There is nothing more important than establishing a human resources (HR) strategy aligned with your business strategy for the success of your startup. The fact remains that talent management is often neglected when faced with a multitude of great business challenges, even though it seems obvious. Jorge Zuñiga Blanco, an expert in business operations and long-time entrepreneur, provides insight into how startups can deal with and overcome challenges related to human talent.
A company must deal with two major problems during the early stages of its development: developing its product or service as well as finding its first customers. There can often be problems associated with the development of a team that lags behind because of these two issues. It is often the case that people’s skills are neglected, and they are not adequately addressed.
As a company grows, the skill sets required to run a business are obviously different when a company has five people, 25 people, or 250 people working for it. It increasingly becomes more demanding and requires an ever-changing approach to management.
The most important thing for an entrepreneur to remember is that he or she must implement an HR strategy from day one of the company if the entrepreneur truly believes that the team and people are the most important assets of the business. According to Zuñiga, “you have to think about what feedback you should give, how to plan for growth, how to help people think about their career paths, and how to handle performance issues.”
In the early days of a company, it’s easier to get started than it is to face all the challenges that have accumulated over time as the organization grows. The CEO or vice president of marketing or engineering, the person who manages human resources, has other responsibilities and does not have time to think about the skills and development of people. What happens is that most startups don’t have an HR person on board from day one.
Despite the fact that we take on natural inclinations to handle such HR matters, many of these leaders face other issues and, in many cases, they do not have any HR experience. It is very important that people in any organization need to be continuously educated and developed.
If you have good talent, you must make sure that they are trained and kept up to date with the technology of the moment. It’s very important that people in any organization be continuously educated and kept up to date.
It is much more costly to replace someone than to develop the talent that we already have if we want to have an organization that learns. Therefore, if we want to have an organization that learns, we need to think about taking existing talent and enhancing it. Companies must consider their people’s medium-term growth as they strive to survive in today’s fast-paced environment, taking into account how fast the problems are coming our way.
It is important that executives ask themselves if employees will not only be able to do the job that they are currently doing, but also be able to take on the next two positions as the company grows and scales.
As Zuñiga points out, it is critical to understand your team’s hopes, goals, and career aspirations as a manager in both startups as well as large organizations. Knowing your team’s hopes, goals, and career goals will allow you to assign them roles and positions in which they will feel highly motivated to perform at their best. There is no doubt that if people believe that you are taking care of them, they are able to accomplish a lot.
There is a need for leaders to ask themselves a fundamental question about whether they really know their team’s goals and how they can provide them with the support they need to achieve them. It is a mindset with a medium-term vision rather than a transactional vision of people’s development.
It is essential to be able to continuously push yourself outside of your comfort zone as a leader. When things are going well, leaders can raise the bar even further. While leaders can offer specific skills-building tools, such as workshops, they must also push and challenge their employees. Above all, it is crucial to remember that, particularly for startups, it is imperative that communication, links between colleagues, motivation and talent be promoted.
