Peace of Mind Organizing

Introducing Amy Hubbard, my first employee

20 August 2018

Amy with Bix, my poodle

For ten years now, I’ve been leading organizing teams to create swift and dramatic change. Until this month, my teams have always been made up of independent contractors, fantastic organizers who have their own businesses (and insurance). They are all members of the St. Louis chapter of the National Association of Productivity and Organizing Professionals (NAPO-St. Louis).

This month, I took what feels like a big step and hired my first employee, Amy Hubbard. Amy will be working with me as an organizer. She’ll be a team member, a team leader, and also work one-on-one with clients. She’ll be working part-time for me, because she also works as a freelance makeup artist. Amy is a natural-born organizer with a beautiful aesthetic and has a lovely, calm demeanor. She’s terrific.

The process of hiring my first employee was a bit stressful. There were a lot of bureaucratic hoops to jump through. I needed to come up with a different pay scale (the pricing for clients remains unchanged). And I had to write up policies and operations because I’m not permitted, by law, to tell independent contractors how to do their work. There were lots of things to think about.

So why did I go through the trouble? Primarily because I wanted Amy on my team. She is an experienced and talented organizer. (She’s worked for other organizing companies in St. Louis and elsewhere.) And she is not interested in owning her own business, so I couldn’t hire her as a contractor. I’d been toying with the idea of hiring employees for years now. Amy gave me a big reason to take the plunge.

Since she’s an employee, I’m able to train Amy about how I like organizing done. It feels like the first step in a process of building a more cohesive company. And now that I’ve gone through the red tape of hiring one employee, it will be easier for me to hire more employees. I may hire organizers or hire employees in other roles.

This feels like a big shift to me, but the change should not have a big impact on my clients’ experience. I’ll continue to use wonderful independent contractors on my teams. We’ll still do excellent work. But Amy will, I hope, be a consistent member of my teams.

If you’re a current client (or a future one!), I look forward to your meeting Amy. This feels like a big milestone for Peace of Mind Organizing® and I’m looking forward to seeing where it leads!

Tagged with: amy hubbard, business practices, employee, organizing team, team organizing

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