Before You Hire Another Person, Take a Look at the Work
Growing businesses eventually reach a familiar point.
Everyone is busy. Administration is increasing. Emails are piling up. There are more customers, more paperwork, more things to keep track of and not enough hours in the day.
The obvious answer can seem to be:
We need another person.
Sometimes that's absolutely the right decision. Growth requires people, and there are plenty of roles where another set of hands, additional expertise or increased capacity is exactly what the business needs.
But before advertising that position, it's worth asking another question:
If you hired someone tomorrow, what would they actually spend most of their day doing?
Would they:
Serve customers?
Generate revenue?
Solve problems?
Deliver services?
Build relationships?
Apply skills and experience that your business genuinely needs?
Or would they:
Update spreadsheets?
Move information from one system to another?
Follow up approvals?
Re-enter information that's already been captured somewhere else?
Send routine emails?
Chase paperwork?
Check whether somebody has completed the next step in a process?
The distinction matters. Because if a large part of the role exists to keep inefficient processes moving, hiring another person may solve the immediate capacity problem without addressing what created it.
Hiring Costs More Than the Salary
When businesses consider employing another person, the salary is naturally one of the first costs they consider.
But it isn't the only one.
Before a new employee becomes productive, the business may need to invest in:
advertising the position
reviewing applications
conducting interviews
checking references
preparing employment documentation
setting up accounts, devices and access
onboarding and training
management and supervision during the transition
There is also the time existing employees spend helping the new person understand the business, its customers, systems and processes.
None of this means you shouldn't hire.
It simply means that adding another employee is a significant investment, and it's worth making sure you're investing that money in additional capability rather than additional administration.
Are You Short of People, or Is the Work Taking Too Long?
This is where things get interesting.
A team can genuinely feel understaffed while simultaneously spending a significant amount of its available time on work that could be simplified.
Consider a fairly ordinary business process.
A customer submits an enquiry.
Someone receives it by email and copies the details into a spreadsheet.
Another employee creates a folder and saves the relevant documents.
An email is sent to someone else for approval.
A few days later, somebody checks whether the approval has happened.
Once approved, another employee enters some of the same information into another system and emails the customer.
Nothing about that process necessarily looks broken. Everyone knows what they're supposed to do. The problem is that every additional customer creates another series of small administrative tasks.
As the business grows, those tasks multiply.
Eventually the organisation doesn't necessarily need another person because the underlying work has increased proportionately.
It may need another person simply to keep all of the administrative steps moving.
Small Inefficiencies Become Expensive at Scale
This is one reason inefficient processes can be difficult to notice.
Five minutes doesn't sound like much. Neither does sending one email, copying information into one spreadsheet or checking whether one approval has been completed.
But repetitive work scales with volume.
Imagine a process that consumes just 15 unnecessary minutes and occurs 20 times each week. That's five hours of administrative effort every week.
If several processes across a business operate this way, the cumulative impact can become substantial. And, unlike a large, obvious problem, this workload tends to grow quietly.
One spreadsheet becomes three.
One approval becomes several.
One system doesn't quite talk to another.
An employee develops a manual workaround.
Someone else creates another spreadsheet to keep track of the workaround.
Eventually, the workaround becomes the process.
The Answer Isn't Necessarily Another App
This is also where businesses can make another expensive assumption:
We need new software.
Sometimes you do. But before purchasing another system, it's worth looking at what the organisation already has.
Many businesses are already paying for technology with capabilities they aren't fully using. The opportunity may be to connect existing systems, simplify the way information is captured, remove unnecessary steps or automate repetitive activities.
For an organisation already using Microsoft 365, for example, that might mean looking at whether tools such as SharePoint, Microsoft Lists, Forms, Power Automate or Power Apps could improve an existing workflow rather than immediately adding another standalone application.
The technology isn't really the starting point, though.
The process is.
The first question shouldn't be:
What software can automate this?
It should be:
Why are we doing this step in the first place?
There's little value in automating a process that doesn't need to exist.
Automation Doesn't Have to Mean Replacing People
When automation comes up, the conversation can quickly become one about reducing headcount.
I think that's often the wrong way to look at it. In small businesses especially, good employees are incredibly valuable.
The goal isn't necessarily to replace them.
It's to stop wasting their time.
If an experienced employee spends hours every week copying information, chasing approvals or maintaining spreadsheets, the business isn't getting the full value of that person's skills.
Removing some of that administration might allow them to spend more time:
helping customers
resolving issues
improving service delivery
supporting other employees
developing new business
managing important relationships
doing the work they were actually employed to do
Good process design can therefore create capacity without necessarily adding headcount. And when the business does eventually hire, the new employee can be brought in to increase capability rather than simply compensate for administrative inefficiency.
Look at the Process Before the Position Description
Before writing the next job advertisement, it can be worthwhile mapping out the work that is driving the need for another person.
Ask yourself:
What work is consuming the team's time?
Which tasks genuinely require a person?
Where is information being entered more than once?
What are employees regularly chasing or following up?
Where are spreadsheets being used to coordinate processes?
Which steps exist simply because two systems or departments don't communicate effectively?
What repetitive work could be eliminated, simplified or automated?
You may still reach exactly the same conclusion:
We need another employee.
And if you do, that's useful. You can recruit knowing you're adding genuine capacity to the business.
But you might discover something else.
Perhaps ten hours of administrative work each week could be removed.
Perhaps a process that involves six manual steps could become two.
Perhaps information that's currently entered three times could be captured once.
Perhaps an approval that somebody has to remember to chase could automatically notify the right person.
Individually, these improvements may seem small.
Collectively, they can change how much work a team can handle.
Make Better Use of What You Already Have
Before adding another salary, another software subscription or another layer of administration, take a step back. Look at how work actually moves through the organisation.
Not how the procedure says it should work.
How it actually works.
Follow the emails. Look at the spreadsheets. Identify where information gets copied. Find the points where people are waiting, chasing, checking, updating and re-entering.
Those are often the places where relatively modest improvements can create meaningful additional capacity.
Sometimes growth genuinely requires another employee. But if the next person you're planning to hire would spend a large part of their week keeping manual processes moving, it may be worth looking at the process first.
If your team is stretched but you're not sure whether the answer is another employee, another system or simply a better process, take a fresh look at how the work actually flows through your business. A few relatively small changes may free up more capacity than you expect.
Because sometimes the most cost-effective employee is a well-designed process.
