Scaling Smart: When and How to Expand Your Team

There will come a time when you’ll want to scale your business. To do this, you’ll need to expand your team, to keep up with the demands of a growing business. Below, we’ve taken a look at when and how to expand your team, and why planning is the key to scaling success.

What Does it Mean to Expand a Team?

Scalability means being able to increase your operations and output, and boost your revenue, without using more resources than you currently do. It’s a way to expand and grow your business, without putting more time or money into resources. In regards to your team, scaling means expanding your team enough to increase revenue, but without increasing team expenses and outgoings. If your team brings in more sales, but they’re spending more money doing so, you haven’t scaled successfully.

Why You Should Properly Plan Your Team Expansion

It’s rarely a good idea to jump straight into scaling and expanding your team, not without having a detailed plan in place.

• It Leads to Stronger, Bonded Teams – Teams that perform well tend to be a lot stronger, more collaborative and bonded than those that are underperforming.  It’s easier to build a strong and bonded team when you have a plan of action. This plan should provide employees  with structure, advice and a detailed roadmap for how their output will be increased, all of which should be centred on working together and consistently achieving results.

• Planning Increases Revenue – By scaling your team, you can increase your business’ revenue, without spending more on resources, hiring or day-to-day operations. With a plan in place, you can scale in a way that increases revenue, without requiring you to hire anyone new, change your workflow or break the bank investing in more resources.

• It Boosts Efficiency – It’s one thing to boost your team’s efficiency, it’s another to keep up with that pace. If you don’t have a plan of how you’re going to expand your team, it’s extremely hard to keep up with the growing demand that comes with scaling a business. It’s important to ensure that your team has everything they need to scale efficiently, including everything needed to take on more responsibility, otherwise sustaining efficiency can be difficult.

• Planning Makes it Easier to Check Employee Performance – With a plan, it’s a lot easier to track if your expansion is succeeding. This is a lot harder to do without a plan, as you won’t know whether you’re on track to hit your targets or whether you’ve veered off course. A plan can give you an idea of how individual employees are doing, and how much they’ve contributed to the scaling, increased output and revenue. This is why you should include goals and targets in your plan, all of which will enable you to evaluate your team’s success along the way. If things aren’t going as well as you’d hoped, a plan will help you to make changes as necessary.

• It Increases Productivity – You can’t dive into scaling your team unless you have a group of productive people working with you, and this all comes down to having a comprehensive plan. Not only does a plan provide you with direction for expanding your team, but it gives individuals guidance and something to refer to. A lot can change within a team when a business scales, but a plan will ensure that everyone knows what they’re doing and can be as productive as possible. It’s a lot easier to be productive if you know exactly what’s being asked of you.

Expanding Your Team and Scalability Success

• Try to Be Flexible – It’s tempting to approach expanding your team with a strict idea of how you’re going to go about things, and no plans to waiver from that. But, it’s important to be flexible, even if being flexible isn’t something that comes natural to you. You need a plan that clearly maps out what you’re hoping to achieve and how, but still leaves enough room for flexibility if things change. There’s no knowing if a problem may arise along the way, and the plan for expanding your team needs to be flexible enough to adapt.

• Be Realistic About What You Can Achieve – Your team might have the capacity to increase output, but don’t get carried away with grand plans of them getting double or triple the amount done. There are going to be limits to what’s truly possible on a day-to-day basis. After all, there are only so many hours in the day. If you’re not realistic, you run the risk of ruining team morale and confidence, when employees are disappointed by not reaching the unreachable goals that have been set.

• Have a Strong, Capable Team – You can’t scale alone, so make sure you have a strong, capable and willing team to support you. Factor in the strengths, weaknesses and abilities of each team member. Identify the necessary skills and experience required to achieve your goals, and then assign key tasks with this in mind. Selecting the right people for the job is vital as, without a capable team that can manage tasks and meet targets, you’re likely to find scaling your business challenging.

• Don’t Shy Away from Delegating – You might think that you can take on everything yourself, but this is unlikely to be the case in practice. With a capable team supporting you, it makes sense to utilise the skills, experience and knowledge of others. When you delegate, you’ll find it a lot easier to increase your own output, maximising efficiency.