Scaling a business is complex.
As a business owner, you have to consider various factors when growing your business such as your expanding your client base, improving your content marketing efforts and optimising your systems and processes.
However, one of the most important aspects is expanding your team. Building a well-knit, talented team is key to scaling your business and achieving long-term business goals.
In this article, we’ll explore why scaling your team is important, when you should do it and how you can do it effectively without making costly mistakes.
Why is scaling a business important?
Given below are the 5 reasons why scaling your team is important:
Improved efficiency
By scaling your team, you can distribute the work more effectively amongst your team members which will lead to increased productivity, faster project completion rates and hence, better profits.
Improved client service
Having more talent to manage your client’s needs and expectations leads to improved client satisfaction and retention.
Expand your market share
If you need to expand your services and reach more customers, you’ll need to hire dedicated talents who’ll be able to deliver your services effectively.
Increased revenue potential
By hiring more talent, your business can take on more work and thereby, improve your revenue and profits.
Better company culture
Scaling your team with like-minded individuals helps you maintain a positive company culture and boost employee morale which leads to better employee satisfaction.
When should you scale your business?
Just because there are benefits to scaling your team doesn’t mean you should do it immediately. The key to achieving success with your team expansion is understanding when to do it.
Given below are the 5 signs when you should consider scaling your team:
Becoming a market leader
If you want to stand out from your competitors as the go-to business in your niche, it makes sense to hire specialised talents with expertise in your domain.
Increased workload
If your employees are involved in multiple projects, are working overtime and seem overwhelming, it becomes imperative to hire more employees so that you can distribute the workload effectively among your team.
Expanding your offerings
When you plan to expand your services, you must hire dedicated professionals with years of experience to help you provide more services to your clients.
Consistent growth in revenue
When you have been achieving consistent revenue growth for your services for a long period of time, you know that there’s demand in the market for your offerings. In such a case, you can consider scaling your team to make even more revenue.
Increasing your market share
Hiring more employees makes sense when you want to reach more clients, take on more work and increase your market share.
How to scale your business?
Now that we’ve discussed the benefits of scaling a business and when to do so, let’s see how you can scale your business effectively:
Assess your current team
Before you expand your business, it’s essential to analyse the pain points of your current team so that you have a clear idea of the problems you want to solve. For example, some of the things you must analyse include:
- Are there any skill gaps in the current team?
- Is the team overworked with various projects?
- Are there any tasks that can be outsourced?
- Can the team take on more work?
- Are there aspects of the business that can be automated?
Define your hiring process
Once you’ve assessed your current team, it’s time to define a hiring process. By this, we mean creating effective job descriptions, conducting interviews and creating tests (if required).
This will help you streamline your hiring process and save time and energy.
- Some of the questions you need to ask yourself are:
- Where will you be posting your job openings?
- How do you plan to communicate with your prospective candidates?
- What skills will you be looking for in your applicants?
- What questions do you intend to ask in your interviews?
- How do you plan to examine your candidates practically via tests?
Leverage your network
One of the best ways to expand your team is by leveraging your network on social media and offline. It’ll help you tap into your industry contacts and find talent relevant to your business’s offerings.
Offer attractive compensation
Many business owners are guilty of looking for cheap talent in order to reduce costs and more profits. But what ends up happening is that they deliver low quality of work which affects the business’s bottom line.
Hence, you must always offer competitive salaries, including perks and benefits, to attract the best talent for your business.
Prioritizing culture fit
If you hire a talent who may be experienced in your domain but doesn’t fit with your culture, this may end up costing your business in the long run.
And hence, while hiring, it’s essential to prioritize candidates who share the same values and vision as that of your business so they can gel with your team seamlessly and deliver the best possible work.
Consider outsourcing
If you’re low on budget or don’t have the bandwidth to hire full-time employees for a particular service, you can consider outsourcing the talent. It helps you save money as you won’t be providing them with salaries and benefits.
Hiring a recruiter
If you don’t have the time to hire an in-house employee and would rather focus on the things that matter to your business, you can hire a recruiter to help you source, vet and hire top talent for your business.
While you do so, ensure that your recruiter has past experience in recruiting in your domain and they have an understanding of your business’s culture.
You can achieve the same with InCommon, a headhunter business in India that helps you source, vet and hire talents according to your needs. We help you build a fully remote creative and marketing team at a 40% lesser cost.
With InCommon, you get the following benefits:
- InCommon sources from its existing pool of pre-vetted talents so you don’t have to.
- Accelerate your hiring cycle by shortlisting 3 domain experts in 3 days as per your needs.
- Ensure smooth delivery of your work with talents that are well-versed in English.
- End-to-end compliance (EOR) and payroll management
- Talent replacement guarantee
5 Common Hiring Mistakes To Avoid While Scaling
Avoid these 5 common pitfalls to ensure you have a smooth scaling process:
Rushing the hiring process
Hiring the right talent takes time and effort and hence, you should be patient while sourcing and vetting your candidates else it’ll backfire your business in the long run.
Take your time to go through all the job applications and shortlist candidates according to their skills, experience and cultural fit.
Creating a generic job description
When you create a job description, mention the relevant skills, experience and values you want to see in your ideal candidate rather than copy-pasting a job description from the internet.
This will help you attract the right talent while staying away from the non-qualified talent.
Scaling for the sake of it
Many businesses are guilty of scaling their teams either in anticipation of new projects or when they have the necessary funds. Doing so is highly risky and will increase your costs in the long run due to which you may be forced to lay off your employees.
Neglecting training and development
Hiring the right talent is only one aspect of scaling your business.
You also need to ensure that you train them regularly and invest in their professional growth so that they stay motivated to give the best for your business.
Hiring a generalist rather than a specialist
Another mistake that business owners are guilty of hiring someone who’s experienced in many skills and expecting them to do various projects.
Know that if you do so, you’ll be getting average output from them and you’ll be better off hiring specialists who have years of experience in your domain.
Conclusion
Scaling a business is not easy but if done right, you can expand your team with the right talent, get more clients and achieve better profits in the long run.
Remember that you must scale your business only when you have the need for it. And while doing so, remember to assess your current team, draw out the pain points and address them so that you can solve the right problems with your team expansion.
Alternatively, you can hire us if you want to save time and money and focus on your business growth instead. As a headhunter business, we help you build a fully remote creative and marketing team at a 40% lesser cost.
