Three things HR needs hyper-growth managers to do and why it’s not a realistic expectation without tech.
As a startup CEO, I have yet to meet a manager from the tech industry that heard I was originally an HR person and does not automatically give me a weird look. I get it. Most managers dread HR involvement and usually push back to any attempt of HR “telling them what and how to do things right” as clearly “HR doesn’t understand what the reality is on the ground.”
Bottom line: there are several things that any manager growing their team should do, especially when that growth is rapid. The issue is that asking managers to do so without giving them a solid tool to help them is somewhere between wrong and impossible.
First thing’s first — communication is the key.
If we require managers of rapidly growing teams to constantly communicate with their team and dedicate time for face-to-face conversations without giving them the tech to help them do so, we are dooming them to end their days in constant meetings without any time to work. Having ‘Zoom 1:1’ and ‘slack’ or ‘team chat’ and WhatsApp isn’t enough. This is just the space. We need a shared context that’s beyond professional to make that communication matter. Managers need to be accessible for short face-to-face conversations like a ‘water cooler chat’ or a ‘coffee break’ so that the team has the cultural acceptance and convenience to just approach and ask for help and guidance. Doing this via tools that require scheduling and leave no room for serendipitous conversation is not a good fit. Overwhelming them with yet another tool is also not realistic. What we should do is curve the time and space for these interactions within the platform the team is using in their day-to-day work.
Culture building would ensure clarity of vision and form that execution
Culture isn’t just “nice to have,” this is the glue that helps us function in a group. Culture is complex and under no circumstances do you build only via work. It requires knowing the people in front of you as a 3D being. Asking managers to foster this without tools that enable shared context would be difficult. More so if the time dedicated to this culture-building and team spirit would be limited to a once-in-quarter offsite. This is a daily task that if not supported with tech is entirely impossible to reach. Managers should be handed light, daily context, and cohesion-provoking activities that are not time-consuming to organize but have a huge ROI for the team development and culture.
Fast onboarding and constant knowledge sharing
As surprising as it would sound to some people, knowledge isn’t the sovereignty of the few. Some of the most effective learning is done via peer-to-peer on-the-job training. Managers should enable that not just within their group but the organization and understand that eradication of the secret WhatsApp group from new employees that don't even know it's there and that they are missing it, is a critical step.
A feasible solution is a technology that gives employees the feeling of connectedness with each other that then filters into an increased connection to their job and the company itself. A reasonable answer to said challenges is tech that can successfully mimic and even improve the in-office experiences. Things like water cooler banter and coffee and lunch breaks with colleagues used to breathe life into jobs. Even the first minutes of a meeting until everyone is settled in their places would be an improvement.
As Elizabeth Holme once said “compliance is everything,” or perhaps it wasn’t her. Managers are often very happy to comply and participate when told so by HR, but rarely initiate these things because they are busy managing the work that needs to be done. Managers not initiating and staying only with compliance becomes a problem when organizations grow, especially if the organization is growing fast. HR should not be there to replace the manager at every point, they should give them the tools.
As I said in the past, the add-on to the current way of doing things needs to consist of multiple factors: the tech needs to provide entertaining, dynamic ways for employees to interact, or alternatively to participate at their convenience in an asynchronous manner. And managers need to enable this tech in order to enjoy the benefits of what used to require their time and attention, and with tech, can become low-hanging fruit.
