Spartan Bioscience On: Company Growth During a Pandemic

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Change and growth at your place of work can be trying at the best of times. Having it happen during a global pandemic poses a unique set of challenges. That’s certainly the case when it comes to Spartan’s current company growth.

According to Spartan’s Human Resources team, successfully growing so quickly in the face of uncertainty is about being open and flexible to change. For example, they are currently revamping their onboarding process to bring employees on remotely.

Sarah Crandlemire and Connor Giddens, Spartan’s HR team, shared that they have never faced anything like this in their careers to date. Most of Spartan’s new employees have never been onboarded remotely, so it’s new for them as well.

“It’s all about not being afraid to try new things, and collecting feedback to see what works and what doesn’t,” shares Connor, Spartan’s HR coordinator.

Another example of what their team is doing to adapt to growth and change is not rushing to put a return to work plan in place. Spartan’s employees have all transitioned to work from home relatively smoothly, so their HR team feels that they are in a good position to pivot in whatever direction is required.

“Right now we are taking the time to survey everything that is happening in our external environment and our employees’ preferences before we make a final decision,” shares Sarah, Spartan’s Senior Manager, HR. “Despite the uncertain external environment and the ongoing public health crisis, the reality is that Spartan is in the best position it’s ever been in to grow, and grow quickly. We just need to put the right tools in place to make sure that every employee has what they need to be successful in this new environment.”

In fact, Connor and Sarah are actually two of Spartan’s newest hires. So far, their experience has been positive.

“It has pretty much been the most exciting first few weeks I could imagine. There is so much opportunity to build an amazing HR foundation here and Sarah and I both feel really lucky to have the chance! For us, it’s all about laying those foundations while still capturing the magic of what makes Spartan, Spartan,” says Connor.

Spartan’s senior HR manager has similar feelings on the company’s growth.

“For the company to grow this successfully over the last 15 years before hiring their first HR employee is a huge testament to the culture that Paul has built here,” says Sarah, who joined the team back in April as their first HR hire.

As a brand new HR department, Sarah says that they don’t see the goal as reinventing the wheel. With Spartan’s current growth projections, though, they have decided that there is a need to implement tools and processes that will help their employees continue to be successful and do the jobs they were hired to do.

Because of Spartan’s strong culture, it is critical that the HR team continues to gather employee feedback on what their employees want to see in these new tools and processes. Spartan is an evidence-driven business, and for HR, that means collecting high-quality data on employee attitudes to ensure that changes will be widely adopted across the company.

The team at Spartan can’t wait to see what comes next!


Spartan Bioscience logo    Article provided by Spartan Bioscience