Thinking of hiring an operations manager? Read this first
Every week I see the same advert on Indeed. "Operations Manager wanted. Must be organised, a self-starter, able to take ownership." Read between the lines and it says something else: please, somebody take some of this off me.
I get it. We built a property management business to over 100 properties and more than 20 staff. For a long time, everything came back to us. So I'm not going to tell you never to hire an operations manager. I'm going to tell you why the hire often doesn't work, and what to do first so it does.
Do you need an operations manager, or do you need structure?
When an owner says "I need an ops manager", what they usually mean is:
- Everything goes through me, and I'm the bottleneck.
- Nothing is written down, so only I know how things are done.
- My team checks with me on decisions they could make themselves.
- I'm doing admin at 10pm and I can't remember my last proper week off.
None of those are solved by a new person. They're solved by structure. If your business shows several of these signs, our post on signs your business depends too much on you is a good place to start.
Why the hire often doesn't stick
Drop a capable hire into a business with no clear roles, no written processes and no systems, and they inherit the mess. They spend three months learning how things work by asking you. Which is exactly the problem you hired them to fix.
It also tends to go wrong in a few predictable ways. The new person doesn't know what they're allowed to decide, so they keep checking with you. The processes they're meant to run don't exist, so they invent their own and the team does it differently. And because nobody has defined what a good month looks like, it's hard to tell, for a long time, whether the hire is working.
A new person dropped into chaos doesn't fix the chaos. They become part of it.
Five things to fix before you hire
Here's what I'd do first, in this order. You can start most of it this week.
- Write down where your time goes. For one week, note every task you do and every question your team brings you. You'll find half of it doesn't need to be you.
- Draw a line on decisions. Split them into three: what the team decides alone, what they check with you, and what only you decide. Put it on one page. This one change takes more off an owner than almost anything else.
- Write down your five most common processes. Not a manual. A simple checklist for each: quoting, booking a job, invoicing, onboarding a customer, handling a complaint. If it's only in your head, it's a risk.
- Get everything into one place. If jobs and enquiries live across WhatsApp, email, texts and paper, pick one system and move them in. Often it's software you already pay for. If you want help choosing and setting it up, that's what our systems and automation work is for.
- Know your numbers. Work out what your most common job actually makes, and review cash, profit and who owes you once a month.
What usually happens next
When we did this with Keelan at Keeda Services, an electrical contractor in Blandford, the answer wasn't "hire an office manager". It was one job system from quote to invoice, a pricing database built from real jobs, and a written handover to his lead electrician. For the first time, Keelan could see what each job made.
Sometimes the owner does still need the hire. That's fine. Now the new person walks into clear roles and working systems, and they're useful in weeks, not months. Sometimes, they don't need them at all.
Before you commit to a salary
If you're weighing up an operations or office manager, get a clear view of where the business stands first. A Business Health Check shows you where the business is held back, in plain English, with the few changes that would make the biggest difference. Our operations consultancy then helps you put them in place, and you can read how we work if you'd like to know what that looks like.
For a quick read, our free Business Readiness Scorecard takes three minutes and shows which area is leaning on you hardest. Or drop me an email at [email protected] and we'll talk it through.