Tech Startup HR Support: When should I hire an HR person?

At the beginning of your business journey, you’ll be looking after all aspects of running your startup, from core product to finance, admin, marketing and HR support. However, if your company is growing rapidly which is common for tech startups, soon you will need to hire more staff to keep up with demand. Initially, you may be able to manage the recruitment, onboarding and ongoing HR processes for a small team of people, but as you get bigger, this activity will become more time consuming. When your HR is taking up more than a few hours a week, it’s time to hire in some tech startups HR support. 

So where are you in your business journey?

1-10 employees – very small business or startup

At this level of staff, the HR can probably be managed in-house by the COO or perhaps CFO. You will need to ensure that you have robust documented processes in place and by law, you must have the following policies as a bare minimum:

• Health & Safety 
• Disciplinary/Dismissal 
• Grievance 

It’s also good practice to provide an employee handbook which explains to employees what is expected of them and you may also wish to write other policies to cover things like absence, diversity & inclusion and maternity which can help you to set the company culture and ensure everyone is clear on how things operate.

11-50 employees – growing small business or more established startup

Once a business has grown past a couple of dozen employees, you’ll need to have one person who has HR as their responsibility. Whilst HR could be in addition to their other responsibilities, such as office manager or admin, now could also be a good time to either hire a dedicated part-time tech startup HR support person or to consider outsourcing your HR to a consultant who can provide the employee oversight that your business needs. If your staff is located remotely, you may find that this creates more work so you might need to hire in a full-time resource at this stage.

50+ employees – established small business

With over 50 employees, the HR activity will be significant, so it’s important to ensure you have someone in place who can dedicate enough time to managing everything properly. With more staff, there’s more scope for issues so it’s vital to get a qualified full-time HR professional working for you. The advantage of an employee at this stage is that they will be embedded in your culture and be much closer to what’s going on so they can spot problems earlier and put in place actions to mitigate issues. 

What should I do if my business is a high growth tech startup?

In this situation, it may be a good idea to hire in HR resource sooner rather than later. If your business is hiring a lot of people in a short space of time, the recruitment and onboarding activity could easily become overwhelming if you don’t have a dedicated resource to look after it.

The responsibilities of an HR person

Recruitment and onboarding: HR will manage the recruitment approach to attract the right employees to your company. They will handle the interview admin and deal with employment contracts.

Pay and benefits: HR staff will manage the pay review process and feed through changes to the payroll. They may even administer the payroll if you don’t have this function within your finance team. The HR team will be responsible for supplier relationships with benefit providers such as pension scheme, employee assistance programmes and wellbeing.

Health, safety and wellbeing: HR is responsible for ensuring a safe and healthy working environment from ensuring that your company is compliant to the Health and Safety at Work Act to providing support to employees who might be going through a difficult time with physical or mental wellbeing issues. HR can also be a liaison between the employee and the manager if required.

Learning and development: Staff training and continuous professional development is another HR responsibility. The team might run workshops and courses, face-to-face or online and they will also manage the booking processes for off-site training.

Employee relations:  Should there be an disputes, grievances or disciplinary issues, your HR team will take the lead in managing these. 

So, you can see that there is a lot of HR activity that is required to create a successful thriving company. Having the right HR support is not something that you can dismiss as an unnecessary expense.

Getting the right tech startup HR support in place at the right time is crucial

Although we don’t partner with any specific outsourced HR companies, you can look at the support you could expect to receive by going to CitrusHR’s website. 

If you leave it too late to hire your HR support, you may find that your company is in breach of employment law, your processes are ill-defined and inefficient or that you’ve lost control of your company culture. To avoid these issues, why not speak to David Masih, our client relationship partner who can walk you.Call 03330 067 123 or email info@onthegoaccountants.co.uk.