Prepare Now for Future Growth Challenges

By Rob Waters, President, Watersedge Dental Laboratory, Ottawa, ON; 43 employees

Rapid growth has definitely delivered hurdles that our business has needed to overcome. Back before our lab was named one of Canada’s fastest-growing companies in 2019, we realized we needed to be proactive about implementing systems to ensure rapid growth didn’t compromise what matters most to us: employees, product quality and the customer service experience.

For example, we don’t allow any of our team to work the kind of insane 70-plus-hour weeks I did as a production tech but, nonetheless, when people are working at maximum capacity day after day, even someone getting sick or leaving on vacation could be hard on the rest of the team.

When that happens, we monitor for signs of stress—for example, shortened breaks and lunches, recurring overtime, and the usual emotional signs people display when they’re feeling...