When should I hire more staff members?

It can be difficult to know when the right time to expand your employee team is.

Things may have taken a turn for the better at your business venture recently, and so you are now thinking of getting a few more pairs of hands on deck to help steady the ship.

There are a few key indicating signs that show you’re ready to hire more individuals to work for you, so it is essential you know what these are.

You need to be at the right point in your business’ timeline for it to take on extra staff members. Perhaps you’ve been a small unit for a year or two now, or even working completely on your own, and things have been going pretty well. Naturally, you may feel as if now is the right time to bring in some help from elsewhere, to both further establish your firm and continue to grow.

You should however, be considerate of the amount of profit you’re currently making. The more members of staff you take on, the more wage packets you’ll have to finance at the end of each month. Is your business now in a spot to be spending a large chunk of extra cash each month? Do you really need the extra assistance that will be provided by taking on more staff? These are a few of the questions you need to ask yourself before you start sending out any job advertisements. 

How do I know when I need to hire more staff?

You’ll know you’re in need of more staff when the workload is becoming a little bit too much for your current team. This is particularly apparent to those business owners who work alone within their ventures. If you’re struggling more than you did at the start, do not assume something has gone wrong or that you’ve become worse at leading your company; the chances are that you have developed as a small business and now have more clients, a larger workload to deal with on a daily basis, and have probably entered more business sector areas than you began targeting back at the start.

You may even be beginning to notice chances for development and growth, such as a gap in the market you know that you can fill with your products and services, but don’t have the manpower to go through with your goals. This is where hiring more people to work for you can start to become essential to the continued growth of your business. Try not to dismiss your chances of growth and let them pass by, as much in the world of business is about being at the right place at the right time.

Take on more staff members in these situations if you can afford to do so. As long as you’re comfortable with your budget and aware that it will be heavily affected by incoming workers, you shouldn’t have any issues with adding to your employee team.

The Apprenticeship model

Apprenticeships could play a big part in helping your business grow if you are looking a taking new members of the team onboard.  Rishi Sunak’s Plan for Jobs has new measures in place for employers who hire an apprentice between 1 August 2020 and 31 March 2021 can claim a £2,000 incentive payment for any apprentices aged 16 to 24, and £1,500 for those aged 25 and over.

Looking to get hired during the Coronavirus pandemic?

Perhaps you’re reading this article from the viewpoint of someone that needs a job, not someone who currently owns a business. We all know the pandemic has led to many people losing their jobs in the United Kingdom, and being forced to look for new lines of employment. If this applies to you, we have some advice that may be helpful during the job hunt:

• Always expect the job search to take a long time. This is something that will help you avoid disappointment more than anything else, which is likely more important than you first think. Finding a new job often takes an extensive amount of time, which is unfortunate news for those of us that desperately need to get our hands on some income during a crisis, but it is simply the harsh reality we must face up to.
• Don’t use the exact same cv for every job. Tailoring your cv with some individual specific details for each and every job you apply for is undoubtedly the best approach to utilise when searching for a new job. Have a basic copy of your cv saved to your computer, but be prepared to make changes within every job application you fill out, so that you can impress different employers.
• Be clear about what you want. Where do you want to work and does your current skillset and experience set you on the right track to achieve your employment goals? If not, you should look into what you can do about it.
• Research your target companies. If you turn up to an interview not knowing anything about the company you’re hoping to be employed by, you’ll seem unprepared and thus unlikely to land the position. Be prepared and take the time to make sure you know your stuff.

Positives to taking on new staff members

• You’ll be able to spread out the work load and take some of the weight of your company directly off your own shoulders. It really can be useful to get some helping hands in and make things a little easier for yourself.
• More ideas will be generated and problems will likely become easier to solve when you have more minds at work. Working together with others is often a great way to overcome issues in a company. It also isn’t a bad idea to get the opinions of others on something you’re working on. Perhaps you have a few negative points in a project that someone else could point out to you.
• Availability to clients and customers will most likely increase. Gone will be the days of you having to reply to every single customer query and complaint, by taking on a few staff members to help you out, either they can start taking care of these matters on your behalf, or you can begin to widen your company’s available hours as a team.
• You’ll start to build up strong relationships with other members of your workforce. This could potentially lead to friendships outside of the workplace, or simply just give you a few people that you can rely on within your company, which will always come in handy further down the line.

The signs to look out for

There are certain signs that can appear to any business owner based in the United Kingdom, which would make them aware that the time has come for them to finally hire some extra members of staff. If you’re experiencing any of the following on a regular basis, maybe you should think about extending your team of employees:

You’ve been turning down jobs

You are landing such countless rewarding opportunities that your group is consistently occupied. Up until this point, completion of the work is on schedule, yet you’re turning down responsibilities to evade possible altercations with current customers and clients. All things considered, when the approaching interest is more prominent than your work force can withstand, the output will be generally of a poor standard.

Whenever you start passing on promising circumstances since you come up short in regard to the size of your team, it’s an ideal opportunity to think about employing more staff.

Your employees are becoming overwhelmed 

Your workers are looking observably exhausted. It may even be taking its toll on them to the point where it begins to affect their performance levels. As a result of this, a few of your workers are searching for occupations somewhere else and you’ve seen a higher-than-normal number of days off being utilised.

It’s completely conceivable your members of staff are feeling the crunch, yet they simply don’t let the boss know, in case they receive some kind of negative reactions. In the event that your team is giving indications of being overpowered by work, it’s an ideal opportunity to enlist more individuals to guarantee your best performers don’t look to other places of work that may be an easier ride for them in the long run.

Your customer service is suffering 

Is it taking a long time for a client to be served by your business venture? Are the customers satisfied with the delivery or are they complaining and frustrated with the turn times? If your team of workers are being completely stretched out, chances are your customer service is starting to drop a number of levels and clients are raising legitimate concerns over delayed services. If that is beginning to happen, it’s time to hire more workers and increase the size of your employee team.

Experienced staff members are covering multiple positions 

On the off chance that you or your senior workers invest a ton of important energy helping on junior level assignments, at that point it’s probably time you made a bid for employment. One simple approach to decide if you need to enlist extra help is to do a fast estimation on the dollar estimation of your time each hour. In case you’re performing undertakings that would cost undeniably less whenever relegated to another person, at that point think about designating them to a new member of staff.

There’s a lot of available overtime popping up 

Your present representatives are doing the absolute best they can, yet there’s as yet a requirement for them to stay at work past 40 hours. The issue with representatives staying at work past 40 hours consistently is that it brings about additional costs you could maintain a strategic distance from in the event that you had sufficient staff. In case you’re presently compensating critical measures of cash for double time work, add staff members.

What will I achieve with more staff?

These are some examples of the positive aspects hiring new staff will award your business with:

More work will be completed –

One of the most obvious ways that hiring new staff members will provide your business with a positive step forward, is that you will be able to complete more work. Spreading work tasks across a larger cast of employees will speed up the overall process and help your company to achieve growth. Consider hiring more staff if you are currently being held back by a lack of completed work.

A larger team means more support –

Building on our previous point, having more staff members in the office will offer you, and your employees, higher levels of support. You’ll be able to better cope with time-sensitive projects and offer support to others, which will be a rewarding experience for you, too. Become closer to your team by adding to it and making the effort to look out for one another. A more supportive unit will often result in a superior level of work; remember that communication is key in all areas of business.

You can say goodbye to freelance –

Are you tired of hiring freelance workers to complete projects outside of your workplace? Well, by hiring more staff, you can do just that. Once you begin to set on additional employees, you’ll be able to spread the workload out evenly amongst them and never need to consider paying for a freelancer again. This could be a major part of reducing overall company costs and allow you to operate more affordably.

Your internal team will grow –

As you develop your internal team and add more individuals to it, you’ll start to look like a more professional organisation. This will make you more appealable to customers and clients alike, as from their point of view, a bigger corporation often means a more successful organisation. This will inspire repeat business and lead you to a potentially far more successful future with a higher number of customers.

Hopefully you are starting to see the bigger picture and getting an idea of how hiring staff can often be a highly positive and transformative thing for your business venture. You will be able to accomplish more things and turn many of your business dreams into a reality. If you can afford to do it, employing more people to work for your company will often lead to heightened success and scope for your business operations.

In summary

Ensure that you have the right budget to take on extra members of staff before making any serious decisions on the matter. If you are confident that you’ll remain outside of any financial frailties while paying the wages of your new employees, and you believe that they’ll help to advance your business to the next stage, then there is no reason why hiring a couple of new staff members will be anything but a positive thing to you and your business venture.