FloBiz Is Attracting Talent in the Era of Job Cuts – Here’s How

The age-old dilemma of attracting, hiring, and retaining the right talent still persists as a challenge for any company. The last few years owing to macroeconomic conditions and the pandemic have posed challenging situations for working professionals, and many companies have used job cuts as a tool to deal with these difficult circumstances. But despite all this, the startup sector prima facie has been able to attract talent and keep the hiring engine running. According to media reports, 75,000 startups in India today have created 7.46 lakh jobs. According to Nasscom, the Indian startup ecosystem is likely to add 250 startups by the year 2025 in areas like Fintech, Ed tech, Logistics, Automotives, and HealthTech.

Here are a few of the factors that give startups an edge and how they can be used to attract talent: 

• Attractive Incentives & Better Employee Policies

Startups are scoring over large companies by providing a slew of incentives such as frequent promotion cycles, full or higher proportion of fixed pay, joining bonuses, performance-related bonuses, and shorter cycles for promotions. Progressive leave policies including parental leaves, period leaves, bereavement leaves, wellness and mental health breaks are much valued by today’s talent pool.  

Also read: Have ESOPs, Every HR Manager’s Trump Card, Lost Its Sheen?

• Employee Stock Options (ESOPs)

ESOPs are a great way to attract talent and compensate mainly for the lack of the ‘take home’ remuneration that large companies offer. The long-term prospect of being rewarded as the company grows inspires loyalty and makes employees partake in the company’s success. Many startups like FloBiz are strategically designing and customizing ESOPs to suit the experience and expertise of the talent. An example of this is the 10 years time frame for vested options holders who have moved on from the company to exercise their options. 

Startups are scoring over large companies by providing a slew of incentives such as frequent promotion cycles, full or higher proportion of fixed pay, joining bonuses, performance-related bonuses, and shorter cycles for promotions. Progressive leave policies including parental leaves, period leaves, bereavement leaves, wellness and mental health breaks are much valued by today’s talent pool.

• Inspiring & Attracting With The Company’s Mission

Startups can leverage the mission for which they are working to inspire talent and use it to their aid to motivate them to join them. Ola’s mission to create mobility for a billion Indians, FloBiz’s mission to empower SMBs through technology, and Google’s mission to organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful are such examples which attract individuals who believe in the cause and intend to make a difference. This is possible by creating a mission-oriented culture from the founders to the junior most employees. 

• Convenience And Flexibility

Work from home, work from anywhere, hybrid work culture – these are the questions sought by prospects. Startups may choose to adopt either of these, depending on the nature of work, and also with a planned strategy which doesn’t compromise productivity. The aspect of flexibility not only attracts new talent in post-pandemic times but also helps in retaining existing employees.

• Challenging As Well As Rewarding Culture

Startups look for hires who are up for daunting tasks, aggressive timelines, agile methodologies, and are full of zeal to perform. Providing opportunities for employees to take up roles and responsibilities outside their comfort zone and rewarding them suitably when they rise to such occasions make them feel like a contributor to the company’s success. Such a culture fosters healthy competition and makes a startup more desired amongst job seekers of today.

Also read: Startups Should Make ‘Agility’ Work to Meet Business Goals

Promoting continuous learning and skill development is also a lever to become a good employer. At FloBiz, we have set up a FloAcademy where employees can claim reimbursement for expenses incurred towards skill development in their work function. We have also instituted a leadership coaching program for executive coaching of our senior leadership.

• Acqui-hiring Strategy

Depending on need & feasibility, organizations may use acqui-hiring as a strategy. This refers to the trend of buying out a company entirely for the expertise of the staff rather than spending time, energy, and resources adding certain skill sets that match up to the end goal of the company. Acqui-hiring has been trending, with digital giants such as Google, Facebook, Yahoo, and Twitter using this method to find the right talent fit. 

The pandemic-impacted millennial workforce seeks meaningful career progression and a learning culture focused on personal development. Employees in the next normal are no longer looking for ‘just a job’ and refuse to be dictated to by their managers. Instead, they seek a collaborative approach, a space to express freely and leverage their talents to put the company on a growth trajectory. This makes it indispensable for HR managers to reimagine hiring and retention and consider ‘employer branding’ as an important function. Good career progression opportunities, flexibility, and a better work-life balance are key for startups to attract talent in this era of job cuts.

Author: Rabi Agrawal has 14 years of experience in different roles across multiple industries and startups. Previously, he has built and scaled talent acquisition functions for leading startups like Zivame and Clear.