When you started out, HR probably wasn’t top of your to-do list.
You hired smart people, moved fast, shared a Google Doc here and a “quick chat” there, and generally made it work. If someone was half-decent and had a pulse, they got the job. Maybe they got a handbook. Maybe they didn’t.
And it worked. Until it didn’t.
Now you’ve hit 15, 30, maybe even 50 people. You’re still growing. But something’s changed. The cracks are showing. And the people stuff – once just an admin niggle – is now eating your time, your energy, and sometimes, your will to live…..
Welcome to the teens: that awkward middle bit of growth!
There’s a moment in most growing businesses where the way you’ve done things just doesn’t stretch anymore: People start stepping on each other’s toes; roles blur; managers emerge by accident rather than design and you find yourself answering the same questions on repeat, fixing the same issues again and again. Your team might still be great — but something feels stuck. And you’re the one holding the glue.
Growth isn’t just about headcount
Hiring more people doesn’t fix this kind of feeling either. In fact, it usually makes it worse. Because growth isn’t just about headcount, but instead is about creating the right infrastructure to support that headcount. Otherwise, you’re just scaling chaos.
Many founders resist adding structure because they worry it’ll make things ‘corporate.’ But we believe very much that structure doesn’t kill agility, chaos does. What growing teams need is clarity: about who does what, how decisions get made. About how to handle performance, feedback, onboarding, and, yes, the occasional tricky conversation.
What you needed when you had five people around one desk is wildly different from what you need with a hybrid team of 25 spread across Slack, Zoom, and a coworking space. The stakes are higher now and you’ve got salaries, expectations, real clients and real consequences if things start to wobble.
This is where great HR steps in. Not the beige kind that turns everything into a form. The kind that helps you scale your team the way you’ve been scaling your business: deliberately, clearly, and in line with your values.
So what does great HR look like at this stage?
It’s structure that supports, not suffocates. Clear roles and reporting lines that reduce friction. Job descriptions that actually mean something. A hiring process that helps you avoid the last-minute panic. Onboarding that sets people up properly, so you’re not firefighting performance issues two months in.
It’s systems that give you rhythm. Regular 1:1s. Light-touch feedback loops. Ways to capture what’s working — and fix what’s not — without endless paperwork. It’s a culture that’s actually lived: your values, behaviours, and expectations embedded in the everyday, not buried in a slide deck or ignored until the next offsite.
It’s supporting your managers (especially any accidental ones!). You know the ones? Promoted because they were excellent individual contributors, but now expected to lead people with zero training or guidance & you’re wishing that they were able to focus again on what they were brilliant at in the first place.
This kind of structure gives your people what they need to grow, and gives you what you need to step back from the daily people-drama spiral. It’s how you build meaning into their roles, accountability into their actions, and growth into their development. It’s inclusion in practice, not just policy. It’s care that’s real, not just reactive.
In other words, it’s HR that creates MAGIC, the kind we talk about a lot here at The HR Hub. But whether you call it a framework or just “getting your house in order,” the result is the same: calm, capable teams and a founder who can actually lead again.
If this sounds like a big leap, take heart: you don’t have to fix everything at once.
Start by reviewing your team structure. Who does what? Are responsibilities clear? Are you relying too heavily on one or two people? Look at how you hire and onboard. Is it consistent, or do you reinvent the wheel every time? Are you having regular performance conversations, or just awkward “can I grab you for a sec” moments?
None of this is about adding red tape. It’s about reducing decision fatigue. It’s about giving people enough guidance to move forward without constantly needing you in the room. And it’s about setting up a culture that performs without burning people out.
So if your team is getting bigger but everything still feels like it’s stuck to you with Blu Tack and goodwill, you’re not failing. You’re just in the messy middle. And that’s a sign of progress.
You’ve built something good. Now build the structure to keep it growing. Think of HR as the scaffolding, not the straitjacket.
That’s what we do. Get in touch and we’ll show you how to make the messy middle a lot less messy.
Reach out to us at hello@thehrhub.co.uk or call on 0203 951 1208
Not a phone or email kind of person? Grab my book, The MAGIC of HR, for more practical tips to build a culture that actually works.
