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Journey of a Startup

SYNOPSIS

This is a story of few friends who charged with ambitious dreams sets out to give a face to their
idea. Ongoing further on their journey they realize various problems that were imperative to be
resolved for the success of the company. This story majorly focuses on issues faced by startup
companies when they start to expand in terms of its human resource management. Issues faced
by the company without the proper HR division has been clearly depicted in the story. The story
also touches on the solution to the HR problems along with the depiction of the outcome after the
HR issues were resolved.
PART-I: Foundation of the startup
The story that we are going to tell you starts with 4 friends wanting to make an impact on the
world. Their idea was to create an organization that will help them create a niche market for the
fandom.

G Yadav was the one who has the idea. N is the one handling the creative part. P Goel is the
pocket of the organization, and A Duggal take care of the sales & marketing part of the
organization

So this is the dream team started in 2012 with the idea of connecting to the child inside them.
Today it claims to be India’s largest online platform brand for big budgeted movies merchandise.

The idea struck to them when they realize that their childhood favorite 90s shows are just part of
their memory. The present generation that is growing up right now is completely devoid of the
awesomeness of these shows so to make their favorite character immortal and make the present
generation aware of these character they all came up with the idea of “THE HEARTED SOUL” a
platform that brings life to their hearted character and thus helps in creating the impact they want
to create in this world.

So going chronically, the Hearted Soul was founded in 2012, with the idea of creating a one-stop
platform for all the fandom to connect with their childhood heroes. G being an avid star war fan
wanted to connect with his favorite character (Darth Vader, Han Solo, Yoda) from the movie but
alas not many options were available to him. They wanted to create an online platform that sells
quirky pop culture merchandize. This breeds the idea of “The Hearted Soul” in him.

Upon doing a little research, he was confronted with a fact that the licensing business in India is
negligible as compared to the US, where the licensing business is an industry of $250 billion.
India also has approximately the same potential, so for them, the opportunities are there.

Till now, only the easy part is done, that is, only the idea is in place. Now begins the most
difficult part, the realization of that IDEA. For that, they have to struggle with the procurement
and distribution. Going to the customer and or creating brand value, an understanding sales
figure, etc. they thought they had covered all the major aspect of the business and they are ready
to go. They were excited, they were brimming with confidence, and they thought they had
prepared the perfect recipe for success but what they cooked was not what they expected as they
were literally missing the key ingredient, that is, HUMAN RESOURCE was not considered in
their recipe. Later through introspecting their idea and feedback from peers in the industry, they
realize that they lack dedicated recruitment and training cell, that is, HR department was missing
in the organization.
PART-II: Realization of the problem
From the beginning, they were able to make the profit, sales were happening but the trouble they
had here was that they were not able to reach their potential that they had planned from the
beginning as already mention the potential of the licensing business is around $250 billion, and
they were not able to achieve their initial goals. Alongside, the attrition rate is pretty high for the
organization. Most of the employees that join the company leave it in 6-7 months thus having a
high churning rate, and at the point it looks like the company has an open door policy that affects
the overall image of the company. The theory that best describes this problem is the personality-
job fit theory, which postulates that a person's personality traits will reveal insight as to
adaptability within an organization. Along with that the Job description and job specification
does not meet with the selected candidate as their selection, and recruitment process is
completely standardized as prevalent in the present industry scenario but what they did not
realize is that they were in a different industry altogether whose main components are not the
regular guys who are trained to do 9-5 hours jobs the job description demands a different type of
labour force that basically focuses on the creativity. They had to be someone who fits the job
description as the job demand them to be creative, and companies product is youth-centric, so
they need people who can come up with something different, something extra and something
unique. So overall what they lack is the workforce planning. “Workforce planning is a
continual process used to align the needs and priorities of the organization with those of its
workforce to ensure it can meet its legislative, regulatory, service and production requirements
and organizational objectives.”

So, after thorough discussion among themselves, with their allies and peers in the industry, G and
his team realize that the mistake that they are committing is the lack of dedicated department that
focuses on the workforce in the organization. So in the next general meeting, G presented the
idea of having a dedicated HR department, which will focus on recruitment and selection of
workforce based on companies job description and the recruitment would focus on the job
specification. So on Recommendation from their investors, the team appointed S Gupta as their
HR head and thus the era of reform begin in ‘The Hearted Soul.’

The tasks are given to S (as HR) are,

Job evaluation by systematically determining the value of one job in the organization to another
and accordingly establishing a rational pay structure.

Recruitment and selection of candidates by maintaining uniformity between job description


and job specification, so that the right candidate can be selected for the organization.

Orientation, Training, and Development to accustom new hire to the organizational culture
and values, the orientation, training and development program takes place.

Performance Appraisal is the method by which the performance of an employee is measured


and documented.

Promotion and Transfer the horizontal and vertical movement of the existing employees in the
organization structure according to their performance.

Career path planning the most important job of the HR in any company is to maintain the talent
pool that they have recruited, and that can only be done when the employee sees the commitment
of the organization in retaining them thus the need of career path planning arises. It focuses on
the long-term retention of the workforce.

Labor Relation emphasizes on the relationship that the organization has it with its workers.

But the biggest problem that S has to overcome in this organization is to find a perfect
recruitment process for the organization. For Example, right now, the Same Psychometric test is
used to evaluate the salesperson, finance guy, and design/creative guy. This led to asymmetry in
the selection process as it attracts the unfit people for the job thus violating the personality-job
fit theory.

PART III: Solution to the problem


As the organization grew bigger in size, more and more people with right skill and attitude were
imperative to support and sustain the growth. This was the point the realization of different HR
department was felt to plan and handle the human resource for the efficient functioning of the
company.

The newly appointed HR head, Mr. S was given the responsibility to come up with the solution
to the problem the organization was facing. S spent some time with other members of the
organization to understand the different types of the task done by them. Following were the
observation made by him after thoroughly interacting with all the crucial members of the
organization:

 Selection and recruitment process for finance department was a simple standard process
that was being followed till now.
 Challenge was analyzing and defining the job role and specification accurately for design
division to get an appropriate job fit persons for the role.
 As organization core strength was the creativity in the products that they were offering so
recruiting and selection right person for the design division was imperative.
 Up to some extent innovative people were required in marketing division also to get the
product to the right end customers.

To better understand the job intricacies S decided to follow a procedural way that he had learned
under his MBA curriculum. So he started with following steps:
1.) Job Information: This was first stepping to get an insight on the job in terms of
complexity, criticality, and skills required to perform the job. The two approaches that he
found appropriate to obtain the job information was :
 Interview: S interviewed the existing employees under different roles to
understand the duties, tasks, and behaviors necessary for activities. He designed a
set of questions that he asked a variety of working personnel to gather the
required information.
 Fleishman Job Analysis: This method was used to understand the abilities
required to perform the job. The various areas were covered under this method
was the cognitive ability and perceptual abilities which were imperative to in
design and marketing division.
2.) Defining the job: Post getting the information S went ahead to the next step that was to
define the job. Under this step, he defined the characteristics of the different type of jobs
done within the organization. A proper job description was made which included job title,
job activities, working conditions, social environment and conditions for employment.
3.) Job Specification: This step was followed to list down all the abilities and skills that
were imperative for the performing the job efficiently. This was done objective of
conveying right details to attract job-fit candidates for the recruitment and selection
process.

Setting up Divisions and Positions:

On doing this level of analysis now, S had a better understanding what structure was required
within the organization to segregate different divisions. Broadly he decided to set up four major
divisions. Different types and levels of job positions were created within each division. Job
position and requirement was defined based on the job analysis done by him in the initial stages.

Following were the four major divisions to be set up proposed by S with its functionality:

1.) Design: This was the graphic designing team and was supposed to be a very exciting
team. The main functionality of this team would be, involvement with design creation
team from ideation to manufacturing process. People having out of the box thinking
attitude was highly required in this. Even the most ridiculous ideas were listened and
considered. To best represent the job responsibility and expectations from this division
two important post were created.
 Design Captain: This was full-time graphics designer post. Requirements that
were to be considered for this position were:
 Badass designing skills
 Ability to understand how and why any design will work
 Highly interactive with colleagues
 Open to feedback and criticism
 Design Cadet: This was graphic design intern position for 2-3 months. This
position was created to make potential candidate understand the unique work
culture within the organization. Also, this position provided an opportunity to
harness new skills for short duration and test whether that works. If it works, the
intern could be offered a permanent position.

2.) Marketing: This division required people have excellent networking skills who were
supposed to represent the company at different occasions like music events, college fests,
city programs and corporate houses.
3.) Customer Relations: This division was created by keeping in mind the relationship
building with the customers and find innovative ways to engage with the existing
customers. In other companies, there was no such different division, but this work was
done by few dedicated teams. Mr. S created this different division because he understood
the importance of the long-lasting relationship with the customers from a business
perspective.
4.) Finance: This division was in line with other industries following same standard
protocols to recruit and select people.

Mr. S believed that implementing structure and process will certainly help him to get the right
person for the right position within the organization. Though, in order to confirm that objective
and understanding of the workforce is matching to the company’s mission and vision, he decided
to set up a training and development cell. New recruits in under different division were supposed
to go through training sessions to better understand the company’s goals. Existing experienced
employees of the company were planned to give these training sessions to the new recruits.

PART IV: Outcome


All the above idea suggested by S was set up within the company. Within three years after the
implementation changes were visible. Improvement in the outcome was clearly highlighted and
impressed all the stakeholders of the company. Not only this, setting up of proper structure and
position also lead to increase in job satisfaction of the existing employees and reduced attrition
rate.

Due to an increased focus on graphic designing, the hearted soul emerged as a leading market
player in graphic t-shirts. As a result of set up of customer relation division, the number of
customers increased to five lakh. At this point in this time, the company was processing 1000+
orders per day.

The company that started small with different skills and ability brought in by N, G, A, and P was
given a different momentum by setting up appropriate HR strategy by S. Later on, impressed by
the work of S he was given partnership in the company.
CONCLUSION
The story depicted the importance of HR policies in a growing company. When a company is
small or startup recruitment is done through standardized process across the multiple roles. But,
as the company grows it becomes imperative to define a structured process for recruitment and
selection, along with job analysis and definition for different roles in the company. Right person
at right position with right knowledge is what made the Hearted Soul kiss the skies of success.

References:

 Wayne F. Casico, H. A. (n.d.). Applied Psychology in Human Resource


Management. Pearson.
 Ganeriwala, P. (2015, June 25). YourStory. Retrieved 2, from
https://yourstory.com/2015/06/the-souled-store/

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