How HR Teams Support Scaling in Hyper-Growth Mode

Register for our Scaling HR at Lightning Speed to Support Your High Growth Company Webinar December 17, 2019 at 1 PM EST (12 PM CST, 10 AM PST)

Businesses today are growing faster than ever. Increased globalization combined with better business technologies are helping organizations hire and scale in a way that’s more distributed and — in an ideal world — more efficient. But we all know what they say about the best laid plans, and when it comes to scaling your people operation in hyper-growth mode, it’s better to stay ahead of the potential breaking points than risk blindly succumbing to them. Every day, the people team at TripActions works hard to move fast while simultaneously planning ahead for those potential pitfalls. Luckily, there are a few tried-and-true ways to equip your HR team to support your organization as it scales at lightning speed.

Prioritize employee engagement and satisfaction.

The numbers have spoken — establishing an employee-centric culture that prioritizes engagement and satisfaction is simply good for business. When you consider that happy employees are 20% more productive, and happy sales teams sell 37% more, it becomes crystal clear that prioritizing your workforce’s well-being is critical to your business’ ability to successfully scale. Consider what your team is doing to ensure employees feel engaged and satisfied at work. How are you creating environments in and outside of the office that make employees feel supported and remain productive? Especially in hyper-growth mode, everyone across the organization should be running full-speed ahead and aligned around the same goals. Because of this, it’s critical that employees feel engaged and satisfied — not frustrated, overwhelmed, and ultimately burnt out — while on the job.

Provide solutions that make it easy to be more productive at work.

In their consumer lives, employees can request a ride home from the airport, get late night snacks delivered, or reorder laundry detergent at the push of a hand-held button. On top of that, cross-channel support for all of these services is always customer-centric and often available 24/7 365. With so much convenience at their literal fingertips, it comes as no surprise that behind-the-times business technologies are simply ignored in favor of more innovative alternatives. An example of this can be seen with corporate travel booking and management — it can take over an hour for travelers to book on most legacy tools, which leads them to take to consumer travel apps instead. Today’s state-of-the-art corporate travel technology takes the friction out of the corporate travel booking and management experience to keep road warriors productive and satisfied whether they’re in the office or on the road.

Scale your values along with the business.

As an HR team, you’re not solely responsible for building and sustaining the culture, but you should do what you can to inspire your workforce to live out your values — from the top down, across regions, and throughout teams. If the organization is growing, the values it was built on need to keep up or you risk losing sight of your North Star. Leveraging your managers is one way to successfully scale your culture and keep your entire organization values-aligned, as is building in feedback loops to better understand your people and gain insights into where you’re hitting the mark and where you may need to put in some extra work.

Hire and grow your talent thoughtfully.

Not least, but by no means least, is the need for firms operating in hyper-growth mode to hire and retain the proper talent. To ensure that prospects are inspired by and enthusiastic about the direction you’re all going in, teach your team how to recruit with culture and values in mind. And it’s crucial to give those dedicated workers who have helped you get where you are now the appropriate development opportunities so they may advance their careers alongside the company.

If the integrity of the human infrastructure is not carefully considered or maintained, a company’s culture may suffer when it experiences rapid growth. However, by keeping these culture-focused suggestions in mind, your HR team will be well-prepared to assist in successfully scaling your workforce even during a period of rapid expansion. Sign up for this upcoming webinar, Scaling HR at Lightning Speed to Enable Your High-Growth Company, to find out more about the methods, plans, and tools that support the expansion of the human resources department in companies.

 

This article was originally posted on Workology.