How will Scale-up visas affect business culture and company growth?

Many high-growth businesses will no doubt be taking advantage of the Scale-up visa upon its launch in August 2022. A visa aimed at highly skilled individuals from around the world, the hope is that the introduction of it will encourage scale-up businesses and their first-rate teams to continue developing cutting-edge scientific and entrepreneurial discoveries.

In this article, we explore why recruiting the best talent from an international pool will help inspire creativity and drive innovation in your scale-up business, and why this will contribute to increased growth.

Is my company eligible for the Scale-up visa?

Employers will need to demonstrate their eligibility by:

• showing an annual growth rate of ≥20% for turnover over the past three years, or
• ≥20% annual growth rate of employee count for the past three years, and
• have at least 10 employees from the start of the three-year period.

My company is eligible – are there any other requirements?

Other requirements are that:

•  the job on offer must be highly skilled,
•  the salary for the job on offer must be at least £33,000, and
•  the employee must have sufficient English language proficiency.

Your company meets the criteria for being eligible for the Scale-up visa, you have a highly skilled job on offer with a starting salary of £33,000, and you have decided using the Scale-up visa to fill this position is the best way forward for your business. However;

How will people joining your company impact your existing innovative, forward-thinking, and industrious work culture?

• They will encourage you to foster a continuous learning environment

Recruiting the best talent from around the globe will encourage your business to provide high-quality Continuing Professional Development (CPD) training, opportunities, and innovative programmes – generating an effective learning culture in your organisation.

One of the key ways to build a learning culture is to create a teaching culture facilitated by company executives and senior leaders from around the globe, who can bring their real-world context and ideas for practical application aligned with your business’s goals.

• They will inspire creativity and drive innovation

International people/s should promote multicultural product development teams in your organisation. Having multiple voices, perspectives, and personalities bouncing off one another can give rise to out-of-the-box thinking.

How else will the Scale-up visa and their effect on company culture contribute to business growth?

1. Diverse skills allow companies to offer broader and more adaptable products and services

This is vital in today’s volatile and often uncertain business environment. A company with cultural and cognitive diversity can be not only more proactive – by spotting a gap in the market – but more reactive too – by saving a company time when responding to economic threats.

You will also have the global and market-specific insight and experience to help new or adapted products to meet changing consumer behaviour.

2. Talent, finance, and access to new markets

For scale-ups, access to new markets is intrinsically linked to innovation and the wider challenges facing scale-ups – talent and finance. Each corner of this triangle can become an enabler for further growth activity for your business.

Fostering each corner of the triangle effectively can enable businesses to tackle one corner using a combination of the other two. For example, your chances of successfully entering new markets will increase if you utilise your company’s talent and finance effectively.

To enhance the effectiveness of talent in your organisation, you could consider encouraging your employees to develop productive peer-to-peer networks – internally and externally. For finance, consider engaging universities, corporates, investors, and funding organisations to access the finance you require and advice you need for the next stage of growth. Having created well-rounded talent in your firm and sought advice or capital, you will then be able to access new markets. From here, you will continue to innovate your product, but also innovate to meet the needs of industry standards, such as net-zero. The cycle will then continue, although perhaps not in any particular order.

Recruiting from an international pool of talent has many benefits for high-growth companies and their work cultures, and utilising the Scale-up visa to do this is one step your business can take to realise these benefits.

This article was written by our Business team. At Price Bailey, our Business team has long-standing experience supporting and advising scale-ups, in addition to guiding many businesses on the benefits of international recruitment for them. If you would like advice or support on anything mentioned in this article, please contact Rebecca using the form below.