All businesses tend to start with small teams, and with a level of success, growth is inevitable. With that, there will be many changes, including team expansion. As much as we all want to succeed, sometimes growth can happen too quickly, which may leave a bumpy road to any necessary restructuring to help the team adapt to altered processes that will help support the business. Here’s a few tips to help you manage a quickly growing team.
Starting a new job can be stressful for employees, with the pressure to meet expectations, communicate with existing co-workers, and prove their skills on top of being in a completely new environment, adaptation is a must. If you manage a growing team, it is important to make sure your new recruits are not only competent, but able to utilize their individual skills to help compliment the team. It is important to encourage them to use their abilities and show them their potential from the start. When everyone fully understands their expected position and tasks, your business will run much more smoothly. To achieve this, it is crucial to define their place on the team, provide a detailed description of the expectations of their role, and allow for any communication to clarify anything not fully understood. When all of this is in place, it gives the new employee confidence in starting their position which will help them blend into your existing team as well as prevent avoidable misunderstandings or lapses in productivity.
Meetings can be a real drag on both ends, but they are unavoidable when it comes to the success of teams, especially when they are growing. The ultimate reasoning behind this is because it gives everyone a chance to coordinate with each other and confirm deadlines. It also gives a feeling of being a part of a whole unit as opposed to a group of individuals working separately. Regular daily meetings can really bring the team together and help boost morale. Having multiple meetings with different teams within the unit can serve as a super binding factor within those groups. It may prove time consuming or a bit of an extra expense if you provide food (which the employees will always appreciate), but it is well worth the effort.
Communication and management tools are must-haves. Handling more than two employees at a time means you cannot watch them closely to observe and adjust your focus to make each one as highly productive as possible. It is important to know what results they get from what work styles they are implementing. That is why it is paramount to put some existing tools to use so you can make better calls when it comes to handling ever expanding groups. For instance, timekeeping tools are a great resource that allows you to view how much time is actually spent on specific tasks and projects, so it is good at help with planning and observing accountability of each team member. Without the requirement of needing to scope out the work of each individual employee personally, it will be much easier to bring more people on board without feeling overwhelmed.
