6 Signs It’s Time To Hire More Staff

Hiring employees for the first time can be a tricky one, likewise increasing your current team with additional employees. If you get this wrong as a small business, the consequences can be tough, but if you get it right, the results are always exponential.

Beyond the techniques and methods of recruiting excellent hands that are fit for your business, one foundational step must first be successful; knowing the right time! If this initial step is wrong, the entire activity will turn out not so productive.

Here are a few signs that you must see before you consider hiring a new staff for your business.

1. Are you spending too much time on minor tasks?
If you find yourself overloaded with tasks that are not very strategic; things someone less experienced can handle successfully, this might just be a sign you need to hire that someone.

2. Are your staff overworked?
Overworked or fatigued staff is very bad for business as it will ultimately affect the quality of output you give your customers, and you do not want this to happen.
Regularly assess your workers’ workload and determine if the current capacity is being used optimally, if you notice that you are not getting the best of out of your craftsmen due to work load, it is a major sign for you to get out there and scout for new hands to come help with the work.

It should be easy for you to tell when your employees are struggling to keep up with the demands of their jobs, most of the time when this happens, it is just an indication of how much your business has grown in terms of demands from customer and an increase in the team size will not be a bad idea.

3. Is your customer service becoming poor?
If you notice that the attention your customers are getting is declining, you may want to look closely to figure out if you need extra hands to help out. For a small business,

An overworked employee will not handle customers properly, and this will certainly hurt your brand. To track this, you should consider creating channels for feedback and reviews from customers; so as to have an accurate measurement of the customer service outlook of your business at all times. You must always have an accurate picture of your customers’ satisfaction with your brand. Are calls going unanswered? Are emails going days without reply? Answers to questions like this will show you when there is a problem and a need for new hands.

4. Are you turning down too many good jobs?
As your reputation grows, you will begin to detest dissapointing your customers for any reason whatsoever. As a result, you may also begin to notice a trend where you turn down jobs not because the offering is not good enough, but because you cannot deliver within the given parameters; the most common culprit being time. More jobs are meant to be the drivers of your business growth’ more clients, more completed projects, more revenue. Hence it becomes important to measure this metric, once your cancellations begin to approach certain numbers, it may be a strong indication that your business is growing beyond your current workforce, therefore a need to increase the team.

5. Are your senior employees doing work of junior employees?
If you or your senior employees spend a lot of valuable time assisting on junior level tasks, then it’s likely time you made a job offer. If you’re performing tasks that would cost far less if assigned to somebody else, then consider delegating them to a new employee.

6. Are you trying to grow your business?
Growing your business means more clients and more clients means an increased workload.Relying on your existing workforce alone will lead to work overload. You’ll need to hire new employees and mix them with your current team to ensure that you are able to consistently deliver the same quality of services that your clientele expects.

Finally, you need to be practical with your desired expansion, it is not enough to want to expand your client base for instance and not consider expanding workforce, this may result in chaos, and ultimately loss of customers due to resulting issues. Also it is not smart to over-staff a business at any given point in time. Be sure your decision to or not to hire more hands is based on facts, and facts only.