Freeing Up Your Time – A Staffing Solution
by Ron Roberts
Do you know what every small business owner struggles with? Time.
Time to work on the business. Time to spend on tasks that make money. Time to meet with valued customers. Here's how to free up more of it.
Allow me to share with you the not-so-obvious cause
of almost every small business owner's lack of time. Perhaps it will convince you to stop procrastinating and address the
problem head on.
The solution is not a mystery. I'm willing to bet you
already know it. You're probably even committed to fixing
the problem. You just haven't fixed it yet.
The problem is one or more of your employees.
One or more is stealing one of your most valuable personal and company resources, YOUR PERSONAL TIME. One or more is
preventing you from working on your business. From getting
more sales. From spending more face time with your best
customers and most promising prospects.
The fact of the matter is that for every minute you spend
doing something an employee can and should be doing is a
minute you are not out making money.
You know that, right? It's probably what keeps you up at night.
In your heart you know you need to replace this employee(s).
However when it comes time to take action you get nervous
over all the things that could go wrong.
You worry that the person you hire could be worse than the
person you have; good employees will leave because you ran
off their friend; disruption to your current projects;
loss of sales leads; theft; sabotage; or that you may lose
a valued personal relationship with them.
These are natural worries and natural feelings. Every owner
we've visited with has expressed these very same worries
when faced with the situation. Some took action. Many didn't.
Everyone who stuck with it until they found the right person
was supremely thankful they did. They discovered that:
- Running a business can be rather fun.
- Good employees hate working with bad employees.
- Projects go much smoother and more profitably when everyone in the field and front office is blocking and tackling properly.
- Customers are drawn to professional salespeople and well-run suppliers.
- Bottom lines mysteriously grow by leaps and bounds.
Upon fixing the problem(s) you will shocked to discover the
vast amount of time you'd been losing and the stress you'd
been suffering due to you're doing someone else's work.
An important point of our advice not to overlook is that
we are not advocating adding more headcount. That would be
applying a band aid. That would be transferring the problem
to another one of your employees, which translates into a great way
to run off a good employee. No, we're advocating replacing
the under-performing employee with a high performance
employee.
You may have to pay a little more but wouldn't it be worth
it? What is your time worth? How much is your current
employee truly costing you when you add your cost per hour
to their hourly cost or salary? It's probably pretty
staggering. For that matter, it's probably even worth
paying the fee for a recruiting service.
There's no question that if you hire the right person the
first go around, odds are you will save money by running
the recruiting and selection process yourself. However,
be honest with yourself. What's your batting average? How
often do you find and hire a high-performing employee?
50% of the time? 15% of the time? It certainly isn't 100%
of the time or you wouldn't be needing to replace someone.
Additionally, by outsourcing the search it's much easier
to keep it a secret. Recruiting on the sly eliminates
several of the worries that can be caused by the current
position holder finding out that he or she is headed out
the door. You will perceive a recruiter's fee to be steep;
however, their hit rate should approach 100%. You should
also receive an implied warranty that they will run the
next search for free if their recommended candidate doesn't
live up to expectations.
Allow me to share a few of stories with you as examples.
A contractor we've worked was putting in enormous hours
straightening out messes his office manager made and handling
unending field worker complaints. He finally had enough,
canned his office manager, and replaced her with a hard
working, professional lady with significant experience.
Within weeks the owner discovered more critical information
was suddenly available to him. The field's complaints about
payroll and other problems dried up. Then, he replaced his lead
operations man with someone who really took the bull by the
horns. No more off-hour employee phone calls. Far fewer
field errors.
The owner suddenly gained almost 50% of his time back, which he
invested in estimating and sales calls. Revenue jumped by
50%. The bottom line looked amazing. Two simple personnel
switches and the chains holding the company back have been
broken.
How about a reverse story? What happens when you lose a great
employee, one that turns out to have been the glue that held
everything together?
A contractor had been run for years by the owner's
aunt. Although she was the office manager by title, she
literally ran the place... and quite profitably at that.
The owner traveled over six months a year. He was an absentee
owner. Then his aunt decided to retire. The owner had to
come back in-house to run the business and find a new office
manager. Frankly nobody could have replaced his aunt. However,
the office manager selected didn't even provide average
performance. The company started to struggle. Last we heard
they were barely hanging on.
That's the difference one employee can make. Don't tolerate
that in your business. Don't shoot for decent employees. Shoot
for superstars. They make all the difference in the world.
In closing, we try and follow three sets of rules, our wives', the Ten Commandments, and "The 10 Biggest Mistakes Contractors Make." Let us help you master your business. Help is just a phone call away!
Until next time, best of luck with your business!
Ron Roberts,
The Contractor's Business Coach
More information about Ron Roberts' and the contractor coaching company he and partner, Guy Gruenberg, operate together, may be found on his website ContractorsBusinessCoach.com. Ron may be reached via email sent to ron@contractorsbusinesscoach.com.
If you have new information to provide on this topic, let us know and we can add it in as an addendum to this article.
|
