Knowing when to scale up your team of employees can be a hard decision to make. If you think that now might be the right time to grow your business and hire more employees, ask yourself these seven questions:
- When was the last time you had to ask a client to extend a deadline?Missing client deadlines can be damaging to your business. Look back at the last few times you had to delay a deadline, what was the reason? Was it down to lack of skill, so a task took longer? A lack of time, as you had too many projects?
- Have your overtime costs rapidly increased? Are employees coming in early, skipping lunches and working longer hours to complete their work? A productive workforce is a happy workforce. If you need your team members need to work out of hours on a regular basis this can foster discontent. Are the reasons for the overtime valid?
- Are employees cancelling their vacation?Don’t lose sight of the need for individuals to have their own work/life balance. If employees are repeatedly delaying or cancelling paid time off it is a clear sign that, although you have a dedicated staff, they need more help.
- Are you relying on external vendors and contractors?Using contractors and vendors to cover extra work as your business grows, can be a great stop gap, but they can also be costly. Analyze if the amount of money you are paying a contractor could be used to employ a full time staff member at the same skill level or higher.
