It's no great insight that well-managed employees make your company better. That goes without saying business is all about people and companies are about people as well. When I've spoken earlier about that managers need to spend more than 50 percent of their time and leaders need to focus on the company culture, it's all about people and people. However, people are complex. Managing people is exceptionally hard to do well. It's something that even over six startups, I still struggle myself, not least because generations have different attitudes. Many managers are struggling now with millennials, for example. Some other people are looking at hiring contractors as opposed to having full-time employees. Managing people is one of the things that also people need to work hardest in. Many people think they're good at it when they're actually not. Managing people is hard to do well, so as a CEO, as somebody in a scale-up employee, something you have to put a lot of time into. Think about how to hire, how to get those A players, that's the real question. The other thing you have to do is how to stop good people from quitting. This has huge knock-on effects. I still remember the guy, the first senior hire we had, he was leaving Marrakesh. I still remember how I felt. I still remember how all the people looked at why is he leaving? Then suddenly, it got them to ask themselves, "Well, maybe I should leave as well." From a startup environment for everyone was really motivated. Suddenly, there was a feeling that there was something better out there. I remember the effect it had on morale, and I also remember how we should have identified that and not had him leave. The Netflix culture won't work for everyone. I understand that in Silicon Valley, not only one percent of all Earth, well, is Silicon Valley, so we need to perhaps look at other possibilities. I still think you should look at what Netflix do. I still think we always need to learn from the best. However, I do understand that there is a more standard approach that might work for you. This is the standard approach. Every employee has a clear direct manager. It seems once again, like an obvious thing, but I have worked in startups for not every employee is very clear about who their direct manager is. Some people have matrix structures, some people are working a bit in marketing, and a bit technology, and a bit in event management. However, I think the suit when you're scaling up, it's perfectly acceptable and reasonable, and it should be attainable that every employee has a director or manager who's responsible not only for their performance, but also for their coaching, for their leadership development, and to see that they are growing in their role. The second thing is to define the expectations of the role. At this point, you're probably looking at me as if to say, "What?" There are people who don't know exactly what they're supposed to be doing, and I will tell you that absolutely there is. In startups, it's quite common that people don't even have desks. There can be time to sit down and work out the expectations of the role. However, maybe it can be done in a form of HR way in one of those grid things, but everyone needs to know what's expected of them and needs to have regular one-to-one conversations where that is made clear. Number 3 is to benchmark salaries. One of the things actually that comes from Netflix, which is that you say if anyone calls you and offers you a job, you should tell me what they're offering. That is very good information because look, if it's about money, then maybe I can give you a raise. Maybe if you can find out what other comparable companies are paying, maybe I need to pay you a bit more. Benchmarking salaries is a key function within your company. You need to look at what the market rate is and you should be paying your people in the market rate. Number 4, standardize the interview process. Again, very often, startup founders who perhaps come from technical backgrounds, they don't necessarily have a standardized interview process. They don't look at competency-based hiring, they've never really read a book on HR, which asks yourself exactly how to do interviews, how to work out the specific abilities. You never differentiate between people who are good at interviews and good at working with other people. You have to need to have a standardized interview process which you use for all the people you hire. Finally, for benefits and vacations, you have to watch that there's no burnout. In other words, you have to make sure that everyone takes their vacation and also that you have benefits. In other words, health care. In other words, people are getting tested, and people are getting, making sure some country is mandated by law, other is not. However, benefits and vacation are not just something you gave and forget, there's something you need to manage, and in some cases, you need to say, "Look, you should just go away for a week, it's not so bad." All of these are really easy to say, but harder you do. Anyone who's watching this video, who's worked with me, will probably be able to think that I didn't do all of these things. Most people won't. However, most people try to shortcut because it's instinctive again, as a founder, unless you've had direct personal responsibility of the importance of things, you try to shortcut. In other words, you try to say you turn up for interviews not prepared. I'll tell you, people generally work that out. Especially people who are going from startup to startup has a lot of people are, they work out when you're not prepared, when you've gotten no hiring process. When you've got no hiring process, they'll worry that you're missing a lot of other processes and might you take the job in your startup. Especially in a startup environment, lacking experience. Hire somebody who can do these things for you if you don't have the experience. HR is another profession that's attracting better people all the time. It's moving from this idea of just compensation and benefits. It's moving to very much people who were involved with the technology, who understand much more about what drives people, the growth mindset, all of these things. They're really good HR people out there. Very early on in your startup, find one of these people, they know what they're doing, and let them do their job. Almost everyone in Silicon Valley has this mantra of hire slow, fire fast. There's this idea of take your time. If you're unsure, don't make the decision. In other words, once you let someone into your company, that's a big deal, so be very careful what you leave. But once you know they're not working out, make the decision quickie, because almost always it never gets better. Almost always you just delay the process and it doesn't really work. One of the readings talks about the example of Stripe, who are a payments company. They took two years to find their first five employees. They determined that these employees would be the people who would set the corporate culture beyond the founder. They needed to take the time to find them. These people, once they found them, they were given equity, in other words, so they would stay on the basis that really good people attract really other good people. That was a very interesting and definite decision they took based on the importance of corporate culture. The other thing that they determined throughout this process is that there are people who are instinctively happy people and easy to work with. One of the ways they measure this was by working with them for a week before they actually made them an offer. There are people out there who are instinctively happy, instinctively positive people, we've all met them. Obviously, you can go to an extreme, but I think we all know people who are instinctively happy people. That was the formula they found that worked for them. That's something you should consider. Happy people, people easy to work with, hire them. Work with them for a week, then if at all, if they continue to do that, then make them an offer
