top of page
Synergy Consulting logo

Growth Without the Growing Pains

Writer: Kristan Strate
Kristan Strate
3 hours ago
5 min read

You landed the big contract. Revenue is climbing, the phone won’t stop ringing, and you just approved six new hires. Ninety days later, your best supervisor is running on fumes, two of the new people have already quit, and nobody can find the current version of the offer letter. Its a nightmare and now you are questioning the choices you've made.


Growth didn’t break your business. The foundation underneath it did.


That foundation is your people: how you hire them, lead them, pay them and support them. It was strong enough to get you here. That doesn’t mean it’s built for what comes next.


Growth is disguised as a business plan when it really should be a people strategy


Most growth plans are detailed on revenue, space and equipment. The people part usually shows up as a single line: “hire more staff.” That’s where the risk hides.


When BDC analysed Statistics Canada data on roughly 950,000 Canadian SMEs, it found only 4% qualified as high performing. One of the strategies that set them apart was an investment in developing leadership and management skills. By providing supports like coaching and people management systems, great employee engagement tools and planing that includes clear performance indicators (BDC, 2018) these business were able to "out grow" their peers.


The truth...the businesses that grow well don’t just add people. They build the conditions for people to do good work at a bigger size.



Plan the people you need for growth before you post the jobs


Hiring more people is not always the answer. Sometimes the answer is the right person in a different seat, a cleaner process, or experienced support you don’t need full time yet. Before you post a single job, get clear on four things:


  • What does the next stage actually require? Which roles, which skills, and by when? Tie every hire to a specific piece of the growth plan.

  • Should you build, buy or borrow? Can you develop someone internally, do you need to hire, or does a contract or fractional resource make more sense for now?

  • Nail the compensation. Decide how and what you will pay before you’re negotiating with a candidate. One-off deals made under pressure turn into problems later.

  • Insist on role clarity. A real job description and a 90-day scorecard set expectations early and prevent more early turnover than any perk.


According to CFIB’s Monthly Business Barometer, 39% of small businesses say a shortage of skilled labour remains the second-biggest constraint on their sales and growth (CFIB, March 2026). When good people are hard to find, every hiring mistake costs you twice: once in the wrong hire, and again in the time it takes to replace them.


Your leaders are the growth strategy, whether you planned it or not


Here’s the classic scaling move. Your best technician gets promoted to supervisor because they’re the best technician. Nobody shows them how to run a one-on-one meeting, handle a performance issue, or manage the person who used to be their lunch buddy. Six months later, you’ve lost a great technician and gained a stressed-out manager.


Gallup estimates managers account for at least 70% of the variance in employee engagement across business units (Gallup). As your team grows, your managers become more responsible for the experience your new employees have. Your expectations, your standards and your culture now travel directly through them, not you.


So develop your leaders before you need them. Ensure they have the basics: setting clear expectations, regular check-ins, feedback that actually lands, and knowing when to ask for help. Investing in developing high quality leaders costs far less than the cost of turnover it prevents.


Growth Scalable systems are boring. Build them anyway.


At 10 employees, you can run HR from memory and a shared folder. At 30, that same approach creates real risk: inconsistent onboarding, payroll errors, policies that live only in the owner’s head, and no paper trail when a difficult conversation goes sideways.


Growth also moves you across legal lines, often without anyone noticing. In Alberta, an employer with 5 to 19 regularly employed workers must designate a health and safety representative, and at 20 or more, a joint health and safety committee is required (Government of Alberta). At that same 20-worker mark, the OHS Act also requires you to establish and implement a health and safety program (Alberta OHS Act). Plenty of businesses blow past those thresholds during a growth spurt and find out later.


The systems worth putting in place early:


  • Recruitment processes and systems that help you identify and hire the right talent

  • Onboarding that ensures new hires are productive and confident in weeks, not months

  • An employee handbook and core policies aligned with Alberta Employment Standards and your culture to ensure everyone understands the playground's rules

  • A simple, consistent rhythm for performance conversations and supporting documentation

  • HR and payroll tools that can handle twice your current headcount


None of this is glamorous. All of it is cheaper to build at 20 people than to repair at 60.


Culture shifts while you’re busy growing


Here’s the part nobody warns you about. At some point, the people who were there in the early days become the minority. The habits and unwritten rules that made the place work start to fade, and new ones form whether you shape them or not. Be intentional about the kind of workplace you want to build.


Culture doesn’t scale by accident. It scales through who you hire, what you reward, what you tolerate and how your leaders lead. If you want to keep the magic you've created, write it down and build it into hiring and performance, not just the poster in the lunchroom.


Grow your people first


Growth is exciting, and it should be. The businesses that scale well do one thing differently: they look at the people side of the decision before it’s made, not after the cracks show up.


If any of this sounds uncomfortably familiar then start with an honest look at where pressure is already building: your leaders, your hiring process, your systems.


If you’d like an experienced second set of eyes on that, a Fractional HR conversation is a good place to begin. You can see how Synergy HR supports growing businesses at synergyhrc.net/solutions-growth.


Sources

Comments

bottom of page