Before you hire another person, work out what problem you’re hiring them to solve

Someone is overwhelmed.

Work is slipping.

The founder is getting dragged into too much.

The team keeps asking for help.

So the obvious answer is…

We need another person.

Maybe you do.

But before you put a job advert out, it is worth asking a slightly less exciting question:

What problem are you actually hiring them to solve?

Because “we need another pair of hands” sounds sensible right up until you add another person and somehow everyone becomes even busier.

More people does not always mean more capacity

Let’s say you have a team of eight.

One person is completely overloaded, so you hire someone to help them.

Great.

Except the new person needs training.

They need access to systems.

They need someone to explain how things work.

They need to know what they are responsible for.

They need to know what they can decide themselves and what needs approval.

They need to understand who they should go to when something goes wrong.

And if none of that was particularly clear before they arrived, the person who was already overloaded now has another person to manage as well.

You have technically added capacity.

But you might also have added more questions, more communication and more management.

That does not mean hiring was the wrong decision.

It might mean the problem was never just capacity.

“We’re too busy” doesn’t tell you very much

Being busy is a symptom.

It does not tell you what is causing it.

Why is the team busy?

Is there simply more work than there are people available to do it?

Or are people doing work they should not be doing?

Are the same tasks being completed twice?

Is somebody manually pulling information out of three different systems every week?

Are people constantly waiting for approvals?

Are senior people doing admin because nobody owns it?

Are project managers spending hours chasing timesheets?

Is finance chasing project information that should already exist somewhere?

Is the founder still involved in decisions that could happen perfectly well without them?

Those are very different problems.

And they probably do not all need another employee.

Look at what is taking the time

Imagine a project manager says:

“I need another project manager. I’m completely overloaded.”

That might be true.

But I would want to understand what they are actually spending their week doing before deciding that.

Are they managing projects?

Or are they:

• chasing timesheets
• sorting invoices
• booking meetings
• updating spreadsheets
• answering the same client questions
• finding information for finance
• moving data between systems
• sitting in meetings that do not really need them

If half of their week is disappearing into operational work that exists because the wider process is unclear, hiring another project manager might simply give you two expensive people doing the same unnecessary work.

Before fixing the resource problem, you need to know whether you actually have one.

Be careful with roles that start as “a bit of everything”

This happens a lot in growing businesses.

Someone says:

“We just need somebody who can help with a bit of admin, maybe some finance stuff, help the team, keep an eye on projects and sort out a few processes.”

That is not really a role yet.

That is a collection of things people currently do not want to do.

And I completely understand how businesses get there.

You grow.

Things need doing.

Someone takes them on.

Then more things appear and they take those on too.

Eventually you have a job description that looks like five different jobs stuck together.

The danger is that nobody has really stopped to decide what outcome that person owns.

Instead, they become the person everyone sends random work to.

Which works for a while.

Until they are overwhelmed too.

Start with ownership

Before writing the job description, ask:

What should this person actually own?

Not just what tasks should they do.

What are they responsible for making sure happens?

There is a difference between:

“Send invoices.”

and:

“Own the monthly invoicing process and make sure invoices are raised accurately and on time.”

There is a difference between:

“Update the project tracker.”

and:

“Make sure leadership has an accurate view of project status every week.”

There is a difference between:

“Help with onboarding.”

and:

“Own the client onboarding process from signed contract to delivery handover.”

The tasks might look similar.

The ownership is very different.

And once you know what somebody owns, it becomes much easier to work out what information, authority and processes they need.

They need to know what they can decide

This is another area that gets missed.

A new person joins the business and they are given a list of responsibilities.

But nobody tells them what decisions they can actually make.

So they ask.

Can I approve this?

Can I move this deadline?

Can I refund the client?

Can I buy this?

Can I change the process?

Can I tell the supplier yes?

Can I tell the supplier no?

Can I move this person onto another project?

Eventually it all ends up back with the founder or a manager.

The company has hired somebody to take ownership, but they have not actually given them any.

That is not a people problem.

That is an operational design problem.

Sometimes the answer really is another person

I am definitely not saying every business should solve everything with process instead of people.

Sometimes the answer is incredibly simple.

There are 200 hours of work and 150 hours of capacity.

You need more capacity.

Fine.

Hire.

But at least you know why you are hiring.

And that gives you a much better chance of hiring the right person.

Because now you are not looking for:

“Someone organised who can help out.”

You are looking for someone to solve a specific problem.

Maybe you need an administrator.

Maybe you need another project manager.

Maybe you need somebody to own finance operations.

Maybe you need an operations person.

Maybe you need a senior hire.

Or perhaps you do not need a new employee at all.

Perhaps you need to stop three people doing the same thing.

Try this before you hire

Before opening the job advert, write down the problem in one sentence.

Not:

“We need an Operations Manager.”

That is already a solution.

Try:

“The founder currently approves every supplier payment and it is delaying purchasing.”

Or:

“Project managers are spending several hours each week chasing information needed for invoicing.”

Or:

“Nobody owns client onboarding from the point a contract is signed.”

Or:

“We have more billable work than the existing delivery team can complete.”

Those statements are much more useful.

Now you can investigate them.

Is the problem genuinely lack of capacity?

Is ownership unclear?

Is the process broken?

Is information missing?

Is somebody doing work that should sit elsewhere?

Is a system making the job harder than it needs to be?

Once you understand that, then decide what to do.

Hiring should be the result of the diagnosis

Businesses are under pressure to move quickly.

I get it.

When everyone is busy, stopping to investigate the problem can feel like one more thing you do not have time for.

Hiring someone feels like action.

But there is a big difference between moving quickly and guessing quickly.

Adding another salary is a fairly expensive guess.

So before you hire someone because the business feels busy, ask:

What problem would disappear if this person started tomorrow?

If you cannot answer that clearly, I would not write the job advert yet.

First, work out what is actually happening.

Then decide whether the answer is another person.