Most powerhouse solopreneurs hire out certain tasks to save time, so the prospect of investing time in team training may feel like a waste. Believe me when I tell you that this is a situation where you’ve gotta “spend money to make money” my dear! This truly is an investment that will pay off in the end, I swear.
Consider your own past employment history. If your boss had hired you on, shoved a mountain of paperwork into your arms, and said, “Good luck!” you might not have lasted a week.
Every job has a learning curve, and just because you know your own processes inside and out doesn’t mean they’ll be totally intuitive to your contractors. Taking the time to thoroughly train them equips your team to work harder and more efficiently on your behalf. And that’s a very, very good thing.
Here are 3 more important reasons why training your team members is a smart move:
A well-trained team needs less supervision
A well-trained team completes tasks with little to no nudging or micromanaging. You may invest time and energy up front to get team members up to speed, but once you have, they’ll be on autopilot. Doesn’t it make more sense to do some deep training at the start so you can step back and allow contractors to work independently over the long haul?
Doing this frees you up to do the deep work of building your business, creating new strategies, and working with your clients.
A well-trained team is self-supporting
When team members understand their tasks thoroughly, they’re able to support, pinch-hit, and even cross-train each other!
Offering comprehensive training to your first group of contractors means you may not need to step in personally when you onboard new help. This is especially valuable during growth spurts.
It’s such a relief to know that your long-term team members can mentor new hires while you focus on managing the mission critical aspects of the business itself.
A well-trained team can create transferrable procedures
Team members who have gone through deep training can (and should) create their own standard operating procedures (SOPs).
The work you do with them at the outset is just setting them on the right track; From there, they should feel free to make adjustments to workflow and task management to keep everything running smoothly.
Empowering your freelancers to create SOPs accomplishes three key goals:
It shows them that you trust them.
It makes it easier for different team members to step in and take over if necessary.
It ensures your business will continue running no matter what happens.
If you’ve committed to paying contractors to handle specific business tasks for you, you should also commit to setting them up for success. Train your people, empower them to train each other, and make yourself available whenever they have questions.
The only downside is sacrificing some of your time to the onboarding process, and when you look at the big picture, that’s time well-spent!
