Soul Proprietor - When your hired help isn’t helping

At some point in your career, you may decide that you need to hire some help. If you’re a one-person show, that may be a service provider such as a web designer. If you have a brick and mortar business, it may be employees for various duties.

In an ideal world, they do their job, you pay them, and all is well. But that ideal world isn’t always the reality.

Service providers flake out or don’t deliver what they promise. Deadlines are missed or ignored altogether. Employees spend more time on their cell phones than actually working or don’t show up on time…or at all. If you tend to be easy-going, it can become a chronic problem. This can be frustrating but it doesn’t have to become your norm.

The best way to prevent these problems is by nipping it in the bud before you even begin working together.

Which means: referrals, clear agreements + policies, contracts, boundaries, and consequences.

Referrals: always get referrals before you hire anyone, employee or service provider. This may well prevent most of your problems (although not always). For employees, be sure to ask for work referrals (not personal) and then follow up with a phone call to the former employers. Ask pertinent questions about the potential hire’s work habits, attitude and strengths. If you are hiring a service provider such as a web designer, reach out to their most recent clients. Ask those people what the experience was like. Were they timely? Did they do good work? Was there any drama? Do your due diligence and you may avoid headaches down the road.

Clear agreements + policies: before you hire anyone, you need to get your policies on paper – and then you need to make sure that any potential service provider or employee knows what those policies are. Those policies need to include the consequences. For example, your lateness policy may go something like this: “Employees must arrive on time. If they are late once, they will get a warning. If this happens three times, the employee will be fired.” Discuss your policies directly with them so that they are clear on what you expect and what you won’t put up with.

Contracts: a signed contract is especially important for service providers. Most service providers will have one for you to sign but you may want to have one as well, especially if the work for hire is deadline-sensitive. A clear contract gives you legal grounds just in case you need to go to court (yes, it can happen).

Boundaries: if you have rules in place, do not bend those rules. If you do, they won’t respect you and sooner or later, your business will become chaotic. Same with service providers – if they keep on missing deadlines and you allow this to happen, they have you at their mercy. If you have a contract in place, you can use that as leverage when they come with a bunch of bullshit excuses. Which leads to number four:

Consequences: if you have been crystal clear on your policies and have a contract in place, then you need to follow through with the consequences. Which may mean firing people. Hopefully, you’ll never have to but you must be prepared for that very real possibility. Do not be afraid to confront or fire a ne’er do well employee or slacker service provider. You’ll feel better and so will your business.

Help is great but when they can’t bother to do their job or to show up when they say they will, it’s no longer helpful or worth it.

As Aretha Franklin sings:

“R-E-S-P-E-C-T
Take care, TCB.”

Take care of your business and make sure that anyone you hire does too.

Blessings,
Theresa