162. Before You Hire: 5 Things to Do Before Bringing Someone Into Your Office

3 days ago

3 min read

Bringing someone new into your office can feel like the answer to all of your problems. Finally — someone to take things off your plate! But here's the catch: hiring someone doesn't automatically create organization.

In this week's solo episode, Laura is taking over the mic to share five things we believe every business owner should have in place before bringing someone new onto their office team. After recently welcoming a new remote employee into Chores & More, we've been putting a lot of thought into how to create an environment where someone can actually succeed — and realizing where we still have some work to do ourselves.

Whether you're preparing for your very first office hire or already have a team behind the scenes, these are five areas worth looking at before adding another person to the mix.

1. Define the Roles — Not the People

One of the biggest lessons we've learned recently is that your organizational structure shouldn't be built around the specific people currently working for you.

Instead:

Identify the individual roles your business actually needs
Clearly define the responsibilities within each role
Then decide who should sit in each seat
Remember that, in a smaller business, one person can hold multiple roles

When your roles exist independently of the people filling them, you don't have to completely restructure your company every time someone joins or leaves the team.

2. Get Everything Out of Your Head

If you've been doing everything yourself for years, there's probably a scary amount of company knowledge living exclusively inside your brain. 😅

Before you can truly delegate, start documenting things like:

Playbooks and microplays
Checklists and task managers
Scripts and templates
SOPs and written processes
Training materials
Frequently referenced policies and procedures

And documentation doesn't need to be beautiful or complicated. Sometimes a short, digestible microplay is far more useful than a 45-page SOP nobody is ever going to read.

The goal is to slowly turn “Let me ask Laura” into “Let me check the playbook.”

3. Clean Up Your Systems

Take a look at your business through the eyes of someone seeing it for the first time.

Could they find what they need?

Before our newest team member started, Holly tackled a major Google Drive overhaul because years of documents had accumulated without the organization a brand-new person would need.

Consider cleaning up your:

Google Drive or file-storage system
Email
CRM
Communication platforms
Trackers and shared documents
Calendars
Other systems they'll use regularly

Something may make perfect sense to you simply because you've been navigating it for years. That doesn't mean it'll make sense to someone on their first day.

4. Create an Actual Onboarding & Training Plan

Your new hire's first day should not begin with you staring at them thinking, “Soooo… what should I teach you?”

You don't necessarily need every minute mapped out, but you should know:

What they need to learn first
What they should observe or shadow
What requires hands-on practice
What they can study independently
Which responsibilities should be introduced later

Most importantly, give them time and grace to learn. Training shouldn't feel like drinking from a fire hose. Teach the foundation, give them opportunities to practice, and gradually add responsibility as their confidence and skill level grow.

5. Set Clear KPIs & Expectations

“Be responsive.”

“Give great customer service.”

“Sell more.”

Those aren't measurable expectations.

Get specific about what success looks like within the role. How quickly should the phone be answered? What's the expected response time for clients? What reports need to be completed? What sales numbers are expected? Which metrics are being reviewed?

When expectations are clearly defined, your team knows what they're working toward — and you have something objective to coach around when a KPI isn't being met.

Because as Laura puts it in the episode: you can't hold someone accountable to an expectation you never communicated.

The Biggest Takeaway

Hiring the right person matters — but creating the right environment for that person to succeed matters just as much.

We're still learning, documenting, restructuring and finding holes in our own systems every single day. That's part of growing a business.

Before you add your next office team member, take a look at the structure they'll be stepping into. The work you do before their first day could make all the difference in what happens afterward.