Everyone is flat out. We probably need a new person.
Sometimes that is exactly right.
When your business is busy and the work is there, another person can be exactly what you need.
But before the job ad goes up, I would want you to write one thing down.
What exactly are you hiring this person to take over?
Not the job title. Not “help the team”. The actual work.
A role can sound perfectly clear on paper and still be vague in practice. Operations coordinator. Account manager. Estimator. Administrator. Another technician.
The title tells you where the person sits. It does not tell you what will move when they arrive.
That is the part worth getting clear before the hire is made.
Name the work that moves
If the new person starts on Monday, what leaves somebody else’s desk?
Maybe they take over customer follow-up that currently sits with you or one of your senior people. Maybe they pick up scheduling that is spread across two people. Maybe they take the routine jobs that keep pulling a qualified person away from work only they can do.
Once you can name the work, you can start to see what the hire is really buying you.
You can see whose time comes back. You can estimate how much of it comes back. And, most importantly, you can decide what that person will do with the time they get back.
That last part is easy to miss.
A new person can take twenty hours of work off a senior team member and still add very little if those twenty hours simply fill up with more of the same. The value comes from what your business can now do that it could not do before.
What changes when they arrive?
A good hiring decision should be able to finish this sentence:
When this person is up to speed, they will take over __________, which will give __________ back around __________ hours a week. That time will then be used for __________.
That might mean more quotes going out on time. Better follow-up with existing customers. More time supervising jobs before they go off track. More time for you to look at pricing, cash flow or the next stage of growth.
The answer will be different in every business. The important thing is that there is an answer.
If you cannot fill in those blanks yet, it does not mean the hire is wrong. It means the role needs more thinking before somebody is asked to fill it.
The hire should create a change you can see
Three months after the person starts, you should be able to point to something that is different in your business.
Not just that everyone feels a little less stretched. Something tangible has moved. Work sits in a better place. A senior person has time back. A customer process runs more reliably. Quotes move faster. Jobs are followed up sooner. You are spending more time on the decisions that genuinely need you.
That gives you something useful to review after the hire as well. Did the work actually move? Did the time actually come back? Did you use that time the way you expected to?
Those questions tell you far more than whether the new person is busy.
Before the ad goes up
If you are thinking about adding someone to the team, take ten minutes and write down four things:
What work will they take over? Who is doing it now? How much time should that release? What will you do with the time you get back?
If those answers are clear, the role is already much easier to define, recruit for and review.
A new hire should not simply make your business feel less busy.
They should change what the existing team is able to do.
Before you advertise the role, name that change.
Murray.
