Three Top Tips to Successful Outsourcing

Hiring a new team member is an important and exciting milestone in any business!

Every business, even the smallest of businesses, needs a team. Even if for solopreneurs, that team looks like an accountant, business coach, and/or biz bestie.

But, when it comes to hiring paid team members, especially if it's your first time doing so, or, you've been burnt by bad experiences in the past, it can be a daunting process.

I'm the first to admit that hiring or managing a team isn't my area of expertise. It's actually an area that I spent years resisting, because I don't love managing people.

But, I've had to move past my discomfort and learn to love having a team. 

It was having a head injury back in 2020 that finally made me appreciate that having a team wasn't an optional extra, but that it was an essential part that I needed. Because, I was working long hours, doing everything myself, and all of a sudden I couldn't do that anymore...

It took me months (probably more years) to recover from that injury. But, in the process, I learned I didn't want to go back to how things were before. I actually couldn't anyway, because I didn't have the stamina I used to have. But, for the first time, I started to both recognise the importance, AND, really quite enjoy having people to share the load with.

Hopefully it'll never come to that for you!
Hopefully you can do the best thing for your business growth, and start to grow a team much more willingly than I did.

Because, even if you just start by outsourcing one small thing, growing a team will help you build so much more momentum than if you try to do everything yourself.

So, these are my top tips to growing a team and outsourcing like a pro...

For example: 

• Do you need someone with high attention to detail?
• Do you need an outgoing people-person who’s great at promoting or networking for you?
• Do you need a creative type of person?
• Do you need someone who’s really nurturing and great with looking after on-going customers?

These four skillsets are very rarely ones that are possessed by the same person.

So, you need to be realistic - do you need ONE person, or do you need TWO or more people to do the tasks you need done?

A mistake I see a lot of entrepreneurs make when they get ready to outsource for the first time is thinking that they can get one person who’ll be good at everything they need in their business right now.

Unfortunately, that’s rarely how it works.
Which is why I encourage you to think carefully about the type of person who would be most suited to the role you need.

Often, you’re better off employing multiple people to do different parts of the business and stay in their genius, than you are to employ one and get them to do everything.

One way to figure out who would complement you, or your team, is to use a profile test like Talent Dynamics. I love this test and use it with all my 1:1 clients, because when you know your own profile, you can use a simple formula to work out the other profiles which would be most helpful to your business.

For example, this test helped me learn that out of all 8 profiles, I am a Creator (a strategic and creative leader). That means that if I only have a team of 3, my ideal profile types to hire are a supporter (a people person) and an accumulator (a details type person).

But, the bottom line is that you can set your new hire up for success, by ensuring that you hire the right type of personality for the role.

The more you can prepare for their start, in the way of creating instructions, systems and training, the smoother the start will go for both of you.

At minimum, I suggest preparing the following:

• The goal for the role
• The main job/task description
• Clear instructions of how to do the main tasks. Preferably a combination of video training and checklists.
• Health, safety and company policies. This is something you should create, even if you're creating a remote team.
• Key performance indicators
• Any brand style guidelines they should know about
• Your brand values and vision
• How you like customers to be treated
• Any access details they'll need
• How you like to be communicated with

It's a long list. But, the more you can prepare, the better you'll set the new team member and yourself up for success.

As well as these project details, you also need to consider how the relationship with the person you want to outsource will work: 

• Are you offering a part-time, full-time, project-based position?
• Do you want an employee or a contractor?
  (keep in mind there are legal definitions to both, and sometimes you need to go with what your tax department requires you to employ them as not what you necessarily want to employ them as)
• How will you pay them?
  E.g. will they invoice you, or will you need to use a payroll system
• What paperwork do you legally need?
• Always, ALWAYS, ALLLLLWAAAAAYS have a contract in place. Even if it’s your friend/family member you’re outsourcing to.
  (I would actually say especially if it’s your friend/family member doing the work)
• How will you communicate to each other?
• How many rounds of changes is acceptable?
• What is your budget for this?

If you’re hiring someone to take over ongoing tasks in your business, make sure that these are documented so that they have clear steps to follow.

There are lots of programs that can make this easy these days. Personally, I find it quickest to create systems by videoing myself doing the task. Then I have the team member I created the video for, create a checklist of the process that I just showed them.

This means I can rapidly create a lot of systems, without it taking me or the team member a lot more time. And it also makes it easy for them to learn - because they have the video and checklist to refer back to.

We store all our team training and processes in a free Google Site.

Hiring a new team member is an important and exciting milestone in any business.

I hope you found these three tips helpful and wish you all the best for your new hire!