Lesson #1: Make Considered Decisions
Fraser has reflected on the importance of maintaining focus in those early stages of scaling, when momentum begins to pick up, your hard work starts to pay off, and all of a sudden; you have to make quicker decisions to keep up.
“When things are moving quickly it's all too easy to be reactive. To be swept up in the momentum of new business wins, awards and increased profits. Decisions should be made in the cold light of day. In calm, and considered moods, and never rushed.”
By following this lesson to keep your head straight and maintain your focus on your goals, purpose and direction, you can avoid being careless, deviating from your strategy or mission, or making hasty decisions that can have long term negative implications on your business.
Lesson #2: When It Comes to Timing, Don't Underestimate Data
One of the great challenges of scaling, “hiring correctly” normally refers to the person you’re recruiting - but what about the timing of growth? Fraser advises that you must get this timing right - and that your best friend in that goal - is data.
“If you want to scale, it's going to cost you. Every new hire negatively impacts your productivity for at least 3 months. They need time to ramp up and their managers need time to invest in them to facilitate that. If you hire when you're too busy, there's no time to train. If you hire when you're too quiet, there's no work to get involved in to upskill. Getting the timing of hiring right needs data.”
So what data should you be using to inform scaling timelines? Fraser shares what has worked at Engaging.io, to help his team succeed in this tricky process.
He says his team measures “sales patterns, conversion rates, productivity and profitability, and they all require the right data to be tracked. If you're not set up to identify, log and analyse the right data, you won't know when the right time to hire is. You won't know what the impact of the hire will mean to your bottom line. This may mean reinventing your proverbial wheel, but it'll be worth it.”
By ensuring your teams are able to give you data-driven insights, you can avoid hiring at the wrong time. Getting the timing wrong can increase your recruitment costs, as well as overburden and cause dissatisfaction among current employees, resulting in decreased productivity.
Lesson #3: Make your Onboarding Process Perfect
Once you’ve got your timing right, you then need to ensure your process is as equally well perfected, because as Fraser points out: “Finding good people can be hard. So can keeping them. Hiring the wrong people can make the right people leave. You cannot afford to get this wrong”
So how does one deliver the perfect onboarding? We’ve summarised Fraser’s lesson into three key areas:
- Work on your Employee Value Proposition: “Having the right Employee Value Proposition (EVP) can completely change your entire business”. Your EVP could include details on what outstanding benefits your team members receive, summarising their expected growth journey at the company, or even collecting testimonials from your staff around what they like about working in their teams.
- Conduct your recruitment with clarity, focus and feedback: “From writing the best advert possible and using the right terms to reflect your company, you need to provide true insight into your business and the role at hand. This extends all the way to giving constructive and useful feedback to people who didn't get the job. How you start your onboarding process in the recruitment phase ultimately impacts who you onboard.”
- Nail the first three months: How you introduce new starters to your team and make them feel in those early, often scary days is directly going to impact how well they perform in that team. How you connect them to the purpose of your company through your values and culture will impact not just how long they stay, but how much they delight your customers through their work. The first three months of a candidate's journey are arguably the most important of their entire career with any business.”
So what’s the trick to getting these three right? At Engaging.io, the secret to success is to “have a robust process and execute it perfectly every time.”
In conclusion, scaling your business requires more than mere ambition—it demands strategic foresight, data-driven decision-making, and a commitment to excellence at every turn. By heeding these hands-on lessons learnt through Engaging.io’s impressive growth, you can maximise on this exciting but complex stage, to achieve the best possible outcomes for your company.
About Sharesource
We help Engaging.io scale their business by hiring the right people to their team. From the first two remote members, we have already built up to eight members working with them and will continuously support them in their growth journey.
Chat with us to find out how we can help your company grow with highly qualified candidates from all over the globe.
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