Are your People, your employees ready for the next phase of growth?

They spearhead the organization with consistency and focus with sheer skill and effort. Fast forward few years of consistent business and strong business networks, what we now call is a – SCALE UP phase. My name is Shruti Jedhiya, I worked for over a decade as HR in large and small companies. And I am here to share my key learnings with you.
Point 1 – What NEXT?
Here is a common-most sincere question that you as a business owner may ask yourself before you go to sleep or when Sales announces their great achievement in the boardroom-What Next? You have investors waiting to put their money in your company. You have a strong business network and a good pool of loyal customers. As a business owner you feel confident that it is time to grow your company. Here’s the catch! Your people! Are they ‘ready for the next phase?’ Most businesses take their own time to grow depending on what industry you are in, where are you placed geographically, how’s the economy of that country, what product or service you are offering and whether global conditions and local government regulations support your business. Many business owners make the mistake of ‘already knowing their people’. They may not have the time to interact with each and every person and may want to delegate that to middle management and HR or they may have lesser one to one discussions as they did at the beginning phase of their organization. They are honestly not expected to. But what is fruitful here is to constantly be adept of what is going on- the Pulse. Your people are your biggest assets. In the post – Covid era, where we are looking at a candidate market, it’s almost imperative that a company works on how to attract good talent and retain the one’s inside the company. Because, hiring cost can be as high as five month’s salary or as low as one. Include additional costing of recruitment, onboarding, training and sharing company systems and processes by other employees. Retaining an employee is an expense prevented. In the days of hire and fire and silent layoffs by top MNC’s, I want you as a business owner to see and reflect- is it really the maximum ROI on Human Capital or contrary? What are employees looking for in 2025? If you look at some popular surveys online, they show that Manager engagement decides how engaged employees feel to their jobs. With only 21% of global workforce actively engaged in their jobs and not looking for other jobs shows the great detachment trend. The key however, remains how managers engage with their teams. This has a huge impact on how engaged employees are to their workplaces. How much sense of belonging do they actually feel? Here’s something to think about- It seems, we corporate humans have learnt to be detached from our job places, this may be due several reasons, however, the topmost remains how engaged our managers are in the first place!