“ You don’t build the business, you build people. And then people build the business”.

Indeed ! The power of people is such that when provided with favorable working condition, they can help the company to grow exponentially within a short period of time.

Looking at how volatile the Indian startup industry is, Human Resource professionals plays a very crucial role in helping Businesses to build their core team and ensuring employees remain with them.

Its therefore imperative to develop HR strategies that are simple and easy to follow without any complex Jargons. HR Strategies should help in making a focused, goal oriented, challenging and enthusiastic working environment.  

Some of the frequently observed HR trends in today’s startups include -

HR playing a strategic role

HR strategies today are developed in correspondence with the business objective. These broadly involves developing organizational structure, culture, talent management, performance management and change management which helps to achieve competitive advantage through people management.

HR professionals provide a sense of direction in the dynamic startup environment so that the business goals are linked with individual goals, through development and implementation of relevant HR policies.

HR Trends observed in Organization’s operation

One of the key element of success is organization’s culture and the ethics it follows. Efforts are made by HR and the management to establish the right culture and work ethics that are aligned to the organizational goals and objectives and ensuring that everyone follows them.

It is often seen that startups have an open culture where there is a flat hierarchy where everybody is easily approachable and work as a one whole team to achieve the set targets.

Working hours flexibility, casual dress code, work from home, BYOD are some of the examples that have become norms today in startups.

Employees are often expected to work out of their comfort zone and Job Description and stretch their set job responsibilities to complete challenging tasks, roles and responsibilities.

Some of the examples of successful startups having great working environment are:

Busigence - At Busigence, some of the employee engagement activities include barbeque nights, family picnics, talent shows, foosball, ethnic wear days, and cultural functions.

TripHobo - At TripHobo, every team goal achievement is accompanied by team party.

SocialCops - The company follows limited hierarchy, giving complete project responsibility to employees, transparency, innovation and creativeness are given importance.

HR Trends in Recruitment and Attrition control

The hiring process is quick, skill and attitude based. People who can take up responsibilities, work hard and keep the company above themselves are the right match for startups.

Generally, in startups, employees are a team of young and enthusiastic people with multiple skillset.

However, it is also a challenge to attract these talented people who can resist the well established MNCs and join startups.

On of the growing concern is considerably high attrition rate in startups. This can be because of lack of employee recognition and growth or cultural mismatch.

Establishing proper company culture, competitive salary compensation, sometimes also in terms of profit sharing, career growth potential, challenging work environment, employee engagement, rewards and recognition can help in controlling attrition rate.  

HR Trend in Performance Management, Reward and Recognition

As stated above, employees in startups are expected to take complete responsibility for their work, to ensure they perform well, 360 degree feedback mechanism is often used where feedback from all the relevant members is taken into account.

Performance management is designed to give quick feedback to employees. In case of positive feedback, it motivates them to outperform and in case of negative feedback, it triggers them to take quick remedial action.  

PMS is often linked with employee contribution to company’s profit.

Another trend of giving 30-50% hike to the deserving employees is also observed.

Rewards and Recognition are important morale boosters that make employees feel they are appreciated for their work.

Early Promotion, designing mentor, incentives, team lunch/dinner are some of the observed current trends.    

Employee Engagement Trends

It is a well known fact that Happy Employees are more productive.

Today’s HR are spending a considerable amount of time in developing effective Employee Engagement Strategies.

Employee’s Birthdays, Anniversaries and Festive celebrations, team lunch and dinner outings, innovative discussion meets, gaming sessions, unique themed days are trending today.

More constructive employee engagement trends observed are delegating important responsibilities, team handling , taking employee opinion in critical decisions, brain storming sessions, making them involved in hiring process, keeping them informed about the business progress, outdoor workstation.  

In conclusion, HR strategies are undoubtedly trending more towards employee empowerment.