Before hiring someone else, check whether the problem really is a lack of staff

When work piles up and everyone in the business seems permanently swamped, the most obvious conclusion is that you're short-staffed. Sometimes that's true. But in many cases, on closer inspection, the bottleneck isn't the number of people available, but a repetitive task that eats up time unnecessarily, a confusing procedure with more steps than it needs, or an inadequate tool that slows down even a simple job. Hiring, in these cases, adds a fixed cost without solving the real problem.

The simplest test: where the work actually piles up

Before deciding whether to hire, look closely at where the backlog forms: is it spread across all the team's tasks, or concentrated on a single specific step that everyone has to go through to move forward? If the blockage is concentrated on a single step, it's often not a people problem, but a question of how that specific step is organised.

Sign one: the same task takes too many steps

If a simple task, such as issuing an invoice or updating a piece of data, requires going through three or four different systems, no extra person will really solve the problem: every new person taken on will inherit the same number of unnecessary steps, and the total time will keep growing along with the volume of work, not in proportion to it.

Sign two: people repeat the same work more than once

When two different people check the same thing, or the same piece of data is entered into several systems that don't talk to each other, the time that seems to be missing is actually time spent duplicating work that's already been done. Adding a person in this situation just adds another source of duplication, rather than removing it.

Sign three: the tool in use is no longer suited to the workload

A spreadsheet that worked perfectly well with ten orders a month becomes an obstacle when there are a hundred, not because the spreadsheet is wrong in itself, but because it's been outgrown by the volume it now has to handle. In these cases, the problem is solved by changing the tool, not by adding someone who uses it just as slowly.

Sign four: nobody knows exactly who does what

When a request passes from one person to another with no clear rule, often because "that's how it's always been done", time is lost in the handovers, not in the work itself. A clear procedure, with defined responsibilities, often recovers more time than a new person confused about those same responsibilities would add.

When the problem really is a lack of staff

After checking these four signs, if the work is still spread sensibly, across suitable tools, with clear procedures, and the volume is still more than your current people can handle, then the problem really is a lack of staff, and hiring is the right choice at that point. We covered this in the article you don't always need to hire: when outsourcing can be the solution, where the same distinction is applied to the comparison between hiring and an external partner.

Why this check needs to happen first, not afterwards

Hiring without having done this check risks bringing one more person into the business who inherits the same confusing processes, the same inadequate tools, the same repetitive tasks that were never automated. The workload people feel eases temporarily, because it's now split across more people, but the underlying problem remains intact and will resurface as soon as the volume of work grows again.

How we check this distinction for our clients

With our smart business consulting service, we look at where the bottleneck really forms before recommending any solution: we listen to the people actually working within the processes, we analyse the tools and procedures in use, and we pinpoint precisely whether it's a staffing problem or a process, tool or procedure problem. When the right solution is to outsource a specific task instead of hiring, we do this directly through our accounting and administration and hosting and IT support services.

Before opening a new position in your business, get in touch with us: we'll carry out this check together, and tell you clearly whether the problem really is a lack of staff or something you can solve without hiring.