Stabilising a high-growth business with scalable HR infrastructure

This client is a fintech business in the middle of a period of rapid scale-up. Revenue was up, the demand for its services was strong and it had a growing client base and increasing brand awareness.  However, the business was growing faster than it’s foundations. It still reflected a start-up from when they were a team of fewer than 20 employees rather than operating as a growing organisation of 48 employees with complex people demands.

Like many businesses scaling at speed, the client wasn’t failing. They were simply unprepared for the complexity that rapid growth brings. The leadership team recognised that policies were outdated, processes were inconsistent, team structures no longer made sense, and they were spending more time dealing with HR incidents than driving strategy.

Managers were overwhelmed and employees felt huge pressure to perform but had little support. There was no clear onboarding framework, teams working in silos and long serving staff were resigning and taking critical knowledge with them.

Several HR incidents landed at once. The lack of clarity around expectations and behaviour had exposed the business to risk. The leadership team recognised they needed support and more HR structure to sustain their growth.

As a HR partner who understands the specific pressures of rapid growth and can combine strategic thinking with hands-on delivery, my brief was to put HR guardrails in place to help stabilise the organisation, restructure HR with new policies and procedures, outgrown, reduce turnover and create a knowledge sharing culture.

Our approach

We developed a 4 phased approach to stabilise the organisation while enabling rapid but healthy growth starting with an HR Audit and Culture Diagnostic, which is an in depth assessment to get a clear picture of where the business was experiencing pressure and where risk was highest. We reviewed the existing HR documentation, policies, and contracts, organisational structure and reporting lines, culture issues and friction points, exit interview trends, patterns in HR incidents and line manager capability.

We then developed a suite of modernised, compliant, and scalable HR policies tailored to the business to re-build the HR Infrastructure including updating employee contracts, employee handbook, onboarding and induction documentation, probation review processes and clear capability frameworks underpinning disciplinary, grievance, and performance management.

In addition, we provided clear guidance for line managers to ensure consistency and ongoing support and training to build confidence and capability levels.

We also recommended a HR system upgrade in order to streamline core processes such as absence, performance, and recruitment tracking.

We reviewed the People Structure and organisational design focussing on role clarity, building business resilience to eliminate “single points of failure”, workforce planning to secure future needs, career progression pathways to build a leadership “pipeline” and plug leadership capacity gaps.

In addition to support a knowledge sharing culture, we created a buddy system, peer learning structures and internal mentoring channels ensuring knowledge continuity and business resilience.

To reinforce behavioural expectations and collaboration we facilitated sessions focussed on cross-functional communication, sharing accountability, giving and receiving feedback and psychological safety to help create a more cohesive and supportive work environment.

The outcomes

The business saw measurable improvements within months. The number of HR incidents and unplanned exits had declined. Trained and empowered managers, using more structured, relevant and documented processes, were onboarding more efficiently, setting clearer performance expectations, showing confidence and competence in handling people issues, creating a sense of “one team” by working cross functionally and sharing learning practices. This improved support meant people felt more secure, confident and valued.

We helped take this client from the edge of burnout to a structured and stable place ready for long-term growth. With a scalable HR framework and organisational structure the business could now grow headcount, expand teams, and take on new clients without destabilising its culture or operations.