Why You Can't Hire Your Way To £10m
You've done everything you're supposed to do.
You've hired more salespeople, more developers and you've even brought in some managers to help you lead the team.
You've got more employees on the payroll than you've ever had... maybe even double what you had 2 years ago.
But somehow your revenue is still roughly the same.
You're working just as hard (probably harder) and the business still can't seem to break through to the next level.
What the hell is going on?
What most UK business owners think when this happens is "I need to keep going and hire more people".
So you hire more but a few months later, you're in exactly the same position: bigger team, same revenue, more mess and stress.
What's Happening?
You believe that growth is a numbers game: more people = more capacity = more revenue.
And logically, that should work... except it doesn't.
Because what's actually happening is that you're not building a bigger team, instead you have a a revolving door of staff.
You hire someone, they stay 3 - 6, maybe 12 months, then they leave. You then hire someone else... Repeat.
Your headcount might be going up slightly, but your team's capability isn't because you're constantly replacing people, onboarding people, getting people up to speed and covering for gaps.
And that's why your business isn't growing.
Why that's impossible (and what staff turnover is actually costing UK scaleups)
You can't plan for growth when you don't know who'll still be working for you in 6 months.
Think about it: real growth, the kind that takes you from £2m to £5m, or £5m to £10m, requires you to:
Build new services or products
Win bigger clients with longer sales cycles
Create systems and processes that work without you
Develop managers who can run whole departments
Have people with deep knowledge of your clients, your market and your operations
You can't do any of that if your team keeps changing. And this is one of the biggest UK business growth challenges that nobody talks about.
When people leave every few months, you're not building capability. You're just plugging holes. You're stuck in a permanent state of "getting people up to speed" while your competitors are actually improving, innovating and winning the clients you should be getting.
What high staff turnover in UK scaleup businesses actually costs you (that you're probably not counting):
Based on the average UK salary of £35k, every time someone leaves it costs you about £20k.
Higher salaries = higher cost to replace.
Whilst that cost quickly starts adding up if you have 5 or more leavers per year, there's not just the financial stuff that's hurting your business.
What about the strategic opportunities you're missing because your team isn't stable enough to pursue them?
That big client you want to win wants to meet the team who'll be working on their account. But you can't commit to that because half those people might not be here in 6 months.
That new service you've been thinking about launching for 2 years? It's still just an idea because you've never had the same team for long enough to build it.
That operations manager who could take stuff off your plate? They're too busy recruiting, onboarding and covering the work of vacant roles, to actually help you.
You're not growing because you're spending all your energy keeping things running, spinning the wheels on the spot... not making things better.
If you want to read more about how much your revolving door is costing you, have a read of this blog I wrote.
What scaling a UK business without losing staff actually needs
Imagine for a second that your team was completely stable for the next 18 months: same people taking accountability for their work, no one leaving, no emergency hires, no backfilling.
What could you actually build?
Let's say you run a digital agency in Manchester. You've got 20 people right now and you want to get to 40 in the next 3 years.
If your team is stable, here's what becomes possible:
Your senior designer who's been with you for 2 years could be developed into a Creative Director. Give her two Junior Designers to lead and have her own your end-to-end creative process, while you focus on winning work.
Your best Account Manager could become Head of Client Services, train up the other AMs and totally take on the existing client relationships, so that you're not having to dive into every client problem.
That Developer who knows your biggest client inside out? Instead of leaving after 18 months (taking all that knowledge with her), she builds out your Dev capability and becomes your Technical Lead.
Suddenly you're not just hiring people to do jobs. You're building a team with depth and experience, and improving your business's capability too.
But none of that happens if people keep leaving.
Because when someone quits after 9-12 months, they take everything they learned with them and you're back to square one.
New person, new learning curve, new mistakes, new gaps.
You can't create senior people if no one sticks around long enough to become senior. This is why keeping employees in growing UK companies is the foundation of everything else.
A different way of looking at employee retention in the UK Tech sector
Here's a scenario to get you thinking:
Let's say you're a UK tech company at £5m turnover with 25 people. Your goal is £10m in 3 years.
Version 1: Your Current Approach
You lose 8 people per year (costing you approx £160k), so you hire 10-12 to try and stay ahead and grow a bit. That looks fine on paper but in reality after 3 years you've hired roughly 36 new people and you've now got about 35 people in total because every time you add someone, someone else is already halfway out the door. You scrape your way to £6.2m. Not even close to the £10m you had hoped for.
Why does this happen? Because you spent the whole 3 years getting people up to speed, covering for mistakes, fixing client issues caused by inexperience and recruiting. The team never gets the chance to develop the depth, judgement and trust that clients expect. You grow in headcount but not capability, so the work stays small. And you were running around trying to hold it all together. None of the hours you poured in showed up as growth; they only kept the ship from sinking.
Version 2: If You Focused On Reducing Staff Turnover First
You still lose a couple of people each year (relocations, life changes, the normal stuff you cannot prevent) but instead, you hire 3 or 4 people a year to fill the roles that actually move the business forward, not just whoever you can get fastest.
Across three years you bring in about 12 new people. You now have a team of roughly 35 who know the work and know how to deliver it without you chasing every detail. At least half the team has been with you for more than three years. Three people have grown into manager roles. Your most profitable services sit with people who have the confidence and context to run them properly. Clients trust you with bigger projects because they see the same faces, not a constant rotation of new starters.
And you are at £10.5m.
Same headcount but a completely different business.
The difference isn't hiring faster though, it's about having people stay long enough to become genuinely good at what they do.
What you're actually not planning for (that's stopping your growth)
Most business owners I meet are planning for next quarter or maybe the next 6 months if they're disciplined.
But you can't grow a business on short-term thinking and this is especially true when you're trying to solve employee retention in UK tech companies or any other fast-moving sector.
If you want to double your revenue, you need to know:
What roles will you need in 18 months that you don't have now?
Who on your current team could grow into more senior positions?
Where are your single points of failure (e.g: the only person who knows how to do X)?
Where are the gaps and what capability do you need to build, to win the work you actually want?
Growth planning only works when you have enough stability to build on and If your team keeps changing, you'll find it really challenging to answer these questions.
This is why retaining talent in UK tech companies is what makes everything else possible.
So What Can You Actually Do About It?
Right, here's what I want you to do this week and remember: this is not about berating yourself with the past but planning for the future.
Step 1: Map your business 18 months from now
If your business was exactly where you want it to be in 18 months, what does it look like?
What revenue are you at? What type of clients are you working with? What services are you known for? What's running smoothly without you?
Write it down and be specific.
Step 2: Work backwards to the roles you'll need
Based on that future business, what roles do you need to make it happen?
Again, be specific, not "I need more sales people"!
What capability do you need? is it a Sales Director who can run the whole function? A Senior Project Manager who can lead complex client delivery? An Operations Manager who owns the business operations, to free up your headspace and time?
List out 5-7 key roles your future business needs.
Step 3: Look at your current team through that lens
For each of those future roles, ask yourself:
Do I have someone now who could grow into this in 18 months?
If yes, what would they need to learn or develop to get there?
If no, when do I actually need to hire for this (not when the pain hits, when strategically)?
This is where reducing staff turnover in your UK business becomes critical. Because you can't develop someone into a senior role if they're going to leave in 6 months.
Step 4: Identify which people are actually at risk of leaving
Looking at your list of future key people is the part most business owners skip. Now ask yourself honestly, are they actually going to still be here in 18 months?
Are they happy? Do they know where they're going? Are they getting what they need from you? Would things fall apart if they left tomorrow?
If you've got question marks next to half the names on your list, that's your real problem. You're planning for growth with people who might not stick around to deliver it and your whole operation is open to risk if it's solely dependent on a couple of individuals.
Step 5: Make one decision based on what you just learnt
Pick the biggest gap between where you are and where you need to be.
Is it that you've got no one ready to step up into management? Then your job is developing leadership capability in your best people, before you hire another manager.
Is it that you're too dependent on one or two people? Then you need to build redundancy and cross-training, not just hope they don't leave.
Is it that you genuinely don't have the skills you need? Then plan the hire properly; write a proper job description, understand how you'll assess, take time to find the right person and onboard them properly so they stay.
Is it that your best people are at risk of leaving? Then figure out why and fix it before they hand in their notice.
You cannot hire your way to £10m when people keep walking out the door.
Every founder who breaks past that level ends up saying the same thing: the moment they stopped treating churn as background noise, everything else finally started to move.
A stable team builds momentum because they get faster, sharper and more confident. They make fewer mistakes and clients know who they are dealing with. They carry more weight so you are not the one patching gaps at eleven at night.
Retention is is the foundation that your growth sits on, not a future job for when things calm down.
So plan the next three years with the people you already have and make it your goal to keep them long enough to grow into the roles you need.
That is how you build the team that takes you to £10m and beyond.
What could your business become if the people you invested in actually stayed?
Want to talk about what's going on in your business?
I'm Maritsa Inglessis, founder of The People Keeper. I help UK business owners (usually running tech or digital companies with 10-50 staff) who are losing their employees and can't figure out why.
If you're stuck at £2-5m turnover and can't grow because your team keeps leaving, that's exactly what I fix!
My Employee Retention Mastery programme helps you find out what's really causing people to leave, fix it properly, and build a team that actually sticks around long enough to grow your business with you.
Most clients cut their turnover in half within the first year and save over £100k. More importantly, they finally get the stable team they need to scale.
