Learning Lab: Unlocking HR’s Potential from Start-Ups to Enterprises

ChapmanCG was delighted to be hosted by Jayesh Sampat and Ishadarshi Mishra of Allen Digital, a start-up revolutionising education in India using technology, in their Bengaluru office. We had a riveting roundtable discussion with senior HR leaders across diverse sectors like manufacturing, FMCG, banking, telecommunications, technology, fin-tech, and retail on how start-ups and large enterprises could learn from one another. It was a very engaging experience, and we would like to thank everyone who attended and contributed candidly to the discussion.

Bengaluru has been a melting pot of the corporate world, where several start-ups and large enterprises have coexisted. It was fascinating to see how the people and business philosophies of these ecosystems shared so many similarities and differences.

When we asked HR leaders across these two setups what they felt the HR function represented in their organisations, there were shared themes of transformation, disruption, and value addition. However, we saw vast differences in agility, culture-building, and mindsets.

In start-ups, speed is of the essence, and organisations are structured to fit the purpose of agility and are relatively execution-heavy. HR teams there did not have structured CoEs. Still, we noticed that an HR leader was expected to focus equally on business partnering, talent management, and employee experience while building a highly ownership-driven culture. The approach towards talent attraction and rewards was also very entrepreneurial, and the leadership was more experimental in its thought process. These allowed a start-up to hire extremely passionate individuals and scale quickly from 0 to 1. It would be interesting to see how large enterprises could imbibe some of these nuances to move away from a highly structured approach to something more “on your feet thinking” especially in times of economic uncertainty, multi-generational workforce entering the corporate, and the constant people vs profits conundrum. In fact, one HR leader spoke about how they wanted their “elephant to run like a horse” – their larger, established organisation’s aspiration to be like a start-up.

While the start-ups were quick to scale from 0 to x, the challenge came in to then go from x to 10x. How do they sustain the growth? How do they build the culture and keep it sustainable? How do they create a method to the madness and build processes and systems that are “fit for purpose” and “fit for future”? What do they do when business takes priority and culture takes a back seat?

Some of the start-ups crumbled when they were unable to handle the complexities at scale and when HR leaders were unable to move the lens to look at the big picture and overall impact. Here, it is critical for HR leaders to wear the coaching hat and show the birds-eye view to founders and business leaders as well who might be too neck deep in the Now and Then and would depend on a patchwork or band-aid approach. Larger organisations, which had also been through multiple economic cycles, seen varied scenarios and found it easier to shift gears in a slow but steady fashion instead with a more disciplined use of resources, which could be a good model to follow for start-ups in such situations.

Ben Davies, ChapmanCG CEO who joined the session, shared

We see the common need for established companies and startups when it comes to HR leadership: the ability to remain flexible and support the business priorities.

He also shared that ‘expectations are the tough part, if you can align on that with a founder or a CEO then it can be the secret to a true partnership.’

Our Final Perspective

Whether a start-up or a large enterprise, the fundamentals remained the same- HR leaders and business leaders were able to build good companies when there was a match between what the talent wanted and what the leadership wanted. Creating meaningful work for the new generational workforce coming into either of these ecosystems meant helping them understand how they contribute to what the customer wants and how the organisations create value through their work. As one HR leader in the discussion pointed out, “Culture of the company is what you tolerate”, and rightly so; as start-ups scaled or as large enterprises re-invented themselves, the role of the CHRO as a Chief Business Officer becomes more and more critical.

The onus is on HR leaders to balance both—let the business happen when it needs to AND let culture thrive without it becoming a choice between the two.