Hiring Excellence at one of Canada’s Top Growing Businesses

Date

April 20, 2023

By Mary Medeiros

Growth creates a whole set of ‘good problems’ for any business leader. All the more so at a company like Harvest ETFs, where growth has been steady for over a decade but turned exponential over the past two years. As our CEO puts it “we’re a 10-year overnight success story.”

Maintaining our exponential growth means we have to grow our team. New staff will help us scale our operations further and innovate new ways to serve Canadian investors. But hiring as fast as we’re growing comes with a host of new challenges. How do we hire the best when there’s a time crunch? How do we communicate the next phase of growth to our existing teams? How do we ensure that we hire sustainably, for our employees and for our business?

As independent entrepreneurs, our approach at Harvest ETFs has revolved around three key ideas: set our priorities, trust our leaders, and stick to our principles.

Setting priorities for a growing team

One of the advantages of independence in the financial services industry is that we can set a purpose for our organization clearly. Bigger organizations often have to embark on soul-searching examinations, but they have so many aspects to their businesses that the common identity they find feels generic.

At Harvest ETFs, our core priority has been clear from the outset: help Canadians build wealth in the long-term with straightforward investment funds. Our hiring priorities flow from that. Whether we need to grow our sales team to explain our purpose to financial advisors, take on portfolio managers to develop ETF strategies that suit our core priority, or hire compliance professionals to ensure our work meets the highest regulatory standards.

Starting with one clear priority allows us to grow with intent. It also means our team leaders can operate with greater independence and innovation because they understand our core priority.

Trusting our leaders to execute

With one core priority in mind, our team leaders are able to clearly articulate what they need to ensure our continued growth. Hiring decisions often begin with requests from our team leaders, who can share clearly what additional support they need and why.

That is not to say we give our leaders a blank cheque, hiring decisions must be justified and for someone in my role it’s as important to say no as it is to say yes. However, it’s important for our leaders to feel trusted and heard. As we grow, its our leaders’ responsibility to stay clued into the work they do. If they want to hire someone who will help their team, I know that the reasons stem from the day to day experience of their work.

Maintaining our principles

At Harvest ETFs we are committed to quality. In our products, our service delivery, and in our teams. That has been key from the outset, even when hiring wasn’t easy. As an independent firm, just starting out in Oakville, we had trouble attracting top talent in our early years. We made the decision in those days, however, to hire based on the best fit rather than take the first person who walked in the door.

That principle took work to maintain. When hiring is slow and you need to grow, it’s very hard to tell someone no because you don’t see a long-term fit. However, I believe that so much of our success and growth has come down to making the right early hires. Now as we continue our rapid growth stage, I am always reminding myself of that decision.

We face a new hiring pressure now. People want to come work at Harvest, but with so many options it can be harder to know who the right fit will be. By reminding ourselves of those early decisions and how we laid the foundations for our success, we can continue to make the right hiring decisions.

Hiring to maintain growth is certainly one of the ‘good problems’ any entrepreneur faces. As welcoming people and equal-opportunity employers, we are always happy to see our team grow. But, growing our team sustainably and well means setting our priority, trusting our leaders, and sticking to our principles.

Equity Income ETFs
Learn more about

Mary Medeiros

Disclaimer

For Information Purposes Only. All comments, opinions and views expressed are of a general nature and should not be considered as advice and/or a recommendation to purchase or sell the mentioned securities or used to engage in personal investment strategies.

You will usually pay brokerage fees to your dealer if you purchase or sell units of the Fund(s) on the TSX. If the units are purchased or sold on the TSX, investors may pay more than the current net asset value when buying units of the Fund(s) and may receive less than the current net asset value when selling them. There are ongoing fees and expenses associated with owning units of an investment fund. Investment funds are not guaranteed, their values change frequently and past performance may not be repeated. An investment fund must prepare disclosure documents that contain key information about the fund. You can find more detailed information about the fund in these documents.

Certain statements in the Harvest Blog are forward looking Forward-looking statements (“FLS”) are statements that are predictive in nature, depend upon or refer to future events or conditions, or that include words such as “may,” “will,” “should,” “could,” “expect,” “anticipate,” “intend,” “plan,” “believe,” or “estimate,” or other similar expressions. Statements that look forward in time or include anything other than historical information are subject to risks and uncertainties, and actual results, actions or events could differ materially from those set forth in the FLS.

FLS are not guarantees of future performance and are by their nature based on numerous assumptions, which include, amongst other things, that (i) the Fund can attract and maintain investors and have sufficient capital under management to effect their investment strategies, (ii) the investment strategies will produce the results intended by the portfolio managers, and (iii) the markets will react and perform in a manner consistent with the investment strategies. Although the FLS contained herein are based upon what the portfolio manager believe to be reasonable assumptions, the portfolio manager cannot assure that actual results will be consistent with these FLS.

Unless required by applicable law, Harvest Portfolios Group Inc. does not undertake, and specifically disclaim, any intention or obligation to update or revise any FLS, whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise.