Time-to-slate

How it works

Clean admin seats can be two weeks. Weird specialist seats take longer. The clock starts when hours and English bar are locked, not when someone says ‘we should hire.’ For a U.S. company hiring one Filipino teammate, write this into the brief, the employment contract, and the peso payroll file before the start date. Slack habits do not override the Labor Code, BIR, or NPC. If the local employer of record holds the paper, they run the statutory step; you still owe a clean operating definition so the seat does not fail in week three. Put a number on the example when you budget loaded cost, because a nameless allowance always returns as a December surprise or a missed SLA.

Example: brief locked 2 March, slate 16 March: 14 days. Brief changed 10 March: clock restarted.

How it differs

Time-to-start includes notice and equipment after the pick. Slate is the meeting set.

Common errors

Starting the clock on the first sales call.

In practice

Treat Time-to-slate as a week-one operating object. Put this on the scorecard or the start-date checklist. If it only appears in a pitch deck, it will not survive week one. Write an owner - founder, local employer, or worker - and a date you will look at it again: first cutoff, first holiday, or first miss. If nobody can show a contract clause, a payslip line, a calendar block, or a checklist box, you do not have time-to-slate yet. You have a conversation. Convert the conversation before the person starts, while changing the deal still costs a paragraph rather than a resignation. Re-read the worked example above against the actual hire in front of you. If the numbers in that example cannot be swapped for this seat’s pesos, hours, and start date, the brief is still unfinished.