How To Get Great & Productive New Employees

Major Points of the Article

• Growing your business will require you to hire productive new employees.

• But knowing when, how, why, and where from can be tricky, which has been outlined below.

• After hiring the new staff member, you should still be looking out for the red flags, to make sure that they will be a valuable asset to your team.

As a business owner or CEO you most likely have brought in other staff members before, but were they a good fit? Were they productive? Or did you want to fire them from day one? Below are some crucial factors you should consider when bringing on new staff.

WHEN Should Businesses Hire New Employees?

You should ONLY hire new employees when the timing is right. What this means is when it is financially feasible to do so and when there is enough additional work for them to do. Below are the top five factors that can help you decide when it is time for your business to hire new staff:

1. You Are Experiencing Strong Growth

The most crucial item to look at first is to take a look at your business’s financial position. In particular, examine your company’s growth and see how it has changed over time. Is it going up, plateaued, or is it going down? If it is going up, then this is a good indicator that your current team is working well and that it could be time to scale up your business by hiring new workers. However, if it is going down, then you might need to consider how productive your current team is. Perhaps, this lack of growth is caused by inefficiencies in your processes or team, which could indicate you need to replace some of your staff members.

2. Limited Employee Capacity

If employees are unable to take on new work or, worse, struggling to manage their current workload, it may signal that you need to create a new job position to keep growing your business. You might notice this from conversations with your current staff members or you might see this as a plateau in your financial growth.

3. Overtime Increases

In addition to speaking with your employees, you might be able to determine the need from the amount of overtime your current employees are putting into their jobs. If your employees need to work overtime more frequently to handle their workload, that’s a good indicator that it might be more cost-efficient in the long run to hire more staff. Furthermore, being overworked, burnout, and fatigue among your workers lowers morale and productivity so it is best to avoid this by expanding your staff.

4. New Opportunities Arise

Growing or diversifying your business's product lines will require new staff in order to accommodate the expansion of your business. Essentially, your business is already busy with its current responsibilities, and you’ll need to take on more employees to help with the increased workload.

5. New Skills Are Needed

In the growth and expansion of your business, expanding to offer new services will require you to bring on new staff. This is an ample opportunity to bring in skills and experiences that will help grow and complement your current team.

HOW Do You Know When to Hire Additional Staff?

Changes to your business operations can sometimes signal that you need to bring on new employees. In fact, in some instances, you might need to act swiftly to keep your business from suffering. Below are some common signs to look out for:

1. You Have to Decline New Work

If you ever have to turn down new opportunities to work with new clients, then that is a good signal that you are currently understaffed. In order for your business to grow and expand, you will need to take on more clients and do more work, which means you will need to eventually hire more employees to manage that increase in work.

2. Your Employees Are Overwhelmed and Overworked

Much like what we mentioned before, if you have low morale in the business, high employee turnover, increased sick leave, and many complaints from workers, then that is a good indication that you need more employees. Their elevated stress levels from being overwhelmed and overworked contribute to hurting your business. Employee retention is important if you want to expand your business and offer top-quality service, so make sure you keep your employees happy and healthy.

3. Customer Service Suffers

When your employees are stretched to capacity resulting in being fatigued and stressed, your customer service will suffer. In fact, work will slow down, increasing the frustration of your customers, potentially to the point of them leaving for your competitor. So if you receive more client complaints about delayed service or lower-quality service, you should hire new employees to maintain the high-quality service your customers expect.

4. Plateaued Revenue

If your revenue growth slows down to a plateau, it could be because one of your departments or teams that has been driving the growth, has reached capacity. Examine your business's many areas to determine where the slow points are and expand the team in order to restart your earnings.

5. Experienced Employees Cover Basic Tasks

Experienced employees do not want to feel underutilized in doing administrative tasks. Similarly, as they are most likely your highest-paid employees, it is very expensive for you to ask them to do such tasks. It is, therefore, better and more cost-effective that you hire more admin or junior staff, which then frees up your more senior staff to focus on top-level projects that make a bigger impact on your business.

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WHY Hire New Staff?

Growing, expanding, or simply because your workers have reached capacity, hiring new staff can bring many benefits to your workplace. Here are some of the major benefits of hiring new staff:

• Improve employee morale and mental health

• Bring new ideas to your company

• Increase the skill set of your workforce

• Build your capacity for new work

• Grow your revenue

Where Can I Find The New Staff?

Expanding your team can be difficult as not everyone will work well within your business. In order to find potential candidates you should consider exploring these options

• Advertising the role on seek.com.au as it is Australia's number one employment marketplace.

• Advertising the role on linkedin.com.au

• Using LinkedIn to find candidates from your competitors or those individuals who have the desired skillsets (LinkedIn recruitment)

• Recruitment agencies, who can do the above processes for you, but note it does cost money to use such services

• Consulting agencies as outsourced suppliers for the work you need. We suggest Paradelta Strategy a management consulting and brand equity building firm, for all your transformative growth strategy and implementation work (sales, marketing, operations, tech, expansion and more...). Or Click Rabbit for all your SEO, AdWords and website management requirements.

BONUS: The following behaviors displayed by a new hire are red flags.

Once you have employed them, how do we know that they should stay? Below are the top 5 phrases you should look out for.

1. “I can do it all.”

When new hires jump in and claim to be able to do everything, they send the message that they think they are better than the rest of the team, which goes towards reducing the overall morale and productivity of your business. It is better that the employee knows what they have been employed to do, as other members of the team have their own speciality and expertise to contribute. In the first 90 days, new hires should spend time figuring out what each person brings to the team so they can leverage their strengths and offer theirs up to support the team.

2. “You need to work around my needs.”

It is all good to reach a mutual understanding of how your new hire will work and contribute towards the business, but it is something else when they vocalize their constraints around what they can do and when they can do it. Usually, you might label them as “high maintenance” which often creates more work for others as your other employees will have to work around them. New hires should be more focused on learning ways their work can contribute, complement, or even make others' jobs easier.

3. “I only talk to people who matter.”

If your new hire says this, then they are not a team player and will only go toward alienating and making others feel low. You should view them as opportunists, who will likely not work well for you as they will be looking at moving to bigger and brighter things when given the chance. These hires will typically not show any interest in getting to know the receptionist or someone in a different department, that they don’t see the value in respecting. New hires should be focused on making friends with everyone they meet in the company.

4. “I’m always looking for the next big thing.”

Related to number three, these new hires will be "all-about-me" and they will do anything to achieve their goal, even walk over anyone who gets in their way. Your new hire should be focused on being proficient at their new job with the intent to exceed expectations.

5. “I can do the job, but don’t expect me to overextend myself.”

This employee will give only their minimum effort while showing a lack of commitment to help grow the business. These are the people who show up to work, and then leave straight on 5 o'clock because that was what they were paid to do. Essentially, they don’t care about whether their employer is feeling satisfied with their early performance or not. They are there for the paycheck, which is not someone you want around as overtime their productivity will go down, and they cannot be relied on when extra help is suddenly needed. You want someone who will do a good job while finding ways to boost their productivity, so that with their extra time and energy they can go above and beyond.

What's next

A key element in business is that you should be always looking at ways to grow your revenue and your business, which also means your team. BUT, in order to grow your business you must know how to do it, which means having a strategic plan. That is where Paradelta Strategy can help, as they create short and long-term plans to then assist you with its implementation. As a plus, we usually find up to 8% in savings that can be used in other areas to grow your business.

In fact, over the years, Paradelta Strategy has helped businesses across Australia to grow and expand, nationally and internationally, and grow significantly in profits. To get assistance with your business, simply email us at hello@paradeltastrategy.com.au or schedule a no-obligation discovery call here.