Is Your Team Overwhelmed and Asking You to Hire? Think Twice Before you Answer.

You have started the year strong by clearly communicating your 2017 business plan and the specific objectives required to achieve the plan. However, one month into the year, you are slightly less confident you and your team will achieve it. You have now been told repeatedly that to achieve the Plan, you must hire. Your team is overwhelmed. Sound familiar?

Your initial reaction might be to give your team the approval to hire the resources they say they need. I strongly recommend you refrain from choosing what seems like the obvious solution. It is not only an immediate hit to precious cash, but also will likely prevent your organization from solving the true issues at hand and achieving long-term, sustainable growth. Adding bodies is often not the right solution.

So, then what? First, you need to determine if you have a shortage of talent within the group and/or inefficient processes that require more effort by the team. Second, you need to implement the right solution.

Experience tells me that 80% of the time, you have the wrong person leading the group and thus inefficient processes. So often, particularly in growth companies, team members are promoted from within. The top inside sales representative becomes the head of the call center or your accountant becomes the controller and then head of finance. The challenge is the person has never been the head of a call center and therefore does not have the experience to optimize the business processes or lead the team.

To determine the solution that is right for you, look within your organization and identify a team member that can comprehensively assess the area requesting resources. They need to provide you with an honest, thorough review of the talent and business processes within this group. Make sure they have the skill sets to fully evaluate the situation.

If you do not have the right person in your organization or “trust” an internal perspective, bring in a project-based consultant to provide a thorough evaluation and an outsider’s view. This is often the better solution, as an experienced consultant can compare your operations to other businesses and bring forth more solutions for improvement. He/she will also not be persuaded by your internal team.

At HireBetter, we are often summoned to an executive’s office and asked to help hire additional resources. We are told the team is overwhelmed and the company will not achieve their goals — worse still, the company is about to lose key resources. As a new kind of talent firm, we avoid the knee-jerk reaction to throw bodies at the problem, but rather push you to get to the root of the issue.

For example, Living Direct’s CEO contacted HireBetter with an urgent need for more agents in the call center. We listened and learned more about the situation and recommended a Strategic Talent Planning™ session to dive deeper into the talent on the team and the operations of the call center. The session revealed a clear opportunity to improve the operations. Post-session, HireBetter placed a call center expert on a project basis to redesign processes. After 45 days, the operations are significantly more efficient and the need for resources has been eliminated. A one-time investment in outside expertise saved this company significant recurring costs and improved the business and employee environment. The team is no longer overwhelmed.

Rather than waste money by throwing bodies at your next business problem, contact us. We will help you find the root of the issue so you can continue on your path to success.