Talent management

A useful playbook for startups to optimise their workforce

- MADAN SABNAVIS

WHEN ONE THINKS of a startup, one visualises a pack of youngsters with unbridled enthusiasm working round the clock, trying out new ideas that might work. There is fun and hard work and the environment is electric. This is a stylised fact about startups.

But there is also the case of founders or staff gradually losing steam after some time or looking for jobs outside. There could be conflicts within, and so on. An area often not looked at seriously is human resources development, where everything is taken for granted. Often, one of the founding members takes on this role to get the right people. But after a point there is need for professionalism.

This is the starting point of Saurabh Nigam's book, People Powered Startups.

The title is apt, because startups are all about people who make an idea fructify, and there has to be focus on these resources. These people could come with different backgrounds in terms of qualifications and experience that make these ventures work well to being with.

But, managing this eclectic set of people with different skill sets and egos becomes very important. Therefore, attracting, retaining and nurturing talent becomes very important as the organisation evolves, and requires a different approach to people management.

These structures, according to the author, need to be flexible and dynamic and cannot mimic those of large companies. Very often this point is ignored by these startups and there could be less attention paid to these finer points.