The 10 AM Wake-Up Call
Another resignation email received. “This is the third person of this month,” sighed the CHRO. As the CHRO of a 90-person tech startup, Samia spent the last two years building a business environment with all the rules, regulations, and deductions. But somewhere along the way, she’d forgotten to build a people-focused environment.
Her best developer left for a competitor. Her marketing lead burned out. And now her operations manager, the glue holding everything together, was giving two months’ notice.
The message was ringing in her head clearly: something had to change.
Fast forward 18 months. Samia had just 35 employees when she joined; people increased since the business was flourishing with 90% retention. People were staying, happy, and named the strart up company as the “Best Places to Work” in Dhaka. What changed? She stopped treating HR as an afterthought and started treating people as her company’s infrastructure.
Here is what she learned and what you can do, starting today.
The Startup HR Trap: Why Good Intentions Aren’t Enough
Most startup founders and HR care deeply about their teams. The problem is not the intention; it is the execution. When you are racing to find product-market fit, HR feels like something you will “figure out later.”
But “later” becomes a crisis when:
Your hiring is reactive, not strategic. You are constantly firefighting, hiring whoever can start Monday rather than who fits your long-term vision, mission, and ethics.
Onboarding is chaotic. New hires spend their first week asking, “Where do I find that?” and “Who should I talk to?” instead of making an impact.
Performance feedback is awkward and rare. You avoid tough conversations until problems explode into resignations.
There’s no clear career path. Your best people leave because they don’t see a future, even though you planned to promote them “eventually.”
Company culture is accidental. You talk about values but haven’t defined what they mean in practice, so every team develops its own mini-culture.
Sound familiar? Samia faced all of these. The good news: fixing startup HR does not require the whole HR department or expensive software. It requires intentional systems.
The Turning Point: Three Insights That Changed Everything
After losing her operations manager, Samia did something uncomfortable, something a normal CHRO do not do. She scheduled exit interviews with everyone who’d left. She asked one question: “What would have made you stay?”
The answers revealed three critical insights:
Insight 1: People Don’t Leave Jobs; They Leave Unclear Expectations
Her developers did not leave for more money. They left because priorities changed daily, they never knew if they were succeeding, and “urgent” fires constantly derailed their work.
The fix: Samia implemented simple weekly check-ins just on Thursday morning… Not micromanagement, just 15 minutes where each person shared their top three priorities and any blockers. This one change reduced confusion by 70% and made people feel heard.
Insight 2: Growth Isn’t Optional, It’s Oxygen
Her marketing lead burned out because she felt stuck. She was doing the same tasks at month 18 as at month 3. No new challenges. No skill development. Just… maintenance. She was only managing people and her daily tasks: no new challenges, no new value added.
The fix: Samia created “growth conversations” separate from performance reviews. Once a quarter, she asked each person, “What do you want to learn? What energizes you? What would make this role exciting in six months?” Then she actually acted on those answers, even if it meant letting people shift responsibilities.
Insight 3: Culture is What You Do When No One’s Watching
Samia had written beautiful value lines: “Innovation. Collaboration. Integrity.” But when engineers worked 60-hour weeks before a launch, was that innovation or burnout? When someone raised concerns about a feature, were they punished or praised?
The fix: She defined what each value looked like in action. “Collaboration” meant “we share information proactively, ask for help without shame, and celebrate team wins over individual heroics.” Then she modeled it, recognized it, and occasionally made hard decisions to protect it.
The HR Infrastructure: 5 Doable Actions for Startup Founders
Here is what Samia implemented. None of this required HR software or a full-time hire. All of it made a massive difference.
Action 1: Create a Hiring Scorecard (2 Hours)
Stop hiring on “gut feel.” Before posting your next job, spend two hours answering:
- What specific outcomes will this person achieve in 3, 6, and 12 months?
- What 3-5 skills are non-negotiable versus nice-to-have?
- What behaviors align with (or threaten) our culture?
Use this scorecard for every candidate. It eliminates bias, speeds up decisions, and ensures everyone interviews for the same role.
Action 2: Build a 30-60-90 Day Onboarding Plan (3 Hours)
Create a simple template that every new hire receives:
- First 30 days: Learn (meet the team, understand the product, consume documentation)
- Next 30 days: Contribute (own small projects, start adding value)
- Final 30 days: Own (take full ownership of your role)
Include who they will meet, what they will learn, and what success looks like. Assign an onboarding buddy. This removes 90% of new hire anxiety.
Action 3: Weekly One-on-Ones, Non-Negotiable (15 Minutes Each)
These aren’t status updates; these are connection points. Ask:
- What’s going well?
- What’s frustrating you?
- What do you need from me?
Write down what people say. Follow up on it. This single practice prevents more turnover than any perk ever will.
Action 4: Quarterly Growth Conversations (30 Minutes)
Separate from performance reviews, ask each person:
- What do you want to be doing in a year that you’re not doing now?
- What skills do you want to develop?
- How can we make your role more energizing?
You won’t always have perfect opportunities, but asking shows you care. And sometimes you will find creative ways to help, like letting your designer learn front-end coding or your salesperson explore product management.
Action 5: Document Your Culture Principles (4 Hours)
Write down 3-5 core values. For each one, define:
- What it means: One clear sentence
- What it looks like: 2-3 specific behaviors
- What it doesn’t mean: Common misinterpretations
For example, if “Move Fast” is a value:
- Means: “We make quick decisions with 70% information and iterate”
- Looks like: “Shipping MVPs, learning from failures, unblocking teammates”
- Doesn’t mean: “We skip planning, ignore quality, or burn out”
Share this document with every new hire and reference it in decisions.
The Reality Check: This Takes Time, Not Money
Samia did not transform her HR department overnight. She started with weekly one-on-ones. Then added the hiring scorecard. Then built onboarding plans. Each change took weeks to become habit.
But here’s what mattered: she was intentional. She treated people operations as seriously as product operations.
The cost? Mostly time. Maybe 10,000 tk for some productivity tools. Compare that to the cost of turnover, recruiting, training, lost productivity and morale damage. One resignation costs 1.5-2x that person’s salary.
The Startup HR Mindset Shift
Great startup HR isn’t about policies and handbooks. It’s about answering three questions every day:
- Are people clear on what matters? (Expectations)
- Are people growing? (Development)
- Do people feel valued? (Recognition)
If you can answer “yes” to these consistently, you will build an environment where talented people want to stay.
Your Next Step
Pick one action from this post. Just one. Implement it this week.
Maybe it is scheduling those one-on-ones you’ve been postponing. Maybe it’s creating a hiring scorecard for your next role. Maybe it’s finally defining what your company values actually mean.
Start small. But start.
Because in startups, your people are not just your greatest asset, they are your only sustainable advantage. Products can be copied. Markets shift. But a team that trusts each other, grows together, and believes in the mission? That’s unbeatable.
Samia learned this the hard way. But it does not mean you have to go through these hard phases!