Advice for HR leaders at a scaling company

With the working world and macroeconomic environment changing rapidly, even businesses that are succeeding and growing face a lot of pressure…They say pressure makes diamonds, but it can also squash you.

As a company goes from, say, 10 employees to 50, and from 50 to 500, the HR department and strategy will likely look different across each of those stages. This presents both opportunities and risks, but now more than ever, it’s a chance to build a function that’s equipped for the modern era.

“I’m a big believer in organizational culture and it’s very fragile. The things that work for a group of 50 don’t necessarily work for a group of 100,” Jo-Ellen Pozner, associate professor at Santa Clara University’s school of business, told HR Brew.

Pillars of culture. “The tension of scale is one of the greatest challenges for companies,” Nadia Singer, chief people officer at Figma, told HR Brew via email. In 2022, the San Francisco-based interface design company doubled its headcount to over 1,000 while also opening new offices in Paris, Berlin, and Tokyo.

HR strategies for companies growing at this rate must be agile while also strong enough to provide structure and new processes for when the old, bootstrapped, or DIY processes won’t work at scale, she said.

“In hyper-growth mode, how to maintain and evolve the connection found at an earlier stage becomes critical,” Singer wrote. She also encouraged peers to be transparent about company activity and changes in order to build trust across the organization.

Willingness to change. Chelsea Johnson, VP of people operations at cloud software company Braze, oversaw similar growth at the marketing platform provider based in New York City, and also emphasized the importance of culture building, offering some advice on how to do it.

“Listen to your employees and allow them to drive the culture, rather than creating it for them.  Provide people with the resources and support to bring their ideas to life to let it bloom organically,” she told HR Brew, adding, “Take the time to truly understand and know your team members.”

Along with the HR team and strategy, broader executives’ responsibilities around culture and people management may also change. This may even require some “upward management.”

“When companies scale, they need to rethink the role of the CEO…because typically the CEO is doing everything, and when you scale, you have to let go. This is a big jump for a lot of CEOs,” Claudia Salvischiani, an HR consultant who advises VC and private equity clients, said in an interview with Stanford’s business school. Singer also recommended a continuous revision of company values.

“For a set of values to create lasting cultural influence, they should be carried forward by leadership and employees alike,” Singer said. In 2022, Figma added the “value of play” to its cultural statement because “it felt like the joy of our team culture wasn’t being fully represented in our value set and we wanted to fix that,” she explained.

“It’s crucial to be open to change and not resist it. Identify what is truly important and be flexible with the other aspects that can evolve over time,” Johnson said. “Change isn’t always a result of something being bad or wrong.”

Rigorously recruiting. “One of the biggest challenges of scaling up is staying true to your talent selection standards. Resist the temptation to just fill seats with subpar talent when the pace is intense,” Penny DeFrank, managing director of people experience at CAIS, wrote in Forbes.

Recruiting teams must also understand the culture of the company.

“Any new employee can mess up your culture,” Pozner said. “That’s costly and painful and difficult. So, as you’re expanding, even though you might be in a rush, even though you might need talent immediately, [look for] people whose values are resonant with your organizational values.”—AK