It can be so very difficult for a business owner to delegate any tasks, let alone employ someone after they have been doing everything, big and small, for their business from the start. However, as your business grows, the chances are that you will need to hire at least one person and possibly more if you are going to see it succeed in the way that it should. Working for and by yourself is wonderful, but it could be stifling your ambitions. If you think that it might be time to hire someone, here is a checklist that can help you decide for sure.
You’re Working Too Hard
It is likely that one of the main reasons you started your business in the first place was to give yourself more time and more freedom. If you find instead that you are working too hard, working long hours and not enjoying the free time that you do have (assuming you have any) because you are constantly thinking about – and worrying about – your business and feeling guilty because you think you should be working in and on it, then you have no freedom at all.
If this is the case, then hiring someone to take on some of the tasks that you are currently doing is a great idea. You need to ensure, of course, that you can afford to pay them for the foreseeable future, but if you can then you will find that your free time and freedom become a lot easier to come by.
Survival Not Growth
If you have reached a stage where you are no longer growing your business but simply surviving from month to month because you don’t have the skills or the desire to push things further, then you have a choice: either you can fold and walk away, or you can hire your first employee to take some of the strain. Ideally, with all the hard work you have put into your business to this point, you will choose the latter. When someone is working for you, you can concentrate on growing your business because that other person is dealing with the survival aspect and ensuring that your current customers and suppliers are happy.
Quality Is Suffering
No one can do everything, and even if you are truly great at what you do, there will come a point when tiredness, distraction, even boredom set in and the quality of your work will suffer. This will lead to loss of customers and revenue, and your business won’t be making enough money anymore. An employee would solve that problem, especially if you find someone you can train up (or who already has the skills) to take over from you, or at least work with you side by side.
When you have someone else on board, you can divide all the tasks that are required up and use project management software to ensure that everything gets done on time and in budget. The more people you employ, the more useful this kind of software will be, as it will keep everyone on track and projects will run more smoothly. All in all, the quality of your business’s output will improve considerably if you are able to relax more and focus, and an employee will help you to do just that.
There’s Not Enough Time
Maybe you are perfectly able to do everything that is asked of you in your business from project managing to accounting to marketing and so on. However, even if that is the case, do you have enough time to do it all? There are only so many hours in the day, and if you constantly work late then your health can suffer.
The solution is to hire someone to take on some of the work so that everything can get done within set working hours and no one’s mental or physical health suffers, and their work-life balance can remain good. Working hard is a good thing and something to be proud of, but not when it goes too far and impacts on your social and personal life, and that of your family. Employing someone to prevent this from happening will help you and others hugely.
You are Ready to Let Go
If you think you’re ready to let go of all or some of the tasks within your business, then you are also ready to hire your first employee. It is the inability to let go because you are worried about letting someone else do things that you have, up until now, been doing yourself that can really hamper your business and hold back your success. You need to be able to trust someone else with the business that you have built up if you really want to expand – after all, ideally you are going to want to step away altogether one day and just reap the rewards of all your hard work, so you may as well start the process as early as you can.
Lost Passion
Another reason to start employing other people to help in your business is if you are starting to lose your passion for it. If this is the case, hiring other people to take over some of the more mundane tasks that you aren’t enjoying can boost your love for your business once more, and keep you going. You can concentrate on the parts of the business that you really like doing, and you’ll feel much happier about going to work, and your business will thrive because of it.
You Can Afford To
Making the decision to take someone on, whether full time or part time, is certainly a big one in terms of the life of your business. The important thing to know is that you can afford to do it or, to look at it another way, that you can’t afford not to do it. Employees are going to want to know that they will be paid for their hard work and that their job is going to be something that they can rely on for the long term. As an employer, it is your duty to make sure that these things can happen, but sometimes in order to have the money to employ someone, you need to employ that person first so that they can expand your business. It can be a difficult decision, and it is not one to take lightly.
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