Scale Your HR Practices to Enable Better Business Growth

Growing your business inevitably means a bigger workforce. And with more people comes more lines of communication and added complexity. To operate effectively as you scale, it’s necessary to introduce technology, culture and advanced management processes underpinned by solid HR support.

But how do you scale HR? We outline the key HR changes you need to grow your business effectively and efficiently while reducing complexity

Don’t Cross Your Lines of Communication

Running a business with up to twelve employees is fairly straight forward. With a manageable number of personalities, demands and people to communicate with, your HR practices will tend to ensure you’re meeting your legal obligations.

When you reach 13 to 50 people, the situation changes. You’re in what Dan Priestley terms “the desert”: you’re too big to be small and too small to be big. Communication lines increase significantly with each additional person you bring in making it more difficult to convey messages, make decisions and complete work.

The solution? You need to start adapting your culture and communications to set your business up for even more successful and painless growth. Doing this requires a more strategic approach to HR.

Managing Culture From a Distance

As your business reaches the magic tipping point of 13 employees, it’s time to accept you can’t control everything in the same way that you used to. To counteract this, you need to start setting overarching guidelines not just about what you do but about how you do business.

Being clear on the values and behaviours that are important to your business will help you:

• Help you recruit an authentic, strong team who are a good fit for the business
• Identify which employees, both leaders and less senior staff, will further your business growth and those who won’t

Making difficult decisions are just one of the growing pains associated with business expansion. And having a HR resource available to help you deal with them legally and fairly is critical to maintaining employee engagement.

Recruiting and Retaining the Right People

When business growth is one of your main objectives, recruitment and retention are a key part of the plan. Making an occasional job offer for a particular role is one thing; hiring larger numbers of the best talent to accomplish your growth goals is quite different.

In a fierce labour market, your competitors are vying for your ideal candidate’s attention. To stand out you need to ensure you have a:

• clear employer brand and value proposition – one that clarifies who you are as a business and makes you stand out to employees for the right reasons
• competitive compensation and benefits to attract and retain staff
• slick hiring and onboarding practices that create a great first impression and reduce turnover in the first three months
• a clear organisational structure with job roles, reporting lines and career paths so candidates and employees can see a future with your organisation

By getting people through the door effectively and keeping them happy, you’ll retain valuable knowledge and experience, enable the business growth and save time and money by only having to hire once for a role.

Easing the Administrative Burden With HR Technology

With every new hire comes a pile of additional paperwork. Doing everything manually will soon become unmanageable. Which is why it’s so important to get sound administrative practices and the right tools in place.

Replace Excel spreadsheet with HR technology to help you manage everything from holidays and pay to emergency contacts and expenses more easily. A HR database that captures and manages all your people information and is compliant with the GDPR is a critical step.

Look for technology that enables you to keep on top of your people costs with speedy analysis and reporting. Want to know whether your employees’ productivity is keeping pace with your growth plans? Or understand how many people are leaving and at what rate? Or the cost of your benefits? HR technology can deliver this for you.

Build Your Team

Any growing business that doesn’t have sufficient HR support in place will invariably reach a point where it becomes overloaded and fails to grow. Or stumbles over employment law and finds itself in a sticky situation.

Working with an external HR consultant and getting HR support will enable your business to scale while minimising risk and controlling costs. With solid HR processes in place and a developing culture, your business can grow from strength to strength. All supported by a happy, engaged workforce who build your reputation as a great firm to do business with.

For scalable HR support, get in touch at hello@tercushr.co.uk or on 0330 555 1139.