The challenges of 2021 are behind us, last year’s tax return is almost submitted and you’re ready to get started on those 2022 business growth goals. You’re not alone, as a survey of 85 UK CFOs published by Deloitte last week found most have plans to expand their operations and increase investment, as they expect strong consumer demand to provide a robust year of growth in 2022, while labour shortages are seen as the greatest risk to business.
Business growth
As great as growth is for a business, when it’s substantial or rapid, a big challenge is often ensuring that your organisation’s infrastructure keeps up with that growth. Most often, those challenges are centred on your people:
- Do you have enough people in your business to keep up with demand?
- Do you have the right mix of skills to deliver what your customers need?
- Are your teams structured to deliver efficiently?
- Are you keeping your people engaged so they still feel a part of the business as it grows?
- Are your leaders capable of getting the very best performance from your people?
Getting your HR basics in place
It’s vital that your HR policies are in place, to outline basic expectations of your employees and cover all statutory requirements such as performance management, absenteeism and annual leave. We’re always singing the virtues of the ‘Brilliant Basics’ – the suite of people documentation we recommend every employer has in place to reassure their employees and protect their business. Decades of research show that without these in place, all of your other people-focused activity won’t start to make a difference to your workforce, so it’s vital you start with things like robust contracts of employment, an engaging employee handbook and digestible HR policies.
Scalable HR support
With every new hire comes yet more admin and the need to manage this efficiently and the human resources capacity has to keep up. Also, more and more business leaders are expressing concern over HR management and compliance. If you’re not confident you’ll stay on top of compliance and establishing and documenting new processes and procedures as your business expands, you could look at upskilling your HR resource through training or outsourcing some HR expertise. It also might be time to say goodbye to that giant multi-tab spreadsheet and look at time-saving HR software.
Recruitment and attraction support
Almost half of the CFOs surveyed by Deloitte (46%) reported that their businesses have faced significant or severe recruitment difficulties over the last three months. The good news is, smaller businesses often attract top employees because they can offer challenging responsibilities, good learning opportunities and personal growth. Once you’re clear on the growth plans for the business, start defining the organisation structure, along with roles and responsibilities. Then plan what your employment offering looks like – remember, it’s a competitive market, so think beyond salary and basic holiday entitlement, to enhanced employee offerings, and opportunities to work remotely or flexibly, as this is proving a must-have for the majority of job-seekers.
It’s then time to plan how you’re going to find the talent your business needs – recruitment isn’t a quick task, so specialist support can often speed up the process so that when your business needs more hands on deck, you’re geared up to find it.
Employee retention
Are you making sure your team feels supported, happy and motivated? How you can keep valued team members informed and included in your growth plans? If you don’t feel you have time to devote to this, it’s important to get some outside help. Read our blog post on How to reduce employee turnover
Your HR strategy
Alongside your business strategy, it’s valuable to build an HR strategy (or ‘people strategy’ as we like to call it), that ties into the key growth milestones for the business and has the flexibility to scale up alongside the figures you achieve. Your HR strategy should define how you will recruit, develop and retain employees, as the company grows. Maintaining a strong HR strategy is key to motivating staff, retaining your talented workforce and enabling your business to thrive and smash those 2022 goals.
Want some expert help?
Whether it’s for advice on HR strategy, a recruitment project or retained HR support – we can help – Get in touch with The HR Consultants.
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