Hiring and retaining the right talent is crucial to a business’s growth, but for a start-up, it can be difficult to establish a solid HR strategy. With little time and resources, many early firms undervalue Human Resources and forget to nurture their teams. The EIC Community Training of June focused on this challenge and provided key recruitment tips, ranging from leadership strategies to the best ways for retaining top employees.
Due to the high demand of the first session, the European Innovation Council organised a 2nd edition of the Community Training on HR, gathering 24 participants on 19 June. The EIC Business coach José Martinez defined the main ingredients to stand out in the labour market and Robert Kaluza, the co-founder of Billon Group, shared his experience in this scaling process. Check below the three essential tactics on HR presented:
#1. Know your needs
According to José Martinez, the right recruitment depends on the right matching:
“Be aware of your needs and then select your team members. If you’re not aware, you will miss opportunities that match with your needs”, he said. “Most of the people only focus on growth plans on the revenue and cost side. They don’t plan human resources in terms of needs, profiles and structure. You have to develop your identity from the beginning. Later you have to fine-tune. If you don’t have an identity from the beginning, that’s difficult”.
#2. Establish corporate values and a company culture
José also underlined the importance of corporate mission and values during HR, which can be especially helpful during stressful periods:
“If you are scaling up, you need glue during the process. That process will have many stressful moments, either with customers, investors or within your team. That glue is the culture, corporate values. If you don’t have them, if you don’t live by them, then the company will dissolve like a sugar cube”.
#3. Leverage your strengths
Lastly, and also one of the most challenging aspects, it’s finding a way to stand out in the crowd:
“When you’re a small company, you can have fantastic technology. But you’re not attracting talent just on this basis. You’re competing with good salaries in big corporations. You have to be creative and innovative while managing people. If you don’t have that, you won’t have money or tools enough to compete with big corporates”, José Martinez added.
Mia Galic, Head of Human Resources of SwissDeCode was one of the attendees of the second event. The company, based in Switzerland, has scaling up plans and Mia is currently trying to learn more on HR. “I was expecting tools, excels, tables, something which I can work with, and I found a great combination here. We received the toolkit on the career paths, but it was also about the mindset, and this was what I liked the most. If we are applying the tool just like robots, without really creating the right culture and linking it with the company vision and values, the tool won’t be efficient. And I liked a lot the combination that José presented”, she mentioned.
The two editions gathered 45 EIC innovators in virtual interactive sessions, designed to invite in-depth sharing of experiences, active participation and real-world problem-solving. Mia particularly enjoyed the peer-to-peer experience and found useful the testimonial provided by the co-founder of Billon Group: “I think this is where the power is: we share our experiences, and we learn from each other. This is how we are going to create great things, by just exchanging and helping each other”.
The Community Events are a regular part of the European Innovation Council Business Acceleration Services. For the month of June 2020, we have planned an additional online event: Community Talk: Ask me Anything about Investors. Keep your eyes on our EIC Community and Calendar for further details!
For any questions please do not hesitate to contact us through our contact page (choose ‘Ask a question /get support about an event’).
DISCLAIMER: This information is provided in the interest of knowledge sharing and should not be interpreted as the official view of the European Commission, or any other organisation.