Finding, attracting, hiring and retaining the best employees in your industry is likely never far from the minds of your executives and leaders. Since you’ve successfully grown into the Middle Market, your organization hopefully can offer more attractive packages than your smaller counterparts. And, as you grow and your business becomes more sustainable and less chaotic, your hiring demands have likely leveled off a bit as well.
If you’re feeling comfortable with the growth of both your business and teams, it can be difficult to see why strategic talent planning is necessary. But, if you have dreams to continue to grow past the Middle Market, your current hiring model may not be right for the future.
Moving Beyond On-Demand Hiring In Your Middle Market Company
As your company has grown, you’ve probably experienced lean times in hiring, coupled with explosive hiring growth periodically. You’ve likely utilized on-demand hiring, extensively. Which, at the time fit your needs. However, for sustained or large-scale growth you’ll probably have to change up your methods and thinking.
If you don’t already plan for hiring needs, start now. One place to look is to your forecasting projections to help you figure out when and where you’ll likely need to hire in the future. If you know you want to grow sales by X amount in 5 years, what areas of your organization are going to need more employees? Production, sales, customer service, etc.? By tying hiring planning into your growth, you’ll avoid being caught between growth and catching up with staffing.
Don’t Wait To Implement Middle Market Hiring Growth Until You Need It
It’s all well and good to forecast and plan for hiring growth; it will definitely benefit your organization. However, part of being strategic is making sure you are ready slightly before your needs. Why? If you are aggressively growing, bringing on new team members and trying to get them up to speed adds aggravation and stress to an already stressful time. You won’t put the best foot forward to your new hires, your existing employees may feel stretched to the breaking point, and you’ll likely lose people from both camps.
Instead, focus on bringing in employees a bit before they are needed. Figure out on average how long it takes an employee to fully be integrated into your organization and be mostly self-sufficient and productive. Then, make sure you hire ahead of that time. If you’ve tied your sales growth directly into your employee growth, you should be able to see the speed bumps before you hit them.
Also, consider bringing on people in stages or hiring for different areas at different times. By not stressing out your internal ecosystem, you’ll likely experience better results. Lastly, if you plan ahead, you won’t feel scarcity and hire just any person who applies. You’ll have time to be more discerning and make sure you’re hiring just the right person every time. You will also be able to more clearly see the full potential of candidates for the future, not just for where they are right now and how they can fill your immediate needs.
Strategic thinking and planning are key in ensuring your Middle Market growth and success. Hiring certainly deserves the same attention and strategic forethought.
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