All startups have been there – swamped with admin and little time left for generating income. You need to hire help, preferably someone like another you.

Making a new hire is one of the biggest steps for a small business. It’s also one of the most difficult and expensive.

First, there’s the time spent interviewing candidates. Once you find someone you feel good about, more time goes into training them. While they have business experience, it likely doesn’t apply to your unique operation. Your processes will be different, or what’s your competitive advantage otherwise?

Then there’s the risk. You’ve just doubled payroll costs and now need increased revenue to cover it. It’s that dreaded catch-22 scenario.

Hiring is, of course, crucial for any business growth. Without a competent team, the business is really just you. It can’t be sold on its own or have independent value unless you sell yourself with it still in it. Without help, the slightest personal setback could also spiral into business collapse. Furthermore, with your time spent working IN rather than ON the business, growth stalls due to lack of innovation or expansion.

So when is the right time for that first hire? Ideally, it’s not while you’re swamped, but rather when profits are steady, cash reserves are built, leads are strong, and you have bandwidth. Okay, so that time may never come – another catch 22!

Before hiring, ensure you have more than a plan – you need solid organisation. Documentation makes your unique processes teachable, and your business principles understandable.

Clear procedures are essential too. While no two projects are identical, general guidelines will help new hires to integrate their skills quickly into your operations. Their methods could prove better someday, but that is for later.

Finally, have systems in place. Systems will help you analyse performance data and data driven indicators so you can make smarter business decisions. If you have an existing accounting package, use this to kickstart your automation. Use your accounting beyond compliance for insightful business management metrics. Lose the spreadsheets as a management tool! You may be comfortable with them but they only tell you what you are looking for. They can’t tell you what you are missing, let alone what your your employees are missing!

In summary – automation can save you 80% of your boring admin tasks at much lower cost and better accuracy than a new staff hire. The same automation can make the transition into hiring new staff a smoother transition when the need eventually arises.

 

If you are looking for solutions to integrate and centralise your current business processes into a unique automated dashboard, speak to us.  Small business automation tools can cost from as little as 3 hrs on minimum wage.  What could you lose?