It seems like we welcome a new hire to the Protenus team almost every week. We’ve grown more than 100 percent in the last year, bringing our team to more than 50 members strong - and we’re still growing. During this period of rapid growth, we took time to evaluate our initial progress and assess what has gone well and where we could improve our hiring process. We have found that this early investment in strategic People Operations continues to be a powerful tool for helping us scale more effectively.

Early stage companies get a lot of advice about how to build a successful team, and hiring someone to head up Human Resources (HR) isn’t usually at the top of the list. But regardless of the size, industry, or stage of growth, every company can benefit from a thoughtful approach when it comes to the human element of business.

“True listening is hearing the needs of the customer, understanding those needs, and making sure the company recognizes the opportunities they present,” said Frank Eliason, Director of Client Experience at Citi. At Protenus, this mindset leads the way. In fact, we rely on insight from our customers, not only to improve, but to innovate. On the Customer Success team, customer feedback drives everything we do. And we start by listening.

As a Privacy Officer with more than 30 years experience working in both large and small healthcare organizations, I’ve experienced multiple privacy postures, ranging from manual reactive audits to proactive privacy monitoring that allowed us to get ahead of breaches to patient privacy before they became catastrophic for the organization or patients. After three decades of experience, I realized that there are three things that every Privacy Officer should know to ensure they are applying best practices for privacy within their organization.

When Protenus was first building its sales and marketing team, I joined as the Senior Marketing Manager. This meant shaping marketing initiatives to make Protenus more successful, and determining which priorities we should tackle first. As I was a “jack-of-all-trades,” I was working on everything from marketing strategy to trade show logistics to content that would elevate our brand within the healthcare industry.