5 Considerations When Growing Your Business
Your business is growing. You’ve spent weeks, even months, in meetings and on calls defining the right growth strategy. Now that you’ve laid a solid foundation, you’re eager to get on with the building itself.
Choosing the right location for your start-up or somewhere to expand your current business is key. There are some important considerations to be taken into account when finalising a location, especially when it comes to finding and hiring the talent your company needs to thrive.
1. Talent, Salaries & Benefits
Does the location provide a talented staffing pool? Does this pool of talent possess the skills you need? And if so, can you afford to hire them? What are the expected additional perks and benefits? Lastly, is it easy for this talent to get to the office from where they live?
In terms of recruiting new people, it can be difficult to define who needs to be on your team. Instead of focusing on job titles, you need to understand what specific skills you need. This is where outsourcing the hiring process is often a good decision. Not only will you save precious time (allowing you to focus on other business priorities), but you will be leaving this in the hands of people who understand the market, know what skills are in demand and will be able to identify the type of person you should hire. In-demand skill sets and more experienced professionals will, expectedly, command a higher salary.
Location will also somewhat dictate how much you pay your people. Salaries in urban areas are generally higher than in suburban areas. However, your access to more diverse talent is greater. Certain locations will provide you with better and/or faster access to the right talent than others.
To define the right salary, use our Salary Guide Calculator to see how payment expectations change depending on location.
Not only salary, but benefits vary by location as well. For example, in capital cities if you’re a tech start-up you need to be competitive in terms of benefits offered such as healthcare, food supplied, etc.
2. Geographic Strategic Location
Geographic location is a crucial consideration. For example, Ireland and the UK are ideally located between the Amerias and Europe so they are prominent business hubs for EMEA. Similarly, there are first choice locations that cover the APAC region such as Singapore, Sydney or Hong Kong, for example.
If you have suppliers and clients that you may need regular in-person meetings with, you will want to be somewhere that is easy for them to get to.
Additional Consideration: Are there any tax laws in the location you are looking at that need to be accounted for in your budget?
3. Office Type & Cost
There are different office type options available to you - leasing a dedicated office space or choosing co-working spaces.
Office space is expensive. It’s even more expensive if you’re in a high-demand location, but depending on the nature of your trade, you may need to be in such a location for your business to thrive. Alongside salaries of your employees, it will be one of your biggest annual costs.
You will most likely be leasing the office space, but if that’s too expensive, there are plenty of co-working spaces available which are less costly and don’t require as much commitment. Weigh up what you think will be best for your teams against what you can afford.
4. Remote Working & Room To Grow
If you are open to remote working and confident it works for your business, you may not need as big of an office. Whilst flexibility around remote working is an attractive prospect for professionals, there will be numerous staff members who want a desk in an office. Therefore you will still want a HQ or base that employees can work from - it just might not have to be as large as you first anticipated.
But don’t forget to think about the future here. If you forecast significant growth in the near future, you will need more space for when the business takes that next step of growth!
5. Brand Fit
The design and layout of your office should create the optimum working environment for your employees. For example, a tech start-up will typically want a stylish or modern office space with areas for staff members to get creative and generate new ideas. Alongside aiding the productivity of employees, you will probably also want meeting rooms where you can pitch to clients and show off your bricks and mortar to investors.
Many professionals highly value where they work; a ‘cool’ office can also be a powerful talent attraction tool.
If you need some help...
There are a number of key considerations when it comes to choosing a location for your business, whether you are setting out as a start-up or expanding your current company. The right location and type of office you choose will have far-reaching influences on who you hire into your workforce and the future success of your organisation, so think about it carefully!
If you’re struggling to find the right people or guidance on where the best talent can be found, feel free to reach out and we’ll make sure that together we will find you the best team.
