Staffing, consistency major bumps on road to growth

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When a company experiences rapid or significant growth, it often hits potholes on the road to success.|ret||ret||tab|

The areas that often cause the most problems include staffing and recruiting, leadership, policy and procedures, and the lack of a clear long-term plan, according to area business owners.|ret||ret||tab|

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In the beginning|ret||ret||tab|

Mike Henry, chairman and CEO of Jack Henry and Associates Inc. in Monett, said the average person typically resists change because it presents challenges. |ret||ret||tab|

"A lot of people don't like (change), yet they have to understand that for a company to be successful over the long term, it has to grow," Henry said. |ret||ret||tab|

Henry said 95 percent of the company's employees are stockholders, "so they understand the importance of a growing company which results in a growing stock price, which results in more gains for everyone." |ret||ret||tab|

Jack Henry began in 1976 with four employees. Today the company has about 2,300 full- and part-time employees in 25 locations nationwide. The company's most significant growth occurred over the past decade as it began acquiring companies. |ret||ret||tab|

Handling the influx of new employees was challenging from a human resources standpoint, Henry said. |ret||ret||tab|

"We went from having just a benefits administrator to having a full HR department and increasingly larger HR staff." |ret||ret||tab|

A more thorough policy manual had to be created when Jack Henry expanded and became a public company, Henry said. |ret||ret||tab|

"You have to have lots of written policies because it's not just a handful of people in one building anymore," he said. |ret||ret||tab|

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Picking people|ret||ret||tab|

Jim Maynard, director of human resources at O'Reilly Auto Parts and member of the Springfield Area Human Resources Association, said as a company expands, oftentimes its biggest challenge is fueling that growth with the right people. A significant staffing and recruiting initiative is often needed to ensure quality employees are in place to maintain company standards, he said. |ret||ret||tab|

Jeff Russell, president and CEO of Russell Cellular, agreed with Maynard. Russell began selling phones door to door nearly a decade ago, and now has 43 retail locations in three states, with four more scheduled to open before the end of summer. Russell Cellular employs about 100 people, Russell said. |ret||ret||tab|

"Putting together a core group of leaders was probably our biggest challenge. I realized early on that for me to grow, I was not going to be able to do everything myself, and I needed a good core team that I could depend on. Getting those right people in place was a big challenge for us." |ret||ret||tab|

Russell said that even when the company had only a handful of employees, he had a personnel system in place that outlined policies and procedures for everything. |ret||ret||tab|

"We developed a system to support the employees and allow them to grow within the company. We had to continually revise the policies and procedures and enhance them as we added more employees to make sure they had an environment they could grow in," he said.|ret||ret||tab|

Russell added, "I think a key that we've had is treating our business like a big business before it was. Plan and think about what's coming. Put together a system that's going to allow you to add more people into it without changing your business."|ret||ret||tab|

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Consistency|ret||ret||tab|

Another challenge facing rapidly growing companies, Maynard said, is protecting and maintaining the company's culture during its growth. Many times growth is a result of mergers or acquisitions, and those incoming companies bring with them their own cultures. The parent company has to ensure its own culture is not compromised, he said.|ret||ret||tab|

"The company needs to have an existing program that is very solid," Maynard said. Meeting that challenge might mean dedicating more training, orientation and company resources to introducing the company's culture, he added.|ret||ret||tab|

As Jack Henry acquires more employees, Henry said the company works to make sure those employees understand the Jack Henry culture. |ret||ret||tab|

"You have to continue to preach the gospel of how you treat employees and customers," he said. "We continue to make sure we don't lose the culture we had when we were small." |ret||ret||tab|

Henry said communication among the employees was easy when the company was small and everyone was confined to one building in one city. Now that Jack Henry has multiple locations, communication has become more challenging, but it is still as important as ever, he said. The company uses its internal Web site to communicate with employees nationwide and keep them up to date. |ret||ret||tab|

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Room to grow|ret||ret||tab|

Physical space is often another hurdle for a rapidly growing company. Twila Hillme, Murney Associates' chief of operations, said the company quickly ran out of room at its Primrose location during its rapid expansion. Murney Associates Realtors was ranked the second fastest growing real estate agency in the nation for 2002, according to REAL Trends 500, an annual report edition of REAL Trends Inc. The ranking was based on the percentage of growth year-to-year in closed transactions.|ret||ret||tab|

"Space probably has been our most difficult aspect of the growth," Hillme said. The company's recent acquisition of Billy Long, Inc. (formerly Billy Long Keller Williams Realty) provided some additional office space, but the company is now considering more physical office expansion, Hillme said. |ret||ret||tab|

Long-range planning, which involved advertising and public relations companies, helped fuel the growth of Murney Associates, Hillme said. |ret||ret||tab|

"We had a plan when we started, and we stuck with that plan. I think that helped our growth a lot," Hillme said.|ret||ret||tab|

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