Time to Hire
Is it time to hire? The question seems so simple to answer on the surface, especially if someone has just handed in their notice or worse, just quit on the spot. This month, we're going to challenge you to dig deeper into the hiring question. We're going to challenge you to view hiring decisions not just from the business' short term needs, but also from its long term strategic needs.
Most business owners make the mistake of jumping into hiring too soon. We all know that hiring someone is a HUGE drain on a business' time and money. The time it takes to locate, interview, and train a new employee can be daunting. Then you have the expenses to generate candidates, one-time expenses of bringing someone new on board, and often times an increase in ongoing monthly expenses. It's widely accepted that a business should be "slow to hire," but often this is viewed solely from the lenses of selecting a candidate to hire, and leaves out the added perspective of ensuring you need to hire in the first place.
This week we want you to think about your entire business when you need to hire and not just the individual position you want to fill. We want you to think about all the functions in your business. Now you might be wondering why. Why is it important to have a comprehensive list of all the functions in your business for hiring needs? The simple answer is, too many hiring decisions are made on what a business has done in the past and not about what a business needs to do in order to reach their vision. Hiring is often a missed opportunity to look at the design of your business.
Listing all the functions in your business can be challenging, so to help you out, below are five functions in all businesses. To get started simply jot down the functions your business completes and in parentheses next to the functions estimate the time your business spends in these areas. We know that this task might be overwhelming so we urge you not to get stuck in the details right now. Think of this as a rough draft that you can and will add to as time goes by. A great way to accomplish this task is to challenge all employees and yourself to keep the five business areas on a piece of paper near you for the following week. As you complete tasks check to see if it's on your function list and add to it as time goes by.
- Sales
- Marketing
- Service
- Operations
- Strategy
This month we're going to challenge you to look at hiring from a strategic point of view and that starts with knowing everything that needs to be done in your business.
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