5 Tips for Scaling Your HR Team

Scaling. Rapid growth. Expansion. These tasks can be daunting - especially for small HR departments or HR teams of one. What does it mean to scale? How do you know when it’s time for your organization to do so? And what are the key considerations? This article will be a comprehensive resource to help HR answer these questions before developing a plan to scale.

Why HR plays a huge role in building the future of an organization

Hiring can be costly, and it often takes months to see the return-on-investment. Meanwhile, the purpose of scaling is to maximize revenue without impacting expenses. This requires a strategic approach that HR is primed to design. After all, there are considerations about talent attraction, onboarding and of course - ongoing retention and engagement that are crucial to making the scaling plan a success.

Five Key Considerations for HR When Creating a Scaling Plan

1. Vision, goals and priorities

What are the organizational goals and how will scaling help you to achieve them? What are the key priorities within the scaling plan? E.g. Are there particular departments that are first priority? Are you expanding the current organizational model or creating a new one entirely? Are there talent gaps and specific areas of expertise that you don’t currently have but are hoping to fill? What is the broader vision?

Answering all of these questions will help HR teams properly identify the gaps, write accurate job descriptions, and create a talent plan that will attract the right people.

2. Consistency in values

As you scale, it’s easy for organizational values to become lost, forgotten or replaced. If you haven't already defined your values, pre-scaling is the right time. This will allow you to screen for applicants that share your values, in order to ensure their consistency and maintenance, even as you rapidly expand.

3. Corporate culture

What elements of organizational culture do you want to maintain? Perhaps your organization is one where everyone is invested in work-life balance, or one that is highly collaborative, or one where people openly encourage risk-taking. Whatever it may be - consider how to maintain that as you scale. In some cases, employee referral systems can work well. But in other cases, the more you share about your culture up-front in your website and recruitment materials, the chances you give people to self-select in or out based on whether or not it suits them.

4. Diversity and inclusion

Do you have a D&I plan or strategy in place? How would you like to progress it as you expand? If you’re working on one, how can your scaling plans further the initiative? What forms of diversity are you seeking, and what steps will you make to ensure their inclusion and belonging in the environment? These are important questions that can support your talent attraction plan. For example, if you know your initiatives involve veterans, you can work with organizations that support veterans as part of your recruitment strategy.

5. Talent development and engagement opportunities

Onboarding the right people is just the first step. As they grow with the organization, how will you ensure that there’s appropriate levels of oversight, training, talent development and other key elements that can drive their own professional development as well as their engagement more broadly? After all, if the scaling plan ends up being a revolving door of hires-quits, organizations won’t receive the ROI that they’re expecting from it, nor will they be able to reach their bigger goals or vision.

How HR tech like GoCo helps with scaling

Lightning-fast onboarding - One of the biggest parts of scaling a team is an efficient and easy onboarding process. If you have hefty number goals, you’re likely looking for an easy way to send digital offer letters, manage onboarding compliance, and tracking all new employee data in an organized fashion. GoCo’s onboarding platform helps automate your new hire and onboarding workflow so you can greet all your new hires with a smile instead of paperwork.

Hands-off benefits administration - HR is used to manually managing employee benefits and any questions that follow. With GoCo’s self-service benefits enrollment feature, new hires are empowered to find the right plan for their families on their own. They can compare and contrast all eligible plan features and enroll in minutes. Again, the time savings that come with scaling a team will help greatly.