When a business is growing, most of the excitement gets poured into revenue projections, launch plans, and marketing strategies. It’s forward-facing, numbers-driven, and often fast-moving. But behind every bold forecast sits a quiet truth:
Growth only works if your team can carry it.
It’s your people who onboard new clients, deliver the work, keep the systems moving, and protect your reputation. If you don’t plan for the human side of scaling, your progress will eventually stall, or worse, collapse under pressure.
This isn’t about hiring faster. It’s about hiring smarter. In this guide, we’ll walk through how to predict HR needs based on growth plans without overcomplicating the process. Whether you’re launching a new offer, scaling a services team, or expanding across provinces, this is how you can stay ahead of the pressure.
Want to set up your team for growth?
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Identify Your Growth Milestones
It’s common to start planning from a sales forecast: “We want to grow by $1M this year.” But that number is the destination, not the journey.
To get there, you’ll hit milestones: onboarding more clients, launching a new service, and hiring a team lead. Building on the momentum of your existing team’s productivity is where pressure builds.
Identifying how these checkpoints will affect internal dynamics is key to recognizing which teams will be the most impacted and what their new workload could potentially look like. Remember: changes don’t hit all teams equally.
This is how different milestones may impact team dynamics:
- Signing 30 new clients: Heavier marketing, sales, and onboarding
- Opening a second location: Payroll, admin, IT, and compliance in a new province
- Launching a premium service: New sales materials, training, service development
- Increasing projects per client: More account management, projects to manage, and customer support
The best way to start HR planning is simple: identify the main business goal, map out milestones that will get you there, and go beyond to ask:
- Which teams will feel this first?
- What new tasks or expectations will show up?
- What could break if we don’t prepare?
- This is how you get proactive (not reactive) about your HR needs.
Assess the Team You Already Have
Once you’ve mapped your goals and what it’ll take to get there, the next logical move might seem like hiring. But that’s not always the best approach, at least not right away.
Before moving forward, you need to identify where your team is. Can your current team handle what’s coming? Do they have clarity, the right tools, and support?
And where can new team members fill the gap while still prioritizing your existing team members?
That’s what this step is all about.
Start With Conversations
The fastest way to understand your team’s bandwidth is to ask. Depending on your work culture, that can start with a short survey or a few honest 1-on-1s. Ideally, they complement each other, but either one can stand alone.
Anonymous Surveys
Surveys are a great way to gather early signals, especially if your team isn’t comfortable with open conversations. They create a safe space for feedback without the fear of being confronted, and help spot gaps in your workplace before they turn into real problems
A quick 5-question survey can ask:
- How manageable is your workload right now? (rate from 1-5)
- What task or process slows you down the most?
- What feels misaligned with your role?
- What’s a recurring pain point in your day-to-day?
- What would help you work more effectively?
You can use Google Forms, Typeform, or whatever creates safety and ease in accessing the gathered data.
1-on-1s
If your culture leans into open conversations, this can be the best place to start.
While most 1-on-1s focus on project updates or weekly progress, this one should feel different. You’ll be seeking a relaxed and collaborative space to reflect on how the work is going and how it could be better.
Frame your 1-on-1 as a shared effort to grow together, where the employee is the expert in their own experience, and you’re here to learn from them.
You could try saying: “I’m looking at how we can grow smartly without burning anyone out. I’d love to hear what’s been working for you, and where we might be stuck.”
Then explore:
- “Is there anything we’re not seeing from our side?”
- “What’s something in your day that feels heavier than it should?”
- “What’s something you wish you could remove from your day-to-day?”
- “What support or tool would make your work easier?”
People won’t always be immediately open to providing feedback, especially if this isn’t the norm. But keep the tone curious, not corrective or defensive, and listen more than you talk.
Assess Your Data, Spot Next Steps
Once you’ve gathered your team’s insights, the next step is to organize what you heard into something tangible and actionable.
This means mapping feedback alongside the current workload reality and the growth milestones you’ve planned for. When you cross-reference both, spotting what can be reallocated or reprioritized internally and what truly calls for a new hire becomes easier.
Mapping your growth milestones and reviewing team feedback will likely spot a mix of both real headcount needs and deeper internal issues. Navigating both is just as important, so keep that in mind while planning for growth.
Feeling the need for a clearer action plan?
Download our spreadsheet to help you track your progress towards workforce planning.
Address What You Can Before You Hire
Addressing in-house problems is worth it before hiring, as they can create a healthier environment for your current team and a better setup for the next person you bring in.
While that’s the best-case scenario, businesses tend to do both in parallel. And that’s okay. That’s why it’s important to prioritize your actions by looking at the following 5 key business areas first.
Taking a step back and looking at your business with an outsider’s lens isn’t always easy. To make it simpler, we’ve pulled together five key benchmarks to help you run a quick audit. Rate from 1-5 the business areas you recognize that need the most urgent attention.
If work is slow or duplicated, check if the tools you’re using are effective. Perhaps your team has been using workarounds or relying on outdated processes to make daily tasks possible. Consolidating platforms, realigning usage, or even investing in better–suited software can clear up hidden friction.
Growth tends to expose weak workflows. Look for vague handoffs, stalled approvals, or tasks that only move when someone manually pushes them. A basic Standard Operating Procedure (SOP) might fix what feels broken.
If two people are doubling up or no one takes ownership of their task, it’s likely a scope issue. Revisit job descriptions and key decision makers before assuming you need another person.
Low output doesn’t always mean low capacity. It could be unclear goals, missing feedback loops, or people unsure of how they’re being measured. Set up actionable key performance indicators (KPIs) to help drive your employees towards common goals.
Are your team members relying on one key person for answers (maybe is it you)? Or decisions made in a meeting are left in limbo with no one to take action? When that happens, progress stalls. Light documentation, follow-ups and clearer async updates can go a long way.
Don’t Forget the Policies: It’s Worth Building Structure Now
While reviewing internal processes, this is also the right time to look at your existing policies. And, yes, we get it, this is not the most exciting part of running a business, and for a lot of people it can feel like compliance for the sake of it.
But as you grow, formalizing what’s been working and making it accessible to everyone does more than ticking a box. It helps:
- Leaders avoid repeating the same instructions
- Teams refer back to what was agreed on
- To resolve minor confusion or misunderstandings before they escalate
It’s tempting to believe things will continue working just as they always have, but growth tends to magnify anything that’s unclear.
Here are a few policies worth documenting if you haven’t already:
Clear rules around vacation, sick days, holidays, and how coverage is handled.
What’s included, who qualifies, and how to access it.
Guidance on representing the company online and using personal accounts.
What’s covered, how to submit, and who approves.
Expectations around communication, availability, and equipment.
An onboarding toolkit so every hire starts with the right tools, context, and links to key resources
You don’t need a 40-page manual, nor do you need to implement all of these at once. But once you’ve spotted the gaps, the question becomes: Where do you start? And how do you make sure that the rest of your staff are on the same page?
You don’t need to tackle it all at once.
—Just start here.
Use this checklist to follow the 7 steps to plan your team around growth so nothing gets missed along the way.
How to Navigate Change
You can’t do everything at once. But when hiring and addressing issues happen side by side (which they often do), it’s important to set the right foundation before adding someone new to the mix.
Why This Matters
Picture this: you’re hiring someone to help reduce backlog on your customer support team.
Sounds simple enough, right?
It makes sense as your existing team is swamped. But in speaking to the team and performing an audit on responsibilities, you realized something else. Somewhere along the way, the lines between admin, operations, and support are blurred. Your customer service team also works on qualifying leads and speaking to suppliers.
Some efforts are duplicated, some tasks are falling through the cracks, and no one really has the time or capacity to train someone new.
If you bring someone in right now:
- They won’t know who to go to for what
- The existing team won’t have the bandwidth to onboard them properly
- And instead of feeling productive, this person may feel lost
These stories are common, and it’s how early friction builds.
And when a new hire feels confused or unsupported, there’s a real risk they leave.
That’s why it’s important to make space before someone arrives.
What to Tackle Now vs. Later
Let’s continue with our scenario. At this point, making a list of musts before hiring vs. things that can wait can help you prioritize.
This approach gives your new hire a better onboarding experience and protects your team from additional strain.
Make HR Forecasting a Monthly Habit
Turnover, absences, and new hires are all part of how teams evolve over time, but they don’t have to catch you off guard. Once you’ve mapped out your priorities and created space to grow, the key is to keep checking in regularly.
HR forecasting isn’t a once-a-year task, it should be part of your monthly rhythm alongside revenue goals and project updates.
Each month, take 15 minutes to revisit:
- Are we following through on the fixes and documentation we committed to?
- Which milestones are coming up in the next 30–60 days?
- Are any teams signaling strain or slipping behind?
- Is anyone planning a leave—or quietly pulling back?
These light-touch check-ins help you adjust.
Because in the end, this isn’t only about hiring.
It’s about building the foundations that keep your growth sustainable.
Ready to turn this read into action?
Use the checklist to review your team monthly, track where pressure is building, and plan for hiring needs with clarity.