Small business owners often say to me, “I could really use someone else but I’m not sure I’m ready.” There are so many things to think about when hiring someone into your business, the first being, how do I know I really need someone else. Here are three signs that your business needs employees.
Intended Growth
The most important sign a business will need employees is that the business is actively looking to grow. A small, one person business may never need to take on an employee if growth and leverage are not in their goals. But, if growth is your goal then doing more with no more time means that you will have to start the process of evaluating how you can use another person (or people) to make you more money or save you time.
Turn Down Work
A clear sign a small business is ready to take on employees is when they have to turn down work because they are too busy. I have heard many small business owners complain that they cannot grow because they simply do not have enough time to do their current work let alone take on the extra work of training new people or handling more clients. They want growth, but they stop at actually doing the work to make the growth happen.
The Ownership Role
When a small business needs the CEO to step into their role full time, so that they can do the work that creates more business, the owner then needs to have someone else do the work they had previously been responsible for. This means they need to find other employees to take on their offloaded duties. Often small business owners feel they are the only ones that can do certain work a certain way and therefore cannot offload it to another, less experienced person. The challenge is, when a business is in growth mode and more growth is expected and wanted, the business owner will have to give up more of the work they did as a solopreneur so that they can make the company more money. After all, it does not make sense for a small company to pay the CEO to do work that they can get an employee to do at half the wage.
If more clients, sales, and growth is in your future, then more employees will be the key to accomplishing your goals.
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