Are your new hires helping or hurting your business? In this episode, I share three criteria for evaluating whether a new hire is a great fit. I cover culture add, price fit, and deliverable fit. Whether it's your first hire or your 10th, this episode will serve you.

In this episode, I cover:

• The key factors to consider when evaluating new hires for long-term success.
• Why focusing on culture add is essential
• The best ways to analyze price fit and return on investment for contractors.
• How to determine deliverable fit
• The importance of a well-crafted job description for a successful hiring process.

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Timestamped summary of this episode:

00:00:06 - Introduction,

Asha Wilkerson introduces herself as a business coach helping service-based entrepreneurs align their business goals with their personal goals, to create a life they want to show up for. In this episode, she talks about evaluating a current hire, whether an employee or contractor, and gives three criteria for evaluation.

00:01:11 - Culture Add,

Asha explains the importance of evaluating hires based on their culture add and not just financials. Hiring for culture add means recruiting people who have something valuable to bring to the team's existing culture, which builds diversity and variety into a team without losing the benefits of a cohesive group.

00:03:21 - Price Fit,

Asha talks about price fit and provides different ways of measuring ROI. It can be measured financially, by a reduction in stress and increase in time, or by the most skilled. She emphasizes the importance of hiring an expert if you can afford it for skilled activities.

00:06:43 - Deliverable Fit,

Asha explains deliverable fit, which evaluates the quality of work an employee or contractor produces. If the deliverables aren't on par with company expectations, then the best decision for the company is to let go of the employee or contractor.

00:08:42 - Coaching Program,

Asha shares how she has helped entrepreneurs turn their business needs into a job description, so they can successfully hire for their company. She combines her employment law background and people skills to determine the best fit.

You're listening to transcend the podcast. I'm Asha Wilkerson, a business coach helping service based entrepreneurs align their business goals with their personal goals to create a life they want to show up for. I will show you how to drop the expectations, thoughts and beliefs that weigh you down as a woman of color entrepreneur so that you can create and walk your own path with success, confidence, and joy.

Welcome back to another episode of Transcend the Podcast. I am so grateful that you are here, and this week we're going to be talking about evaluating a current hire, whether that is an employee or a contractor. So listen up. I talk to my clients all the time about hiring either an independent contractor or an employee to alleviate some of the workload burden that they experience trying to do it all by themselves. It definitely takes a shift in mindset and lots of trust to bring somebody into your business, but it can pay off big time.

What I don't often talk about is how to evaluate whether that contractor or an employee is really working out for you. So today I'm going to give you three criteria for evaluating whether your new hire is working out or is costing you money. Now, the first criterion here is culture ad, and I'm starting with this one, because capitalism and patriarchy will have you evaluating your hires solely from a financial perspective. And just evaluating on a financial perspective leaves so much on the table that will undoubtedly make it really hard or much more challenging for you to find the actual fit for your company, the actual best fit for your company. Now, you may have heard stories about corporations or businesses laying people off, saying they weren't a culture fit, which is really just code for they didn't belong.

But that's not what I mean here. When you hire somebody, you should be looking at what do they add to the culture, not whether or not they fit the existing regime? Hiring for culture ad means recruiting people who have something valuable to add to a team's existing culture. It builds diversity and variety into a team without losing the benefits of a cohesive group. Culture ads can look like bringing in additional languages, being able to reach additional populations.

It might look like somebody who seeks to understand why something is done and not just how it's done, so they can help improve the business. Or maybe someone who just thinks outside the box. An example of this is bringing in someone from a different generation, a generation that's different than you or most of the people in the workplace, whether they are older or younger. They can bring a different perspective to your business. Maybe it looks like having different approaches to a task or a different interpretation of a word.

Don't think of someone as simply too young or too old, but instead look at their perspective, their experience or outlook, and how it can add value to your company. Not everyone in your business needs to be a mirror or a reflection of you. If your current hire is not adding to the culture, expanding the business reach, or bringing something additional to the table that helps you grow, it might be time to reconsider that person's position with the company. Now, the second criterion is price fit. Now, this is easier to measure for contractors than employees, so I'll talk about it from that perspective.

The simple question is, is what you're paying your contractor worth it? I thought about giving you a Return on investment formula, but there are so many ways to think about ROI that don't just involve the numbers. So let me talk about a few. But for my numbers people out there, you can definitely calculate a financial ROI. You would look at your annual revenue and then divide by the number of employees or contractors you have, and that number will tell you how much you're making per hire.

Then you can compare that number to the salary you're paying and see which number is higher and by how much. You can also measure your ROI by looking at how much reduction in stress you feel. This one is big for me. I currently work with a virtual assistant company, and the work I assign my VA is work that stresses me out, like uploading my podcast to the website, posting my content to social media, setting up email shelves, et cetera. These things aren't tasks that directly lead to income, but they need to be done.

And I kind of hate them. Maybe hate a little bit strong, but I really, really strongly dislike them. I do not like them. It is totally worth it for me to outsource these tasks so that I am free to work on other items like content creation, client coaching, workshop planning, and other things like that, that are actually going to increase my revenue. Another way to measure price fit is thinking about how much time you reclaim.

This can be similar to the last point, but it's slightly nuanced how much time you either save or how much time you get back by working with your employee or contractor. The old adage goes, Time is money, but really, time is freedom. So if you have somebody to answer your phones, greet clients, or handle the back end of your business, what are you free to do? It could be more important work. It could be time to spend with your family, to travel, go to the gym, or anything else you could think of, really.

And I have one more. Now, this one is about skill. Is there a person or a company you've hired better skilled to do the task than you are? I've heard so many people say, myself included, oh, I can figure that out. Whether it's brand name, marketing or bookkeeping, it's not uncommon to lie to yourself and say, you've got this.

The truth is, though, when it comes to skilled activity, it is best to hire an expert if you can afford it. I've told this story before, but I just knew I could figure out my bookkeeping my first year in business, and I did it myself when I had absolutely no business in the world trying to do my own bookkeeping. Well, as it turns out, I did it all wrong. And not only had I wasted countless hours and stress trying to get it done and do it myself, but then I had to pay my accountant to actually go back and redo all of the bookkeeping and number crunching that I had done because I had done it all wrong. Not only did I waste my own time thinking I could do it myself and definitely increase my cortisol levels, but I also wasted money thinking I could just handle it.

So, as you think about who you're working with in your business right now, consider all the different ways that you can evaluate whether the price is worth it. You can look at it financially by a reduction in stress and increase in time, or by the most skilled. And now the last criterion is deliverable fit. This is where you evaluate the quality of the work that you've hired the employee or contractor to do. It's really pretty straightforward.

The question is, do you like the work that they're producing? Is it the right quality? Does it match your brand and reputation? Is it a good reflection of you or your business? There's nothing worse than having to go back and redo the work that somebody else has already done, and it's a waste of time and money.

Now, I'm not saying you won't have to review some work, but if you're spending just as much time reviewing and making corrections as the person who originally did it, then that's a problem. If you keep a time log for your projects, ask your employee or contractor to keep track of their hours spent working. Then when you go back and review their work, you should track your hours too. When you have the data on how much time it cost, you can then measure that against how much revenue the project brought to you. I'm working with a client of mine right now who has a health and wellness business.

She has a handful of employees, and over the past couple of months, we've talked a lot about employee training, task lists and job descriptions. In my opinion, she's provided a number of resources to ensure that her employees are successful and one or two of them just aren't meeting her expectations. So I asked her to step back and look at the employees from a bird's eye view and to evaluate the value she's actually receiving from them. As it turns out, her biggest gripe is that the deliverables aren't on par with company expectations. These two employees in particular, struggle to communicate with clients, aren't following the tasks on the task list and cannot seem to get with the program no matter how many training sessions they've participated in.

As uncomfortable as it might be, the best decision for her and for the company is to let these two employees go because they aren't helping the company. Based on what we've learned from these past two employees not working out, we're creating job descriptions, updating position task lists, and delivering more specified training to ensure that every new hire is successful for themselves and for the company. So we've talked about evaluating your contractors based on what they add to the culture, their price fit and their deliverable fit, and whether you're ready to make your first hire or need to reevaluate your current hires. Having me on your side can help you avoid costly mistakes. In my oneonone coaching program, we will work through your business needs, then turn those needs into a job description so you can successfully hire for your company.

Not only will I bring my employment lab background, but also my people management skills to the conversation to ensure that you are set up in prime to find exactly what you're looking for. Coaching will start in September, so get on the waitlist today so you can stay informed and up to date. The waitlist link is in the Show Notes. See you all next week. Thank you so much for listening.

If you want to hear more on how you can align your business and your life with me as a coach, head to the Show Notes and sign up for the email list. See you next week.