1. HR management
Super-project.eu

2. Hiring - importance
An important decision for each organization - magnified many times in the context of new and growing ventures
Consequences of bad hires:
Negative impact on firm’s performance
Poisoning a small firm’s culture
Hiring mistakes are quite frequent. In most cases, they result from insufficient selection and hiring process..

3. Most common reasons behind poor hiring decisions
Relying on candidates’ descriptions of themselves
Failing to follow a consistent, evidence-based selection process
Making hiring decisions very quickly and relying solely on own intuition
Failing to provide sufficient and objective information about the job
Failing to resist the temptation to fill a job as soon as possible
Failing to check candidates’ references

4. Useful tips for recruiting strategies
Look inside the company first
Encourage employees and incentivize referrals
Use multiple advertising channels
Recruit on campuses and universities
Establish relationships with schools and other potential sources of employees, offer internships
Recruit “retired” workers
Use unconventional recruiting techniques
Offer attractive and personalized alternative benefits

5. Leadership & business lifecycle
Leadership = the process of influencing and inspiring others to work to achieve a common goal and then giving them power and the freedom to achieve it
Changing requirements on leadership
Inception – small teams, cooperation – direct supervision and good contact
Early growth – centralized control and direct contact - moving towards more delegation and coordination
Expansion/rapid growth – delegating responsibilities (but in more decentralized structure), indirect reporting and control
Maturity – leadership turns into a watchdog for the organizational culture and overall vision and goals

6. Organizational culture
= a distinctive, unwritten, informal code of conduct that governs its behaviour, attitudes, relationships and style.
= “the way we do things in our company”
Plays an important role for gaining a competitive advantage
Arises from an entrepreneur’s consistent pursuit of core values
Should be also reflected in performance measures - expectations on future employee’s performance and respective performance measures should be explained during hiring process
Sustaining firm’s culture begins with hiring

7. How to assure a cultural fit
Articulate what values, norms and practices define your business
Clearly express your culture in all your communication materials
Anyone involved in interviewing candidates must know your culture well and refer to it throughout the hiring process.
Take the time to provide a look at your culture in real time and discuss it afterwards. Look for other than trained answers..
Ask candidates to take personality tests and arrange them meetings with team members from different levels across the firm.
Avoid asking candidates about personal issues – some questions are illegal to ask when interviewing a prospective employee.
Too much conformity as may cause lack of diversity, leading to poor creativity and decreased competitiveness.

8. Motivation and compensation
Main advantages of small firms are especially the following:
Can offer more rewarding and interesting jobs.
Opportunity to keep staff much more involved.
Flexibility to tailor roles to individuals
Less hierarchy, better communication and involvement.
Main challenges involve the following:
They cannot always offer the benefits as large companies can, so they need to attract and motivate staff in different ways.
People need to take on more than one role and do tasks somewhat outside the job description.

9. Rewards and compensation system
A key motivational instrument in each company
Two important prerequisites to use rewards to motivate:
Link them to performance
Tailor them to employees’ needs and characteristics
Components of rewards and compensation system include:
Salary
Financial incentives
Benefits
Intangible incentives

10. Rewards and compensations: Tips and good practices
Tips and good practices for small businesses are:
Include a personal preferences survey into the new hire orientation.
Publish employees’ results and accompany it by a personal thank you or some other recognition.
Provide training incentives relevant to employee’s job.
Don't discount the power of fun at work to de-stress and motivate employees.
Each employee is an individual - what works well for one employee might have the opposite effect on someone else.
Motivation system should be closely linked with firm’s culture and reinforce it.

11. Introducing HR management practices and hiring an HR specialist
In earlier stages, HR acquisition and management is either performed by the entrepreneur himself (or by a member of founders’ team) or delegated on ad hoc basis.
Later on, these competencies are delegated to member of the management team.
Finally, the stage that follows include establishing specialist HR function
When to hire an HR specialist?
If dealing with legal issues becomes too demanding
When you're hiring rapidly
HR specialist from staff headcount around to 30-35, and HR manager at staff headcount from around 50 upwards. It is very individual and depends on many factors.

12. Thank You !