In week 1, you’ll spend some time onboarding. Depending on the size of the role, that might be 0.5 - 2.5 hours.

In week 2 - 3, you’re already saving time. Onboarding continues, the hours you’ve freed up begin to outweigh the time you’ve put into training.

In week 4+, you’re saving significantly more time than you’re spending. And that saving compounds — week after week, month after month. When you look back from that vantage point, the upfront investment feels like nothing.

This is a realistic trajectory, when you hire and onboard using the best-practice approaches which I’ll lay out below.

1. Hire someone who already knows the territory

Don’t hire someone cheap with very little experience. Hire an experienced career professional who understands the context, knows the common pitfalls, and can hit the ground running. Experienced hires need less hand holding. They often flag things you hadn’t even thought of and make your life far easier from day one. The relief is palpable.

2. Cover all the essential practical stuff in one focused session

Before your new team member starts working, sit down and go through everything they’ll need — access to tools, logins, communication expectations, workflows. Get it all done in one block.

Why? Because if you skip this, they’ll hit roadblocks in the weeks ahead. And every time they’re stuck, you’re the one who has to stop what you’re doing and unblock them. Front-load the basics so they can work independently as quickly as possible.

3. Hand over responsibilities in stages

Start with the easy stuff. Let them prove they’ve got the skill and understand how you like things done. Then move into giving them more complex tasks.

This is a good way to manage risk - give them low risk tasks to demonstrate their maturity before you graduate them to the more challenging tasks.

It’s also good teaching practice - as they handle the simpler tasks, they’re absorbing your style, your standards, and your way of working. By the time the harder stuff comes along, they’re already calibrated to you.

4. Set up regular check-in meetings

Nothing scatters your focus quite like a constant stream of messages throughout the day. My approach: anything urgent, message me and I’ll deal with it. Anything that can wait, bring it to our weekly check-in.

That meeting becomes a contained space where you’re fully present, answering all their questions in one hit, and clearing the air. Once the meeting ends, you can let go and re-focus on your own work with a clear head. It protects your focus, saves time, and means you have more energy at the end of the day.

5. Let them take the lead in their zone of genius

Early on, I used to over-document everything. Every task had pages of instructions, every step spelled meticulously. I thought I was being helpful. What I was actually doing was spending an enormous amount of time delegating, which meant I wasn’t saving much time.

Now I match my level of documentation to the person and the task. If the person is highly experienced, or the task is very simple, then very little documentation is needed.

I’ll spend 15 minutes briefing a task rather than an hour. This gives the new hire room to bring their own skill and judgment. I’ll give them small corrections afterwards. If I’ve hired the right person from the beginning, the corrections are minimal and I end up saving a lot of time with a more streamlined delegation approach. Plus, the new hire feels trusted and motivated to do great work.

Give people the opportunity to show you what they can do. If you’ve hired the right person, you’ll be pleasantly surprised.