Employment trends expert explains why business growth needs to first begin in the HR department
Scaling your business is something that should be on every employer’s mind right now. Increasing your revenue while keeping team expenses stable is one of the most important tools for longtime profit. But when scaling your business, it’s important to consider how to sustain growth from an HR perspective as well as from a revenue perspective.
In today’s market, every company has aggressive goals for growth, whether growing the business internally or through a merger. Typically, business owners approach scaling as solely revenue-based. That can mean that HR becomes an afterthought in your strategic plan. But the truth is that having a plan for scaling your HR as your business grows is vital to the success of growth overall.
Rob Wilson of Employco USA outlines the HR steps that employers should consider when creating their strategic growth plans:
- Benefits, Rules, and Regulations Across State Lines. “When you’re a business just operating in one or two locations, it can be easy to navigate how employment regulations and benefits affect your employees and business,” says Wilson. “But when scaling up your business to include more employees in more locations, it can be easier to miss things or not realize that a new out-of-state location has a new set of regulations you are expected to meet.
Additionally, if your growth takes your company into the 50+ employee size, that also comes with a new set of regulations. Whether it’s something as simple as ensuring that your health insurance offerings work for employees at all of your locations, or knowing the current employment compliance requirements for employers, working with an outsourced HR firm, like Employco, can help you navigate the rules and regulations around having employees in multiple locations across multiple states.”
- Company Culture: “Strong company culture helps you attract better talent and retain the great talent you already have,” says Wilson. “But if you haven’t paid attention to your company culture or considered how the culture of merging businesses may differ, that can hurt both retention and recruiting. A strong culture lets employees know where they fit in. It shows employees that they work for a company that values them and shares their values and voice, which helps drive engagement.
Creating a strong culture can be as simple as providing well-defined goals and policies, or implementing programs and events that support morale, increase employee engagement, and make being at work more enjoyable. Take time to include company culture in your strategic plan, including defining what your culture is and how you can make improvements. Employco helps organizations implement strategies and policies that help build strong company cultures and support employee engagement.”
- Communication is vital. “Communicating effectively with your employees is a critical part of company success, even during the best of times,” says Wilson. “Good communication is even more important when your company is going through changes, such as growth.
Business owners need to plan how they will keep employees in the know throughout the period of growth and beyond. This can be as simple as ensuring that leadership communicates regularly on how the growth or change will affect employees. They may be wondering if their benefits will change or how they fit into the bigger plan for the growing company. Ensuring that policies and processes are well documented and streamlining employee onboarding and training are other ways to help employees feel included and ensure that everyone gets the same information. Additionally, ensuring that employees feel like they have a voice with employee engagement surveys can be a good way to hear feedback on current policies and upcoming or past changes. Ensuring that newer employees can quickly and easily reach out to their coworkers with questions or receive mentoring can help increase retention and foster work relationships and employee development.”
“In a tough labor market like we’re facing today, you want to recruit the best employees and keep them,” says Wilson.
For more info on HR scaling or any other HR and employment issues, please contact Rob Wilson at rwilson@thewilsoncompanies.com.