How to perform a role assessment in your online business
When starting a new online business, or hiring out your first task, it’s hard to justify spending a lot of time or money hiring the best of the best. Why spend an exorbitant amount of money on blog posts that no one will read or social media posts that will only reach a dozen followers?
But as your business grows and your audience grows, people are going to start paying attention to what you do and how you do it. Having sub-par writing or unprofessional responses on your social media is no longer going to cut it. At this point, you may need a role assessment in your company.
A role assessment consists of two steps: examining whether the team member is playing to their strengths and whether they have the capacity to complete the task.
Is your team member playing to their strengths?
The first step to a role assessment is looking at what tasks each person is doing and whether or not they are demonstrating their best assets.
Sometimes, a person may be good at a task, but they may be better at another task. Other times, a person may be good at a task, but they’ll never be great at it. Another scenario might be that they have talents that you just don’t need (or hidden talents you’ve never explored).
Regardless of the scenario, you’ll need to make one of two decisions when you realize that someone is not using their best assets: 1) you give them a different job within your company or 2) you let them go so they can use their skills for someone else who will benefit from them.
If you go with option 2, you may feel panicked that you’ll have to train someone new to replace them, but this lull is only temporary. Your business will thank you and the person who you let go of will also thank you. They will likely have a better time doing work that they can excel at. Often times, people who are not excelling at their jobs will eventually quit on their own. By letting them go, you are expediting this process for both of you, making everyone happier in the long run.
For example, let’s say you have two contractors, a copywriter and a virtual assistant.
The copywriter is responsible for the following tasks:
- Writing blog posts
- Writing social media posts
The virtual assistant is responsible for the following tasks:
- Registering people in courses
- Answering emails
- Creating graphics for social media
You may notice that the copywriter has an informative tone, which is great for writing blog posts, but sometimes comes across as too wordy or stiff for social media. You may also notice that the virtual assistant’s tone is a little too casual for answering emails with business partners.
In this scenario, you may consider giving the copywriter the task of creating an email template for the VA to fill out when answering emails and the virtual assistant the task of writing the social media posts. In real life, it’s often not as black and white as this, but it helps to list each person’s tasks and strengths and see which overlap and which don’t.
Does your team member have the capacity to complete the tasks?
Once you figure out if a person is playing to their strengths, next it’s time to figure out if they have the capacity to complete the tasks. Capacity can be summed up in three traits: desire, time, and initiative.
Desire
Just because someone is good at something, doesn’t mean that they want to do it. Someone who is good at something, who feels motivated by their work will outperform someone who is great at something but has no passion for their job.
For this part of the assessment, decide if the person is excited about what they do. If they’re not, they may complete the tasks in the short run, but likely won’t have the energy to do so in the long run.
Try having your team members list all the tasks they’re currently doing and then have them rate (on a scale of 1-5):
- their enjoyment of that task, and
- their skills/ability to do the task well
You may be able to easily rearrange a few tasks to keep everyone happy and performing at their best, or you may need to hire to fill the gaps in what your current team members are able to do.
Time
A person could have the necessary skills to complete a job and the desire, but they don’t have the time to complete it! Using the same tasks as in the above example, let’s say you have a Virtual Assistant doing all of the above tasks. In other words, the Virtual Assistant is:
- Writing blog posts
- Writing social media posts
- Registering people in courses
- Answering emails
- Creating graphics for social media
Let’s say the virtual assistant is great at all of these tasks. They’re a great writer, they understand social media, they’re organized and professional. All around they’re very skilled. Let’s say that you only contract this virtual assistant 10 hours a week in which they complete the blog post for the week as well as social media posts and graphics.
However, maybe the virtual assistant doesn’t get to the emails until after 48 business hours, which is what you guarantee your clients and partners; or, the course registration confirmation doesn’t go out within an hour, which causes a lot of stress for your clients.
In this scenario, the virtual assistant has the right skills and is playing to their strengths, but simply doesn’t have enough time to complete all the tasks. In this scenario, you may need to hire a second virtual assistant.
In this case, decide which of the tasks your current virtual assistant does showcase their strengths and delegate the rest! Or increase the hours of your current virtual assistant so they have the time to complete all the tasks in accordance with your business values and promises.
Initiative
Finally, the people you hire must show initiative! Someone who only does what you ask of them may be doing their work, but they aren’t helping your business grow. This could be as small as making suggestions or as large as challenging your business ideas. The best people will offer this insight out of expertise rather than just try to make money off your needs.
For example, a good social media manager will let you know if the number of posts that you’re requesting per week is actually effective for your social media strategy.
While you may be hesitant to perform a role assessment on your business, as your vision grows and your business scales you will need to examine who is doing what and if it’s the best way to continue.
Performing a role assessment doesn’t necessarily mean you will have to let go of team members, it may mean using their skills in a different area, or allowing them some creative freedom in their roles (under your supervision of course) to serve you and your company in a way that brings excitement to their role.
Hiring additional team members to fill the gaps in your business also doesn’t have to be scary. Once you know the skills you need, finding the right person to fit that role becomes a lot easier. Performing regular role assessments can help make sure your business operations are running smoothly, allowing you to continue to grow your business in accordance with your big vision.
Do you need help performing a role assessment or hiring a new team member?
Book a business consult and tell me about your team!