Top HR Challenges for a Growing Startups

Start-ups are all the rage nowadays, with new ones popping up almost every day. With the availability of sandboxes, people can now confidently venture into start-ups and establish their businesses. These sandboxes ensure that even if startups fail they don’t have to face that many serious repercussions. There are of course downsides to start-ups as there are with everything. Star-ups often are understaffed and have to make do with minimal resources, which can prove to be exhausting and time-consuming.

In a startup, the Human Resources department plays a very important role which includes recruiting top talent, managing employees' records, developing foolproof HR policies, enabling organizational learning, intentionally nurturing a culture in the company, and much more. This can all seem daunting and scary but never fear. We have outlined a list of the most difficult challenges related to human resources faced by a company and here is a list for your convenience

Top 4 HR Challenges for Startups

 

Challenges 1: Maintain Hiring Standards

The most prominent problem that startups face is that of recruitment. Oftentimes, startups have the same primary employees that they started with, and later on, when they start expanding, they face a lot of HR challenges. The human resources department’s main function is to hire the most talented people. With Startups, as they are new to recruiting new employees and considering the fact that candidates are hesitant to join startups due to the chance of it failing, recruiters end up selecting the first candidate that applies to their company. While there is a chance that that candidate might be perfect for the job, more often than not, the candidate proves to be inexperienced and unfit for the job for which they have been hired.

That is why it is imperative that the recruiters not rush into things and take their time interviewing candidates. While it is true that fewer people are likely to apply to a start-up, waiting for the right candidate is the right option in the long run. The fact of the matter is that bad employees attract worse employees. You may think that hiring an average candidate is a short-term solution. In a few years, you will end up with a team of people that is unable to perform even the simplest of tasks and are a drain on your company’s resources.

Challenges 2:  Create a Learning Culture

While the growth of a company is the primary goal of any employee, it is also to be remembered that a company is only as good as its employees. That is why the employees must grow along with the company. With startups, the employees are so overworked and focused on making sure that the company runs smoothly and doesn’t face any problems that they have no time to focus on individual learning or growth. They are stuck on the same knowledge level as they were when they started, while their peers or juniors working in major corporations may excel both academically and in their careers.

This is one of the big HR challenges for startups. To solve this problem, startups need to give their Human Resources department complete power over how they should train their employees. To create a good learning culture, the HR department needs to have a free hand in organizing training and developmental activities for the company’s employees. Furthermore, it needs to be proactive in such events; only then a proper learning culture can be set up. Companies need to spend time and resources to conduct workshops and seminars that help promote this learning culture.

Challenges 3:  Create Policies

One of the major reasons for the popularity of startups is the relaxed work environment. Startups don’t have strict rules and regulations that big corporations tend to have and usually, make things along as they go. Employees do as they are told or as they think is best and if it doesn’t work out then they deal with the problem. This lax attitude may work in the beginning but as the company expands and more employees are recruited, the company can face some major issues.

Not having a policy guideline means that there are no dos and don’ts and that employees are free to do as they see fit. This does not work well with large populations as there are always a lot of contradicting ideas and opinions. Dealing with problems as they come also becomes impractical as multiple problems start arising simultaneously. This puts a lot of burden and stress on HR. These HR challenges can be removed if the startup starts devising its policy from the beginning. It is no way implies that a startup should have a complete code of conduct or behavioral policy. Rather with passing time and expansion of the company and as the company faces problems, it should add to its policy one at a time, while keeping in mind its work culture.

Challenges 4:  Retain Employees

Finding a new employee is very difficult but it can also prove to be quite expensive. Large corporations have the advantage that they have resources to spare and invest in recruitment. Startups, on the other hand, have a very limited number of resources and as such, they do not have the room to recruit employees again and again. This means that they cannot afford to get their recruitment wrong.

The problem arises when startups are unable to retail their employees. Many people gain experience through startups and once they establish themselves, they move on to bigger corporations. This can handicap the growth of the startup. This is one of the HR challenges for startups that cannot be immediately solved. Rather, startups should focus on creating loyalty in their employees and offering them incentives and growth opportunities as well as creative outlets which they might not get a chance to explore in a large corporation.

Conclusion

To conclude, Startups face many problems as they try to establish themselves in the dense market, but a bit of strategizing and focus on HR can boost up the company and help it establish its name among other successful businesses.