How to Know When to Hire a New Team Member

When my brother graduated high school, our family went on a cruise with two of his closest friends and their families for their senior trip. This ship happened to have a casino, and these three boys, freshly 18, felt sure they could make some money playing blackjack – after all, they’d played it in video games before. I’m sure you can imagine how that went. My brother and one of the others pretty much broke even, but the other lost about $50 in under an hour, which was a pretty significant chunk of money for an unemployed teenager at the time. Luckily, that experience served as an effective lesson on why you shouldn’t gamble, and no major harm was done.

Sometimes hiring a new team member can feel like gambling – will they be worth the investment? Will bringing them on increase your business’ capacity so you can take on more clients and raise your profits? Or will they drain your savings and leave you feeling frustrated and stressed? 

Hiring someone is no small investment, and during that initial training period, it may feel as if you have no way to be sure that you’ll get a return on your investment. But you’ll also reach a point with your business growth where you can’t keep growing without some help. 

The good news is, growing your team doesn’t have to be as risky as playing blackjack at the cruise casino! There are some fairly reliable indicators that will tell you that it’s time:

1. You and your current team are consistently working overtime
2. You notice a decrease in overall productivity even though the workload has only slightly increased or stayed the same
3. You’re having to say no to new clients frequently because you don’t have the capacity to bring them on
4. You and your current team are constantly struggling to meet deadlines or missing them altogether
5. You’re about to start a big new project that will be taking most of the attention from some of your existing team

If two or more of those sound like you, it’s time to bring someone new into the equation. But remember: a new team member doesn’t necessarily mean it’s time to bring someone on as a full-time employee! Consider the scale of work you need someone to take over and if it justifies a full-time role, or if it would be better to work with an independent contractor or a part-time employee to handle the work that needs to get done but is not demanding enough to create 32-40 hours of work a week. 

The best time to plan for a new team member is actually before you need them, so that you can be intentional about the hiring timeline and in building up the revenue to support the added expense of their salary. (It is also recommended to save up about six months of their salary in your business savings as a safeguard.) 

The second best time to hire a team member is when you realize that you need to hire someone – and quickly. If you find yourself needing a new team member to help handle the workload but without the savings net or revenue to feel secure hiring someone, don’t panic. Start saving up and planning for the added team member and be intentional with your capacity planning in the interim so that you don’t completely burn yourself out in the meantime. (Also give yourself grace on adjusting some of those project timelines and some of your goals to create the space needed to prep for and onboard a new team member.) 

For help planning to take on a new hire, check out our Team Growth & Investment Planner in the Visionary Vault. With this tool you have the power to see the potential impact of a new hire and compare the potential impacts of different hires so that you can feel even more secure and confident as you grow your team!