Taking over my family cleaning company and I want us to hire one person more than we need, vs the bare minimum # of people. I also want to pay them 18 instead of the 17 we currently do.
This will result in at least 1 but maybe 3 months where my family barely makes any profit, but I argue if they and we just tighten up the hatches for that small period of time, use our comfortably sized nest egg, then we can have a team thats stable for more than 3 months at a time AND we can finally grow by being able to aggressively pursue new clients
My family’s very against this and thinks I’m a naive socialist, basically. I’m a little out of arguments
How long does it typically take you to get a new person online and profitable?
Can you use any forecasting to prove you will need the extra body within the time needed to make them profitable? (In my world it takes at least 6 months for an employee to be producing results so we are looking at what we might need mid next year and planning our hiring for that now).
What does the 18 vs 17 do for the business? Do you get better hires or is it the same hire earning more? How does this compare to the rest of your staff’s income? Are there any headaches you can cause by bringing this person on for a different wage?
What’s your staff utilization like right now? Can you bridge that gap between now and 3 months with overtime? Does your staff like it when they get overtime or no? (Mine doesn’t so work backlogs until hiring evens things out).
Does bringing them on early free up a higher value resource? Ie can your sales person spend less time on operations and more on growing the business if you bring a new employee on? And just important- will they?
How comfortable are you with laying someone off if the market changes and you don’t need them in 3-months?