Organisations in rapid growth mode ‒ particularly those seeking to be acquired or to grow by acquisition ‒ typically face several challenges related to HR infrastructure.
Challenges range from offering competitive benefits to attracting top talent, hiring and managing at scale, maintaining the organisation’s culture, and complying with government regulations.
Managing these HR functions requires a lot of time, expertise, and technological infrastructure so that the common pitfalls associated with growth do not become significant obstacles to business success.
In this article, we’ll take a closer look at how PEO companies can address some of these unique challenges through the provision of a robust HR infrastructure.
How a Highly Developed HR Infrastructure Supports Rapid Business Growth
Experience has repeatedly shown that one of the most fundamental mistakes that business leaders can make is to fail to recognize that as their company grows and the size of their workforce increases significantly, the HR functions must grow along with it.
When HR functions don’t metamorphose quickly enough to accommodate growth, organisations can easily lapse into a fire-fighting mode to re-tool and expand their HR infrastructure to the point where it can facilitate the functions of the business. This diversion of resources from the core growth plan creates delays in the scaling up of the business.
A good PEO company can shield organisations from this hitch by offering a customized service model that’s ready to scale seamlessly, thereby allowing business leaders to remain focused on growth without interruption.
Here are some dimensions in which this plays out:
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High-Quality Resources for Recruiting Top Talent
Top talents are drawn to top companies. For growing organisations, this means they must be well-positioned to attract great talent.
Savvy candidates tend to evaluate an organisation by its entire recruiting process—starting from the job brief to the interview process. For instance, an organisation will be more appealing to top talent if its recruiting process involves:
- Well-crafted job descriptions that enable candidates to understand the company’s expectations
- Skilled interviewers that are trained to bypass their bias, ask the right questions, and follow best practices for compliance
- First-class benefits packages that offer choice and flexibility at a competitive cost point
A PEO like Workforce Africa not only affords growing companies the opportunity to plug into a high-level HR infrastructure for recruiting, it also provides their top talent big-business benefits that most organisations at this growth stage may not be able to access on their own.
Memorable Onboarding, Better Employee Experience
Too many business executives underestimate the power of a high-quality employee onboarding experience, which is often to the detriment of their organisation.
Yet, onboarding new employees is a critical moment in every business because it is a unique opportunity for companies to engage their new hires, excite them and provide assurance and confidence that they have joined a great company.
If onboarding is disorganised or unsupportive, new employees may fear that their initial impression of the company was wrong and start to doubt their decision to sign on. This often leads to a sense of disengagement that may be difficult to reverse.
So, the question is: why waste your organisation’s time and resources in hiring a talent if you don’t do what is necessary to unleash their highest performance?
To help organisations create memorable onboarding experiences, good PEOs leverage technology platforms to create a seamless, guided experience for new employees.
It is critical to bear in mind that the end goal of onboarding is to help new hires feel comfortable in the workplace, earn their commitment to the organisation, and help them start producing and contributing to the cause.
Better Performance Management, Higher Employee Performance
Years of experience in a broad section of industries often equip good PEOs to help growing companies design and conduct effective employee performance appraisals on a regular basis.
For instance, to support ongoing performance improvement, Workforce Africa often provides its client organisations with:
- Compensation resources and tools
- Base pay structures
- Supervisor coaching
- Assistance with job descriptions
- Reward and recognition program design
- Self-help tools and worksheets for variable and sales compensation structures
- High-quality HR support for company exit strategies
Instead of investing the time and resources needed to build and scale an internal HR system over the course of their multi-year plan, rapid growth organisations looking to be acquired simply need to plug into the existing HR infrastructure that PEOs provide.
PEOs also enable HR continuity, thus forestalling the problem of institutional knowledge gaps that often surfaces when internal HR employees leave the company as it prepares to sell.
The role of a PEO at a time like this becomes vital to prevent the slowing down of critical HR processes when everything needs to be in peak shape for buyers to review.
High-Quality HR Support for M&A Processes
For companies aspiring to grow by acquiring other organisations through mergers and acquisitions (M&A), a PEO like Workforce Africa offers some specific advantages that may be hard to develop in-house.
Before an acquisition, Workforce Africa can help companies with selected aspects of due diligence. And when the acquisition is made, Workforce Africa goes on to onboard employees of the acquired company in a way that’s professional, welcoming, inspiring, organised and designed to retain top talent.
Our PEO team also help with change management. This can include training about the parent company’s vision, mission, values and culture.
Long after the merger or acquisition is made, Workforce still adds value by helping with talent management, employee engagement and succession planning.
Considering that the value of any company is its talent, performing these HR functions at a high level is crucial during and after an acquisition.
To sum it up,
A company in a rapid growth phase looking to be acquired or to acquire other companies can’t afford to leave its HR infrastructure to chance. Too much is at stake. Consequently, the services of highly experienced PEO companies will always prove invaluable.
Learn more about how Workforce Africa can help your business prepare for its future growth plans.