Almost all successful companies were started with one person or a very small team. But as the desired success comes, it brings changes and a quickly growing team. If the success happens too fast, it may not be so enjoyable as there will be no time to adapt the internal processes. Let’s take a look at the main issues coming with a rapidly growing team.
1- Help the New Recruits Adjust Quickly
New employees need to adapt to a completely new environment. They have to learn how to collaborate with new colleagues and how to show their skills to an employer. When your team is growing fast, it’s your job to help them show their full potential from the beginning. It is important to avoid misunderstandings and bring transparency and structure.
Give new employees a detailed job description, define the scope of work, describe their role and communicate your expectations. Ideally, they should have some sort of employee handbook readily available for them. This way the newcomers can start their work with confidence. The question of defining roles should arise regularly as the team faces new challenges. You don’t want to make your company rigid, so flexibility is important.
Related Reading:
5 Tips to Make New Hires Comfortable & Productive
2- Help the Employees to Synchronize their Career Goals with the Company’s Growth Plan
Talk to employees about main objectives and the future of the company. Share with them your business vision. It will almost guarantee an engagement and productive work. Your new team members need to have not only an understanding of their tasks but a big picture as well. It will boost their motivation and raise responsibility.
Tie the vision of your company’s future with achievable goals set for each employee. This way everyone would feel that he or she is pushing the business forward. Give a recognition to the team members who fulfill their goals to show all newcomers how much you appreciate the commitment.
3- Sync Your Team Regularly
Nobody likes meetings, however, meetings are necessary, especially for growing teams. Regular daily meetings help employees to know the responsibilities of their colleagues, to get aware of each other’s deadlines and understand the workflow. Also, meetings help newcomers to feel that they are part of one team.
When setting up meetings, try to make them as productive as possible. Let people know the agenda of regular meetings. Keep the timing of the meetings short. You don’t want to waste a big part of the workday at a meeting. Moreover every meeting must have clear action items for each team member at the end of the session.
These regular daily meetings are crucial initially, but as the team settles down is very much responsible, the frequency can be altered to ever other day and then weekly meetings.
4- Use Software for Your Benefit
When the team has more than two employees, it becomes difficult to manage it. It will be wise to invest in software that will help you to manage a growing team. Project management software brings transparency into workflow and structures processes very well. Time sheet software helps to control overload and analyze employees’productivity. It helps with accounting as well so you can have as many people as you need. Test the software before purchasing it and opt for free versions when possible to avoid unnecessary costs.
5- Plan Your Resources
Analyze your business development and start having interviews before the actual personnel gap occurs. It takes time to find a perfect employee that would fit the role and you don’t want to run of human resources. Think about your values and translate them to candidates during the hiring period. It will help to attract people with similar values and views. Select the individuals with the whole team in mind to support your corporate culture.
Wrapping it up!
The startup life is fast and busy, but it is helpful to be prepared fora rapid team growth and make a plan on how to handle it most efficiently. Keep in mind the main points that we took a look at and plan the future of your company.
