Some Days It's Tough to be The Boss

Poor Megan. She hears my opinion all the time whether she likes it or not. BUT I have witnesses, this time she asked!

Three thoughts come to mind:

• Create systems so that someone with a high school education can do the work. It becomes rote - this happens, do that. I’ve heard it said that every system should be written so that an 8th grader can do that. I don’t really understand all that goes into your business, Megan, but it seems like a lot of it could be very systemized with macros in Word. Client wants this - push Alt A, or whatever.

• Be very quick to get rid of a bad employee. They’ll taint others and find more ways to steal your money, clients, energy, intellectual property than you can keep up with.

• Look outside Reno.

It’s easy for me in the peanut gallery to have ideas, Megan, not being in the front line of the battlefield like you are.

If it’s work that can be done virtually, there are some possibilites.

• College students do seem like a logical source of bright minds. Maybe just in a different market?

• One thing I’ve noticed online is that there are English-speaking ex-pats. Army spouses stationed overseas might be a possibility. I might be able to help you with that one.

• Maybe craigslist ads in communities w. the highest percentages of B.A. and graduate degrees?

• People who need flexible work time might be another appreciative population. Stay at home moms?

• The workforce that’s eager because of unemployment in their region is another idea.

To drag out the oft-quoted line, doing the same thing over and over expecting a different outcome is the definition of insanity. Think about ways other than advertising to find the people you need. I’ve had the best success from asking everybody I know for referrals.

Keep looking and resist the temptation to "settle" for someone who can do the job. Even if it means working crazy hours for a while, hiring a "so-so" employee has always come back to bite us in various ways. The right employee is worth waiting for and worth paying for.

I think employees are the most difficult part of being an entreprenuer; it's hard to find another "you" but that's what you really need. Otherwise you'll always be tied to the day-to-day operations.

And as Diane said, automate, create checklists. One other thing we have done and sometimes it works out really well, sometimes not, but we hire temp's - if they're not so good we tell the agency to send a different one. We've hired a couple over the years. This is where your systems allow you to test a person in your environment before you make a permanent commitment.

Mary

http://bridgeway2success.blogspot.com/

www.bridgeway.merchantrates.com

Megan, you may also want to look at the whole of the work that you and your current staff do. If you divide the work differently, does this allow you to hire someone with different skills from a candidate pool that is larger and maybe even cheaper? Look at where you and your current staff are spending your time, e.g. marketing, prospect follow up, actual paralegal work, office support, payroll & book keeping, etc.

Can you carve out the work pie differently to improve your throughput? Is your current staff allocating their time for the best possible use? For example, could a new person with great communication skills do most of the responding to new business inquiries and effectively sell your services, which are then done by other staff members who are freed up to focus on the legal work. Just a thought.

This means that you may end up giving tasks that you enjoy and are good at, but aren’t helping your company grow as fast as it could because it isn’t the best use of your time.

I second the comments on not hiring until you find the right person. It will waste more of your time and also create opportunity losses in addition to incurred losses resulting from poor or low quality work.

Something else I’ve wondered about - some unemployment benefits and other job type programs also require recipients to show that they are attempting to find work. So they sometimes carpet bomb for things they are totally unqualified for just to check the box.

For the first time in 11 years of business, my staff is firing on all cylinders, and we have a waiting list of future employees. For me, after more wailing and knashing of teeth than I care to recount - it came down to a simple shift in my thinking about the job itself. Gee Mandy has a position in her company called ‘Grunt Work’ - anyone interested? It may not have been that obvious, but given that my people can usually feel what I’m thinking anyway - it was pretty close.

I really had to create the value, in my heart of hearts so to speak, and sell myself on that value until it was a part of what I am. I now find that employees are honored and enthusiastic about positions that I couldn’t fill with good people to save my life before.

I live in a very rural area where the labor pool is incredibly sparse and unqualified - think experienced goat ranchers and cedar choppers , and now, as opposed to just a few years ago, there is a list of ridiculously qualified and excited people waiting for my next position to open. I no longer believe that it has much at all to do with location - there isn’t even a population count on the city limit sign here!

The only thing that changed was between my ears. I’m not suggesting you have the same problem I did - I just thought I’d share my experience because I struggled with it for so long and it turned out to be ME that was keeping people from their dream job within my company.