As your company grows, deciding whether it’s time to hire a new employee can prove tricky. It might feel like your workload is expanding by the day — yet you may not have enough work to justify a full-time hire.

That’s a quandary faced by countless businesses as they scale. Do any of these scenarios sound familiar?

• You need help with specific tasks, but not on a full-time schedule.
• You need a very particular skill set for certain projects or initiatives.
• You need to cover certain duties while an employee is on leave.
• You don’t have the budget for another full-time salary just yet.

Sometimes, the best hiring decision is no hire at all. At the same time, if your current employees are overwhelmed, it’s time to take action — and fast. Forty-five percent of burned out employees are searching for a new job, even if it comes with a pay cut. By making their workload more manageable, you’ll enhance their well-being and job satisfaction.

If it’s not yet time to hire, going a different route can bring major cost benefits, avoid unnecessary headaches, and reduce stress. This can save you time and recruitment costs while still making sure the work gets done well.

So, what are some alternatives to hiring permanent employees? Let’s dive into some of these options now.

Alternatives to Hiring a Full-Time Employee

To avoid making an unnecessary hire, look for more efficient ways to work. By using your time wisely, or bridging skills gaps with simpler, more economical solutions, you can boost team productivity.

Let’s talk about two key options to consider.

Departmentalizing the Work

By letting people focus on using their core strengths, you can build a far more efficient team. Departmentalizing means redefining what each person is doing in their role, so they won’t be bogged down by things they aren’t good at or don’t enjoy. Essentially, you’re reorganizing the work under specific functions, which gives employees a narrower, more specialized scope of work.

As you restructure the roles in your company, make sure each person’s workload matches their aptitudes and interests. Maybe you have one employee who thrives on behind-the-scenes efforts like data management, for instance. By delegating these tasks to them, you can free up sales staff to focus on their greatest strength: working with clients. Each person will then be more productive, handling a higher volume of work more effectively.

Outsourcing a Service

What if employees are still swamped after you departmentalize, but you don’t have enough work to warrant another full-time hire? In that case, think about outsourcing a service by working with a contractor for certain tasks.

For example, say processing data and paperwork has become a major bottleneck. Currently, this work is consuming 15–20 hours of time for full-time staff, who struggle to handle it efficiently. But a contractor who specializes in this area might handle the same volume of work in 5–10 hours, providing a cost-effective solution. As your client base grows, you can reevaluate the need for a full-time hire.

When It Is Time to Hire a Full-Time Employee

If any of these scenarios describe you, it might be time to hire a new employee after all:

• You’ve structured the work efficiently, but people are still overwhelmed.
• You’re scaling up quickly, and asking your current team to handle this increased work volume isn’t practical.
• You have enough tasks for a specific full-time role.
• You’ve hired a contractor, but their workload has expanded substantially.

Say you hired a contractor six months ago to work roughly 15 hours per week, but now they’re working 30. They’re handling crucial functions as your business scales, but at their hourly rate, this just isn’t economical. It makes more sense to hire a full-time employee, gaining greater value at a similar cost.

Or, as another example, say Company A departmentalized its work but all team members are still drowning in paperwork. Tallying up the number of hours spent on tracking and verifying insurance payments, monitoring and dealing with policy changes, and handling data entry, leaders realized they needed a full-time assistant who thrives on these tasks.

The benefits of hiring a virtual assistant are significant, when it’s the right moment. If you’ve realized that time has arrived, use these strategies to find the best person for the role.

Look for the Logjams

Pinpoint the tasks that have become logjams in your company. Or, identify the specific kind of expertise you need for upcoming projects, looking at skills gaps you’ll need to bridge. Consider whether these tasks fall under a clear role, or look for common themes or competencies that they involve. Then, spell out what you’re looking for under a concise job description and seek out recruits who match those needs.

Consider Virtual Options

I live in a town of 4,000 people, so our options for local hiring are limited. But hiring virtually provides a great alternative, giving you access to a much broader talent pool.

Founders sometimes worry about how clients will perceive virtual staff, but these days, it’s the norm. Today, 80% of U.S. companies have remote or hybrid workers (though many still have in-office staff, too).

One of our agency clients in Woodland, Texas, wondered how her clients would feel about having a VA with a different accent. It turned out that clients had no problem with it at all — he was courteous, professional, and provided excellent service. Hiring him only strengthened the agency’s relationships with its clients.

Outsource the Recruitment

If you’re scaling up, outsourcing recruitment can remove some of the overwhelm of finding a new employee. When you’re new to hiring virtually, it can feel daunting. Plus, it can quickly grow time-consuming, taking your focus away from core business activities.

Outsourcing recruitment makes following good hiring practices effortless, too — and the ROI for a good hiring decision can be tremendous, rivaled only by the cost of a bad hire. Bringing the wrong person on board can cost up to 200% of their annual salary, when considering things like lost team productivity, wasted training time, and the time it takes to replace that person. Hence, having an experienced recruitment partner can pay big dividends.

Each of these options can be right for a different stage of business growth. Hiring a contractor can provide a great interim solution as you continue scaling. Departmentalizing will help you work more efficiently, even if you do end up making a full-time hire in the near future. And once you have enough tasks for a new employee, hiring a full-time person will probably be the most economical solution.

If you’re wondering when to hire a virtual assistant for your company, let’s talk. I’ve advised lots of companies on this decision, helping them make the choice that best fits their current needs. We’ll walk through some key considerations to help you determine whether a VA—or one of the alternatives discussed above—is right for you at this stage.