Do you run a company that has under 10 employees now?

Do you want to grow it?

Then you can help yourself by planning for this growth.

How?

By setting up systems so that you are ready to hire, onboard and train new people.

Why so much focus on ‘people’?

Because we all are unique beings and to leverage this uniqueness in a way that everyone works towards a common goal is tough.

Here is a quick overview of how you can do each (Hire, Onboard, and Train)

1) Hire Good People

You can choose great people if your applicant pool is big. So, do all you can to attract a lot of people to your jobs. You do it by way of ‘employer branding’. Look it up if you do not know what it is. 

It does not end here. You need to have an automated application process in places, focused on fast turnaround and quick communication with applicants.

Read “Who” to understand how to hire the right people. Just by reading and applying what’s there in the book, you’ll build an unfair advantage.

2) Onboard Them

Start by creating a structure for what work one needs to go when they come onboard. Detail what a new hire does on day 1, week 1, and beyond. 

Plan how will they learn, and how will they feel connected and valued.

Use a knowledge-sharing app for sharing important information. You can use Slab, Tettra, Quip or Confluence (by Atlassian) to set it up. This reduces your reliance on email to share initial insights.

You can also create an employee handbook. It can be as brief as a page at the beginning with listing on holidays for a year, work timings, leave policies, team phone numbers, and anything you think new team members should know.

Document sharing is a big part of team collaboration these days and most startups use Google Drive for this. At some point, you’ll have to move to an app like Dropbox where you have preset permissions for different employees so that you won’t have to update sharing settings all the time. This may not be needed until you go to the 10-15 employee mark.

3) Train New Team Members

The first 90 days are a good time for employees to learn about working in a new company. Help them by training them. It does not have to be in-person training. You can budget LinkedIn Learning or a similar platform for the training of new employees.

Have new employees – present each week’s learnings for 10 minutes on Friday.

Once you build a foundation, you can be confident in hiring multiple at the same time, and see your brand grow.