team to tackle assignments with confidence.
Set Clear Key Performance Indicators (KPIs)
Key Performance Indicators are essential for measuring the success of your team’s efforts. They provide a measurable way to track progress and identify improvements. Well defined KPIs help your team members to understand their role in the bigger picture.
When setting KPIs for your team, keep a few things in mind:
1. The KPIs should be easily measurable. They have a target or goal that can be tracked.
E.g. Instead of setting a KPI of “increase website traffic,” a more specific and measurable KPI would be “increase website traffic by 17% in the next quarter.”
2. Make sure KPIs are aligned with the company’s overall goals. KPIs should support the company’s mission.
3. Communicate the KPIs to your team regularly. You want everyone on the same page, heading toward the same goals. It will also help you track progress and make adjustments as needed.
Set Up Meetings
When assigning tasks to team members, involve your team in the process as much as possible. This ensures that each team member is aware of their role and responsibilities. Also, it helps foster a sense of ownership and engagement with the task.
Get suggestions from your team members on what should be modified, who should be included, and how outcomes should be defined. You can do this through team meetings or individual conversations with specific managers of sub-teams. This will also help foster better management-employee relations.
By getting input from your team members, you can clearly understand who is responsible for what. They’ll also know how to best contribute to the task’s accomplishment.
Engage with the specific managers of the sub-teams if you are in charge of a large team or organization. It helps you understand each team member’s strengths and weaknesses, and you can utilize them.
Working closely with the sub-team managers, you can create a delegation plan considering each employee’s various skill sets.
Hold a meeting with the entire team before assigning tasks to team members. This will ensure that everyone is aware of their role and responsibilities. It will also allow you to answer any questions or concerns your team members may have.
Delegate Control & Authority
Decentralized power is important. But what does it mean? Giving your staff authority when it comes to managing their work. It helps to use management software like Trello, Asana, Edworking, Slack, etc.
If you haven’t used Slack yet, here’s a great article where you can learn how to use Slack effectively.
Empower your team to take ownership and responsibility for completing their tasks. That makes them more invested in their work. Also, it helps to relieve you, as the employer, of the burden of micromanaging every aspect of the job.
The key to success is giving each team member the rightfully deserved authority while offering input.
Assess the Results
Assess the results of the tasks/projects. Not only will you offer feedback to your team, but it’s recommended to also be open to constructive feedback from them. It’ll help you support their success more effectively in the future.
Your constructive criticism of your team members helps them develop their skills. Remember to be respectful in how you communicate Avoid being critical for the sake of it and instead focus on providing specific feedback that can be acted upon.
Hire Employees: FAQs
How do you decide what tasks to assign to which employees?
At a team meeting, it’s a good idea to assign tasks by discussing priorities, deadlines, and availability. Having team members volunteer for tasks they are interested in can also be effective. Consideration should be given to assigning tasks that align with team members’ interests.
How do you assign tasks to your employees?
- Train your employees properly
- Delegate tasks to team members positively
- Set clear key performance indicators (KPIs)
- Assign the right task to the right employee
- Set up meetings
- Delegate control & authority
- Assess the results.
When should you hire employees?
Consider your organization’s workload and financial state. Hiring new employees requires a budget to handle their salary, as well as additional expenses such as health insurance, training programs, and other benefits.
Wrapping Up: Employee Hiring
Hiring your first employee is not just a big step; it’s a leap of faith toward building a thriving business. It takes courage to trust your business’s growth and invest in the right people to help bring it to new heights.
As you consider adding to your team, remember that every great leader knows when to ask for help.
By hiring your first employee, you are expanding your capacity for success and laying the foundation for a strong and dedicated team.
Believe in your vision for growth and delegate to expert teams like Scaling With Systems. We’ll help you optimize your client acquisition system to reach new heights. Book a free consultation call with one of our advisors today, and let us help you streamline that process.
