HRTech Tips
7 Min
Read

Overcoming Startup HR Challenges

December 16, 2021

By the rise of the new flux of remote work or WFH, people management in both mellow businesses and young and technology-led startups, have faced many challenges; from their traditional tasks such as recruiting to new ones such as building the culture or the like, HR managers should be aware that this is a brand-new era, defining anything anew, has forced everyone to go further. Startup people management challenges might be a bit more challenging even, and it seems more than a matter of a lack of resources.

An estimation projected 25-30% of the workforce will be remote in 2021. Global Workplace Analytics believes we cannot estimate a dead-end point for this increasing wave in remote jobs. Moreover, Upwork estimated 1 in 4 Americans- over 26% of the American workforce- will be working remotely through 2021 or so. There is also another speculation that 22% of the workforce (36.2 Million Americans) will work remotely by 2025.

Indeed, remote work remains an immovable part of the work culture henceforth. I can carry on this speculation as far as can be said. New remote boss vacancies will appear soon; heads of the companies will work absently.  

The distractions, annoyances, and soft abuses that come with co-workers and middle managers, are the most reported things employees have asserted in a survey as the most important issues which their lack in remote works make this new method more comfortable. 95.1 percent of employees surveyed in a Mercer study reported that remote work was better than working in the existing set-ups.

But this new "paradigm shift”, due to its unprecedented adjourns many routines, makes new challenges, and brings out disadvantages, especially for line managers and HR departments in general.

However, through some hacks, we can handle the hurdles and obstacles, and tackle the shortcomings caused by the new method in businesses and startups.

What does HR do in a startup?

Simply, the HR section has to do up and create a platform to make the human structure a unified team. People need to be liked and sometimes need to be discerned important. Your employees need a vent or a blowhole to say what they want during work time to bestow their maximum productivity. Hence your platform should work as a jazz piece.

In my experience, whenever we provide co-workers with a table of discussions weekly or even monthly, the company grows more competent. As a matter of fact, discussion séances are worth more than a box of letters or the like.

Firstly, because confabulation provides you with a lot of ideas that HR initiatives in startups need more than anything like that. Secondly, because HR services for startups should be based on what the employees say as to their exaptation from the workplace. And finally, because we humans understand each other and can make a unified community as a single team. 

American families spend 37 minutes of quality time together per day. So, it can be seen that just 37 minutes of confabulation can keep a family close. In workplaces, we can create a sense of unity with monthly quality time.

On the other hand, a progressive startup has been planned on a flexible cultural plot. Not only will it have shown a sense of confidence, having some advantages in terms of uplifting the atmosphere of the workplace, but it will also be enhancing the sense of belonging to the employees. 

If I wanted to picture it more obviously, I should refer to my personal history in a doll startup. In that venture, the team had proposed great ideas for designing new dolls, and this had been made possible at the mercy of free discussion and brainstorming sessions.  

We all would gather in the design room and everyone would participate in the discussion. This has created a sense of soft competition among the employees. We as facilitators would manage the atmosphere and the vibe so that the flexible hierarchy has never been unbalanced. This somehow fun and cool space has some benefits:

✔ putting out inconspicuous prurience among the passive candidates;

✔ retaining talents;

✔ Smart recruiting;

✔ Enhancing productivity, again through an inconspicuous agenda.

Nevertheless, you cannot value flexibility with only being a copycat and repeating some others’ experiences; there is no suit-for-all-sizes toolkit to do so. Indeed, you should have a smart HR department of your own, designed and planned based on your specific needs, and expand the limits of traditional structures.

With this in mind, you should pay heed to what nowadays successful businesses value as clarity in communication. As a matter of fact, obfuscation should be obviated by working on the level of language with which employees ought to practice while communicating with each other. 

Avoiding using jargon is the first step, and it should be the rule. Still, clarity is what connotes a well-educated and adept person. This makes communications smooth and keeps out unnecessary emulations between employees. So, Keep in mind tackling the language problems in the workplace is upon the HR department to be handled. Indeed, the HR initiatives for startups must ponder over the platform to ease these difficulties.  

To hire creative individuals for a task, however, the creative class has been referred to as ones who have the ability to work with even paucity in information and obscurity of the task sometimes.

It is inevitable that, in fact, clarity isn’t so easy to grasp as to have already been established all the time, increasing the remote work makes it more imperative for startups. And a scrupulous approach to chase after any language error might ban creativity and even overuse of simple language. 

Overall, owing to the fact that startups can be developed through an alive language and trial and error fast and pivot, the best for HR thinkers is to provide employees with a flexible platform to experience new horizons and ease the drawbacks caused by the bumpy road of growth.

What are the biggest challenges facing HR today in Startups?

In the world of startups, you need fierce independence. Everyone wants to see your failure, and it’s a fact. According to startup statistics for 2021, people between the ages of 50 and 59 are at the top of the startup founders list with 35%. Thus, it can be seen that you have intelligent rivals, knowledgeable and experienced. As a matter of fact, they didn’t born yesterday. 

 So, all kidding aside, a faithful staff is really worthwhile. But you must know your employees aren’t your family member, and faithfulness is a two-way street. 

On the flip side of the coin, success is not an individual exploit. Just the stupid thinks he can be successful alone. Hence, so long as they treat you well, you should treat them better, and this is upon the platform the HR services for startups that are going to manage the system. 

In the following rubrics, I intend to open up rather functional HR initiatives for startups a little bit more focused.

 

Positive fame vs. Negative fame

Sometimes businesses think being strict and taking a quite adamant approach to treating the employees, and may help out to establish order. But the priority is your progress not schooling your personal ethics in office or among remote workers.

As a matter of fact, in my view, the lesson that must be learned from the big companies’ history is that we cannot rely on a fixed ethical approach. Indeed, every single situation needs to be tackled with a suitable doodad, and the challenge is seeking out it in the face of different problems. The best HR practices for startups should consider it as well. 

So, HR services for startups come across these kinds of instantaneous-built toolkits occasionally. For instance, to negotiate with the staff you want to lay off. This is crucial for startups to bring out a compromise; otherwise, the startup grows while scooping up negative fame around the brand, to say the least.

Hence, to overcome the fragility of the startups not to be exacerbated by negative fame, the HR initiatives in startups should do up and avoid making frictions inside. 

All in all, if we want to summarize, a smart startup should be able to introduce itself to others positively as much as possible. A good name does a lot of things that many other endeavors and struggles do not even cannot take a step in that regard.


How do you overcome startup workforce challenges?

It is reported that money-related issues were the most common reasons the funded startups failed, with a combined 40% citing running out of cash or a lack of funding as a reason for failure. The second step, thereupon, in this ladder belongs to workforce challenges. 

Consequently, the HR initiatives for startups have faced out many hurdles, while they make for the best tests. Nevertheless, through some measures, we can make out the flaws and take HR initiatives for startups in order to solve and grasp a skyrocketed growth.  

Filling the gaps

One of the best HR practices for startups is to search out the structure for finding gaps caused by individuals who cannot push up their weights. As a matter of fact, the HR initiatives for startups should maintain the process of optimizing every maladroit procedure through which errors of the routines have been produced.

Thus, startup HR challenges could be defined with these gaps. Indeed, the startup HR challenges shouldn’t put up with the employees of the system who couldn’t meet its requirements to develop and retain a good team. 

Furthermore, for managing daily tasks a good online software is essential. There are a wide spectrum of online assets as well, through which HR services for startups can be fulfilled.  By looking at the articles that have been prepared for you in this field on this website, you have really found a more detailed for further acquaintance.

Monitoring the Productivity with Smart Recruiting 

Regarding all the above, the traditional concept of productivity based on the maximum doing per hour or something like this isn’t so productive as to be the current de rigueur notion ironically. Nevertheless, a skyrocketed growth has to reckon with the rate of productivity through the business geography. 

Business geography is a self-made concept I use to explain what I’ve grasped since I’ve been working in small businesses and startups. Simply, the business geography is the ecosystem that your startups have to get along with, rivals, customers, passive candidates, current staff, new technologies related to your work, etc. You need to scoop up a bundle of psychological knowledge as well.

For instance, it is reported that—and could have some sparkling epiphany—, freelancers spend 36 hours a week productively, in spite of office workers whose rate of productivity rotates around 31 hours a week. It is worth saying happiness in the workplace boosts this rate at least for 12%. 

Best HR practices try to make a balanced, even with their limited assets inside, among all the forces of the geography coming to the heart of your startup. 

Let me tell you what happened once in one of the startups I’ve worked with. In that case, the company, suffocated under a lot of adjourned tasks, was about to enmesh. I decided to replace the whole of the IT department with just two nerd students.

They were self-motivated and also had a strong and of course a good bundle of cutting-knowledge for redesigning the system and method of our online retail shop. After just three months, the startup faced with new obstacles, not because my nerds failed, but because we now had a lot of new buyers.

Needless to say, we would overcome new shortcomings so soon at the mercy of getting rid of the previous IT team. Hence, it can be found out that recruiting potential and creative employees can help out the startup to a high degree.


In the end, It's very remarkable how you treat your colleagues. As long as we meet the team virtually or even asynchronously,  we might need to try emotional connection with one another by regular mingling or sending even a simple birthday greeting card. We all deserve respectful and affable treatment. 

As a matter of fact, if we really want to stay alive in the business, we must earn it. The world of startups is a complex, uncertain and demanding, both professionally and in terms of complex human relationships. The real challenge is always people, and startups people management aka HR need to find better channels of facilitating connections between people. You shouldn’t make a one-way street, not by a long shot.

Years of experience have taught me that only those businesses grow with their hearts moving towards prosperity, luxuriance, and deliverance.

Join 18,000 Fellow Recruiters.
Get experts' recruiting tips straight to your inbox.

Thank you! Your submission has been received!
Oops! Something went wrong. Try again.