Hiring and team coaching for Adelaide business owners

• The ad has been up for 5 weeks. You've had 3 applicants and none of them were close.
• You know you need somebody, and you can't work out whether the business can carry the wage.
• You've hired 2 people in 18 months and both were gone inside 6 months.
• The person you did hire is doing a job nobody ever wrote down, including you.
• Your evenings go on work somebody else could do, if anybody had ever shown them how.
• You've made somebody a supervisor and the pair of you are quietly winging it.

1. 01

   Whether the role is actually a role

   Before anything gets advertised: what work genuinely exists, how many hours of it there are in a normal week, and what the business has to produce to carry the wage. Plenty of hiring problems are really pricing problems wearing a different hat, and that shows up here.

2. 02

   Writing the job down before advertising it

   What the person owns, what they decide, what good looks like at 3 months, and who they ask when they're stuck. Spending 30 minutes on this changes the applicants you get, and it's the document you'll come back to every time you sit down with them over the next 3 years.

3. 03

   Where the person actually comes from

   In a tight South Australian labour market the ad is often the least effective channel. Working through the realistic options: your own network, a part-time or school-based arrangement, an apprentice or trainee, a career changer, or restructuring the work so it fits somebody who already exists.

4. 04

   The first 90 days

   Most people who leave early decided in the first fortnight. A simple, written onboarding sequence covering who shows them what, in what order, and what they should be able to do unsupervised by week 6, so the answer isn't just following you around.

5. 05

   The regular 1-to-1

   A short, predictable conversation on a set day with the same few questions. It's the cheapest retention habit available to a small business, and it's the first thing dropped when the week gets busy.

6. 06

   The hard conversation

   Working out what you actually want to say when somebody isn't meeting the standard, deciding what happens if they react badly, and saying it early enough that it's still a conversation rather than a decision. Where a formal process is involved, that goes to a lawyer or a specialist workplace relations adviser, not to a coach.

7. 07

   A structure the team can see

   Who reports to whom, who covers what when somebody is away, and what a person is allowed to decide without asking. Written down and visible, so a new starter can learn it in a week rather than by getting it wrong in front of a customer.

1. 1

   You tell me what's going on

   A short form: your industry, how many people work in the business, what you want to change, and roughly what you can spend. It takes about 3 minutes.

2. 2

   I read it and check the network

   I read every enquiry myself. I look for coaches whose actual background fits your industry, your size and the problem you've described. If nobody in the network works on it, I'll tell you that.

3. 3

   I tell you who and what they charge

   Before any introduction, you get the coach's background and their current fee band. You decide whether you want the introduction made.

4. 4

   Up to 3 coaches get in touch

   I pass your details to up to 3 coaches in the network, and only after you've ticked the consent box. You take a first conversation with whoever you want to, and you're under no obligation to go further.

The full version, including the 13 things checked before a coach joins the network, is on the how it works page.