{"id":309,"date":"2019-07-20T23:44:00","date_gmt":"2019-07-20T23:44:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/321-growth-academy-2023.local\/the-seven-sins-of-startup-hr\/"},"modified":"2023-11-06T23:55:25","modified_gmt":"2023-11-06T23:55:25","slug":"the-seven-sins-of-startup-hr","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/321growthacademy.com\/the-seven-sins-of-startup-hr\/","title":{"rendered":"The seven sins of startup HR"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\"Avoiding<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

People Fails from the Field (And How to Avoid Them!)<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Most startups are fiercely focused on their moonshot, finding product-market fit and figuring out how to keep on keeping on (and growing on!). When it comes to HR, to riff on John Lennon, in startup life people and culture is what happens when you\u2019re busy making other plans.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The thing is unless you are a solopreneur, you have a team and if you\u2019re keeping on keeping on, your team is growing. Enter HR. Yes, it\u2019s happening (whether you focus on it or not!) and here are the most common mistakes startups make on the People front:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

1. Not Having an HR\/People Function<\/h5>\n\n\n\n

We get it \u2013 in the heady days of early startup land, survival (and then, if you\u2019re lucky, growth) is the name of the game. You have customers and markets to understand, products to build and revenue to chase. What you don\u2019t have time for? Thinking about People. Uh, wait, hang on: turns out it\u2019s people who are going to do all those critical things. And in the early days, people (as always) are critical indeed. So, you will have to start thinking about why you\u2019re there, who you need and how you are going to find, attract, retain and reward your team. You may not have a dedicated People function until much later (typically 50 people or more) but you will have the need for a People (formerly known as HR) function. Do yourself a favor and think about who and how you\u2019ll resource the People function (fractionally, as part of your leadership team). And start thinking now about the kind of company you want to build (hopefully one that you are your teammates will be proud to work for and to recommend). Not thinking about HR is a surefire fail.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

2. An Overly Transactional Focus<\/h5>\n\n\n\n

Again, time is of the essence so it\u2019s fairly common that early stage HR\/People takes on an overly transactional focus, meaning it\u2019s only concerned with things like the market comp required to hire a super developer or web ops engineer, the minimal benefits plan that will keep people keeping on, making sure payroll is indeed happening (yay for cash flow) or hanging out taxi chits at your holiday party (in your workspace, natch). Don\u2019t get us wrong, the administrative and transactional aspects of People are imperative (after all most people, save for some founders and committed equity holders, won\u2019t keep on keeping on if their paycheque ceases) and being compliant with workplace legislation is also critical (we say it\u2019s tablestakes, must do stuff). Transactional HR is necessary but not sufficient. You need to move beyond the must-do to the can-do \u2013 so you can elevate the People function to one that is about inspiring people, cultivating a unique culture aligned to your disruptive mission and galvanizing (the right) passionate people to work collectively to achieve the (seemingly) impossible: startup success. Do yourself a favor and think big with your People aspirations \u2013 after all people are going to make or break your company. For real.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

3. Defining Your Culture in Trite Sentiments<\/h5>\n\n\n\n

Think of culture as your internal brand: it\u2019s everything about your reason for being as a company, who you are, how things are done, who gets rewarded and why. It\u2019s your values, your employee experience, the way you describe your company and the opportunity to prospective new recruits and the way you treat people, the way you communicate and the way you deal with both adversity and crushing it. So with that in mind, it\u2019s gotta to be unique; don\u2019t borrow values and corporate culture from a bullshit bingo board. Seriously, take the time to define your unique values and articulate your distinct culture. It will take some effort to do but it will pay off in terms of attracting and retaining the right people so you can grow together and grow your company together.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

4. Culture is As Culture Does: Not Walking the Talk<\/h5>\n\n\n\n

At Netflix, they call it \u201cno brilliant jerks\u201d and other organizations have their takes on this idea, meaning, even if someone is ultra-talented, if they don\u2019t align with the culture, if they are making it difficult, challenging or uncomfortable for other team members, then they don\u2019t have a place there. I\u2019ve even seen this include customers (i.e. clients that don\u2019t align with the company culture are shown the door). It\u2019s about alignment, consistency and doing the right thing (not the easy thing) to stay authentic. People will notice. The right people will notice. It will be good.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

5. (Inadvertently) Creating a Culture of Compliance & Building Bureaucracy<\/h5>\n\n\n\n

When things get growing and more people are added to the team, things can change. This change \u2013 and the real challenge of leading and managing a growing team \u2013 often spurs people to add rules and layers of management and processes. Likewise, growth often means new leaders are heading up teams and it can be a lot easier to look up policies that apply to a situation instead of having hard conversations and working through things together. Sometimes this happens even before significant growth (I\u2019m thinking here of companies that \u2018borrow\u2019 (er are inspired by?) employee handbooks and employment contracts enterprises where they used to work. The result? Five-person shops where they have dress code and policies. Again, don\u2019t get us wrong, we are all about being compliant with all workplace legislation and regulations. What we\u2019re saying though is that, inadvertently when you introduce policies and thick handbooks you may well \u2013 and unintentionally \u2013 be creating a culture of compliance and a workspace where bureaucracy burgeons rather than cultivating a culture of innovation. Stay lean and stay innovative!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

6. Recruiting Pure Play: Post (and Pray)<\/h5>\n\n\n\n

Take it from Laszlo Bock (CEO at Humu, former SVP People at Google and author of the book Work Rules): hiring is the most important part of HR and hiring the right people is the best return on investment for HR. <\/strong>Yet most startups are making many typical mistakes when it comes to recruiting the critical talent they need to grow and thrive. Waiting too long to identify people needs, ill-defined role descriptions, lack of alignment between positions and the moonshot, lack of proactive recruiting (instead hiring and external recruiters and\/or posting (and praying), no defined recruiting process.. we can go on. Let\u2019s put it concisely: recruiting is the most important part of HR so focus on it in a meaningful way and the results will pay off your growing company.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

7. (Not So Great) Expectations: When Good is the Enemy of Great<\/h5>\n\n\n\n

Startups are hard going. There are real constraints in terms of time, money, resources. It\u2019s hard, really hard. And yet, here we are. There\u2019s also opportunity and potential and the real excitement that comes from being in on the ground floor of an organization that\u2019s setting out to be the change. That\u2019s the height of possibility. The challenge is making sure that everyone holds each other accountable to do their best work and to continuously be better collectively. Sometimes, in the midst of all the challenge and constraint we can (sometimes, not always) let things slide, let standards slide or not be transparent about how someone can improve. The role of the company\u2019s leadership is to decide what matters, guide and inspire the team to deliver on what matters, and give everyone the courage to let go of what doesn\u2019t.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

So there you have it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

If some of these #HRfails sound familiar, and you\u2019re looking for a fresh way to manage your People function, check out our People<\/a> courses \u2013 or check out our upcoming courses!<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

People fails from the field \u2013 and how to avoid them!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":311,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-309","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nStartup HR Tips, Learned Through Experience - 321 Growth Academy<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"In this blog we discuss some common startup and small business HR (human resources) fails, and share our top tips on how to avoid them.\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/321growthacademy.com\/the-seven-sins-of-startup-hr\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Startup HR Tips, Learned Through Experience - 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