Many companies look forward to the day when they’re slammed with calls and orders, as it means they’ve found their market and made a real impact on their industry. However, some companies might find that this rapid expansion and new level of need become overwhelming and start to cause more harm than good for the entire team. Here’s how to tell if your business is growing too fast and your teams are suffering from growing pains.
The Work Doesn’t Feel Efficient
It may be the most obscure metric in this list, but if your intuition tells you that your current processes aren’t as efficient as they should be, listen to it. Solutions are more likely to present themselves when you vocalize the issue, so take your gut feeling to the team to see if they have the same concern. Agreement from your peers and employees that the day-to-day operations feel jumbled or overly complicated is a sign that your company has stacked too much into its process. Take a step back to reassess the whole picture with your business’s new growth in mind.
Employees Are Unclear About Position Functions
A rapidly expanding company often includes instant innovation and avenues for growth, which, in turn, put more duties on your team’s shoulders. In small teams, especially, quick business growth can be extremely rewarding yet distressing as employees navigate new functions, learn new tools, and try to figure out their daily expectations.
Growing businesses tend to change employees’ job functions from the list they received when they joined the company. If employees receive a mixed set of functions that don’t correctly utilize their skills or sit in their wheelhouse without added training or compensation, it can begin to affect morale and their desire to grow with the company.
Your Team is Struggling To Meet Deadlines
Customer and client satisfaction are undoubtedly one of the most pressing issues for a business. Quick growth is only possible with increased demand, but if your business is growing too fast, your employees can drown in the unreasonable workload. You’ll need to establish new hiring initiatives as quickly as possible to prevent burnout in your current employees.
If you are beginning to see signs of rapid growth that your business wasn’t ready for, take a step back. Both brick-and-mortar and online businesses will often need to reorganize and shave off unnecessary procedures and tools that are weighing down their productivity and finances. Restructuring to accommodate further growth beyond what’s already happened or implementing scalable solutions will be essential to preventing a bloated workload in the future.
The Edge Team
