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Scaling Your Most Important Resource: People

Forbes Human Resources Council

Head of People at Y7 Studio, overseeing all HR & People efforts company-wide.

When a startup is hiring, one of the most vital things they look for in a candidate is if this person has scaled an organization. This has recently left me reflecting on which factors within the HR and people sector are truly the most important to consider when building for scale. While I believe all aspects of people must be valued and taken into account, four factors, in particular, should be a top priority.

1. Begin intentional work in the DEI space as early as possible.

It is common for companies to wait until they are larger to start this work. However, I can promise that you are only making the future more challenging for yourself. When you start with diversity, equity and inclusion at the forefront, you're able to proactively provide resources and thought leadership for your employees, as opposed to reactively addressing concerns. You build a truly diverse team versus offering new hires a seat at the table down the line. You challenge yourself to ensure that all company programming and initiatives are equitable and inclusive versus launching one-off specific initiatives. You make it so that conversations around interpersonal development, social justice and true inclusion are deeply embedded within your culture. Ultimately, you create a place where people feel heard and valued and want to stay.

2. Build sound systems and processes infrastructure.

If you're an HR leader, you know there is rarely one system that can meet all of your payroll, benefits, recordkeeping, feedback and engagement needs. It can feel incredibly overwhelming to identify which systems are best for you. However, by evaluating your options through the lens of, "Will this system still work for me in two to five years?" the better off you and your organization will be. Shifting systems frequently not only adds to your workload when transitioning but results in headaches and resistance from employees when they are faced with user adoption.

The questions I usually ask myself when vetting a new platform are: Can this system meet more than one of my needs or solve more than one of my problems? Is it user-friendly? Does it add additional time to my administrative work? While it may seem doable at 50 employees, will it become exponentially harder at 200? Does it easily talk to or integrate with other platforms? Will it make a meaningful impact on the employee experience? If the answer is no to several of these questions, the effort to implement may be greater than the impact. When making these decisions, it can also be helpful to involve your employees in the process by asking them for feedback on what they need or what they are missing from their tools in order to do their best work.

3. Create a meaningful onboarding process.

An employee's first 30 days have a huge impact on long-term retention. Effective onboarding will ensure that your employees have a deep understanding of your mission, vision, values and overall approach to people. To do this, you must go beyond a standalone PowerPoint deck and aim to embed these ideals at every touchpoint in the onboarding process. New hires should connect with as many people as possible — both peers and leadership — and feel that these are not just words on a page, but living, breathing parts of the organization.

Questions to consider: How does your company view diversity, equity and inclusion? What programs do you have in place that reflect your mission and values? How are these ideals reflected within daily interactions? How do they come to life in your marketing? Within your supply chain? Employees have plenty of time for on-the-job training, but failing to convey these points in the onboarding process is a missed opportunity that's challenging to get back.

4. Nourish your middle-level managers.

Jim Collins once said, "Those who build great organizations make sure they have the right people on the bus and the right people in the key seats before they figure out where to drive the bus," and I firmly believe this to be true. While it seems obvious that having a strong leadership team is key and that everything trickles down from the top, I believe what often goes unmentioned is the pivotal role your middle-level managers play. Your middle-level managers sit most closely to the ground floor and typically are eager for continued growth within the organization. Ensuring that you have the right people in these seats and that you focus on nourishing and developing them is pivotal. When they're engaged, they lead by example, offer mentorship and guidance to entry-level team members and have a large impact on overall company morale. When these individuals don't feel valued, it can immediately create a toxic culture.

How do you prevent this? How do you continuously ensure this team feels nurtured? While learning and development initiatives, competitive compensation and additional factors play a role, I believe the most important thing you can do is to create a culture of feedback. At the end of the day, this team wants to feel like they have a voice in company decisions. While it's easier said than done, effective feedback and actionable responses are what drives organizational health. It's unrealistic to think that you will always get everything right but are you creating a space for people to speak up? More importantly, are you responding when they speak?

While these four areas are key to focus on, scaling an organization also requires a certain state of mind. It requires drive, passion, agility and the willingness to own and learn from your mistakes. To set yourself up for success, keep these qualities in mind and prioritize your people from day one.


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