JULY - 2023HR TECH OUTLOOK APAC9· Ford 3,000 jobs· HP 6,000 jobs· IBM 1,700 jobs· Lyft 700 jobs· Microsoft 1,000 jobs· Netflix 450 jobs· Oracles 201 jobs· Redfin 862 jobs· Robinhood 713 jobs· Salesforce 950 jobs· Shopify 1,000 jobs· Snap 1,200 jobs· Stripe 1,100 jobs· Tesla 10,000 jobs· Twilio 850 jobs· Twitter 3,750 jobs· Walmart 1,500 jobs· Zendesk 350 jobsIt's not just in the USA, or USA companies laying off their international workforce. As of early December, at least 18,000 jobs were cut by Indian tech companies, 20,000 in China and a further 5,000 across South-East Asia.Not just job cuts, also hiring freezes by the larger companies. Hard on the heels of the so-called Great Resignation (did it really happen outside the USA?!) this puts a flood of highly qualified, well-trained and process disciplined workers into the available talent pool without the option they assumed of being able to go to another large employer.Here is the opportunity for astute start-up leaders and skilled HR professionals. Macro-economic trends are shifting it back to a buyers' market for start-ups seeking the right talent. Employment terms should be more affordable and the value of the talent more attractive. Not only will the ex-corporate staff bring their core technical skills but, they bring a practiced understanding of working in well-formed processes that deliver efficiency and quality. Well, okay, not all of them but, enough to make it worth considering.The HR challenges include job satisfaction deeply impacted by the need to blend cultures and properly manage expectations. Start-ups can't, and I would argue shouldn't, offer all the peripheral and material perks of the corporate work environment. In a start-up, each worker must carry more responsibility and accountability for their own work, and for the work of the team. Failure needs to be an acceptable and necessary step on the path to success. The pace of achievement in a start-up needs to be fast, really fast.All that means there will be pressure, lots of pressure, on everyone. Good start-up workplaces offer their staff clear purpose, community, mutual support, social activities, and individual recognition to help minimise and manage the negative impacts of the pressure. Note, it is about managing the impacts, not avoiding the pressure. The pressure is a necessary ingredient for start-up success.Inspirational and supportive leadership combined with a well-formed people and culture strategy can use the glut of qualified talent to launch start-ups into their stratospheric growth.What has brought me success as a founder, a VC, and as an Angel Investor is being able to see the positive in every change and help founders and start-ups grasp that opportunity. When the big opportunity is all about talent, everyone will need well aligned, insightful guidance and support from their HR folks. Seeking competitive market salaries for jobs in pre-revenue start-ups is the main contributor to start-ups becoming at least 30 percent more expensive to fund in the last five years
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