When one thinks of a startup, one visualises a pack of youngsters with unbridled enthusiasm working round the clock, trying out new ideas that might work. There is fun and hard work and the environment is electric. This is a stylised fact about startups. But there is also the case of founders or staff gradually losing steam after some time or looking for jobs outside. There could be conflicts within, and so on. An area often not looked at seriously is human resources development, where everything is taken for granted. Often, one of the founding members takes on this role to get the right people. But after a point there is need for professionalism. This is the starting point of Saurabh Nigam’s book, People Powered Startups.
The title is apt, because startups are all about people who make an idea fructify, and there has to be focus on these resources. These people could come with different backgrounds in terms of qualifications and experience that make these ventures work well to being with. But, managing this eclectic set of people with different skill sets and egos becomes very important. Therefore, attracting, retaining and nurturing talent becomes very important as the organisation evolves, and requires a different approach to people management. These structures, according to the author, need to be flexible and dynamic and cannot mimic those of large companies. Very often this point is ignored by these startups and there could be less attention paid to these finer points.
Some of these points can be elaborated upon. To attract the right talent, the employer branding is important and often the founder names become the brand. This, it has been seen, has been the most powerful factor when it comes to attracting talent. The talk is always about a venture which has been started by a person X with a team that has A, B and C which are all very well-known names in the industry. The approach to recruitment has to be creative and compensation carefully structured to balance between the ability to pay in the medium term as well as being above the market to entice potential recruits. In a way there is some risk being taken by the potential recruit in joining such an enterprise. Here, employee engagement becomes important because it should not be the case that the best come and leave because they feel out of place.
The author provides several examples to drive home these points. He also emphasises the importance of compliance and a positive workplace culture, giving examples of Zerodha and Zomato —names that will have high reader-connect. He also emphasises the need to have the right performance management systems in startups with continuous feedback, along with goal setting, so that a direction is clear for everybody. Within feedback he shows how important it is to stress on strengths, areas of improvement, collaboration, communication, etc. All these traits are even more important in a startup organisation.
Managing people may not sound important when a startup is in the formative years. However, when there are myriad changes taking place in terms of size of the organisation, both in terms of turnover and people, HR management becomes critical. For navigating change there is a lot that needs to be done. This can include having leadership training programmes, for example. People who are good in doing a certain job would also have to be groomed as the firm expands in size. They need to move to a different level where they spend more time on strategy and less on implementation and have to build and lead teams. This will lead to better innovation, which will be the crux to accelerating growth of the form.
There are three specific themes which Nigam talks of in the area of innovation in HR. One is the frontiers of the workspace, which has become progressively very important. There has been an increase in the concept of remote working as well as hybrid models that have to be considered, as the new generation of professionals is no longer attracted to coming to work every day physically.
Further, the transformative potential of AI is something that cannot be ignored and has to be part of the process of decision making. The other is the importance of DEI—diversity, equity and inclusion.
This, according to Nigam, can be a strategic advantage for the startup as it helps in building employee engagement. The last is of significant importance, where the wellbeing of employees is addressed.
Burnout is quite common in such setups and the job of the HR vertical is to ensure that employees are healthy and happy as these are preconditions to attain higher levels of productivity.
Another aspect that the author highlights which probably is taken for granted in such enterprises is the need for continuous learning and development. He gives several examples of what different companies, including Google, had done in their formative years to keep this box ticked.
Nigam also talks of conflict management that can be due to personality differences or even work related, which can cover goals of the startup or the strategies to be followed.
In today’s age, having a strong social media strategy is important as this is probably the strongest mode of communication that reaches out to a large audience. This is the route chosen for creating a strong employer brand, which is important. This is quite a useful playbook for startups to see how many boxes have been ticked.
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