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The World Can Work Remotely, A Look At The Gig Economy

Anju Nambiar — Mon, 16 Aug 2021 05:35:08 +0000

What’s the best way to make quick cash while working at a decent job that you can add to your portfolio as a graphic designer or a digital marketer? Taking up a gig, of course! Through the gig economy, you can broaden your experience and horizons while getting the opportunity to work with many different organisations, thus developing entrepreneurial skills before you even start a business.

What’s the gig economy?

The gig economy is a job market system that generates revenue through short-term, verbal, or on-paper contracts between an on-demand employer and a freelancer or an independent professional. Characterised by quick jobs and tasks that include an exchange of the job well done for cash, the gig economy creates self-employment for thousands of independent workers. Unlike full-time employment, gigs are much more effective in creating a variable source of income for workers and a faster completion of jobs for companies or employers. Also, it’s much more freeing for both employees and employers since they don’t get bound by stringent employment contracts.

How GenZ and Millennials are supporting the gig economy

The GenZ and Millennial generations are a technologically savvy lot who can easily adapt to the evolving gig economy. Unlike their predecessors, they are looking for fulfilling jobs that capitalise on their talents and that don’t entail troublesome work timings or commutes. GenZ and Millennials are willing to use the most advanced technologies for the smallest tasks like connecting virtually across borders, using productivity tools, or AI (artificial intelligence) based automation tools to get their work done more efficiently. Thus, they are supporting and raising the gig economy.

Consumer Tech trends in the remote working economy

The work-from-home or the remote working economy rests on the foundation of consumer technology. Consumer tech trends are encouraging more workers to take up gigs instead of a 9 to 5 job.

Gig marketplaces

Gig marketplaces like UpWork, PeoplePerHour and Fiverr have been around for a while but now they are seeing a huge influx of gig revenue. Since they have become the go-to source for relevant jobs, these consumer tech platforms are being sought after by organisations who are now creating a verified presence on them to hire qualified gig workers. Now even social media platforms like LinkedIn are turning into gig marketplaces as gig workers are actively looking to connect with employers.

Conference and meeting apps

We are all too familiar with Google Meet, Zoom, Microsoft Teams. But now with the rise in popularity of Clubhouse, social audio apps are quickly becoming platforms that are facilitating collaborations between gig employers and workers.

Digital gig wallets

For gig and remote workers, the biggest concern is to receive timely payments and not get defrauded by employers who are looking to get free work. Digital wallets like Escrows and PayPal bind gig employers into a financial contract where they are obliged to pay half of the project cost in advance and secure the remaining half so that the workers receive the payment automatically post completion of the project. A lot of gig marketplaces are already using this technology.

Virtual events platforms

Whether you are a gig worker or a remote worker, attending conferences, events, and expos, is a part of professional networking. Virtual event platforms are AI based tools to set up real-time conferences, and events that look like they are happening in real life. A lot of prominent national and international events and conferences like the Startup India International Summit and Viva Tech have taken place through virtual event platforms.

Team collaboration tools

Team collaboration tools like Slack and Trello are consumer tech trends that allow gig and remote workers to organise their work effectively especially when there are multiple projects in the pipeline. Using these technology tools, anyone can have a professional workspace experience irrespective of who you are working for, even if you work on small gigs.

How the consumer market was transformed

Open to all price points

The demand for consumer technology like Tablets, laptops, and wearables has become very high. Industries like ed-tech rely on these devices and manufacturers are drastically reducing price points for tablets and laptops of different specifications to cater to the rising demand. For example, a remote learning tablet or contactless digital kiosks at public places come with lower specifications and variable price points. Before the remote working and gig economy were prevalent, purchasing a tablet was expensive, but now it’s much more affordable for students and workers.

Equal distribution of wealth and opportunity across the world

Imagine the teachers of yesterday who had decent paying jobs even though they lived in villages, Tier II or III cities. They were respected and received all the employment benefits. But suddenly, they couldn’t even go to school every day and their income source was cut off. But now, teachers can easily get onboarded on ed-tech platforms from remote villages and teach globally through consumer technology thus enabling equal distribution of wealth and opportunity to every corner of the world. Same goes with handicraft workers like village and tribal women. They can easily sell their goods on social commerce platforms like Meesho.

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Characterised by quick jobs and tasks that include an exchange of the job well done for cash, the gig economy creates self-employment for thousands of independent workers.

What’s in it for me?

Consumers are using technology to make a living while staying at home. This has become the new normal since the gig economy has worked well in the recent months. The remote working economy and work from home have been tested and proven due to emerging technology trends that have helped shape it.

Amidst the job market and economic crashes, the gig economy has emerged as a saving grace for GenZ and Millennials. It’s also become the go-to income source for start-ups and small businesses. Start-ups in sectors like health tech start off quite small by enabling a simple remote consultation between doctors and patients. Also new digital media agencies first go on gig marketplaces or social media to source clients for freelance jobs. Gig economy is thus a stepping stone and a ladder for start-ups and small businesses to scale up in entrepreneurship.

The post The World Can Work Remotely, A Look At The Gig Economy appeared first on Dutch Uncles.

How do You Measure Workers’ Productivity When Working From Home?

Joseph Varughese — Thu, 22 Apr 2021 09:30:48 +0000

The need to work, live and survive in the environment of the Covid-19 pandemic has ushered in innumerable changes to the ways we were doing and conducting things in life hitherto. Many of such methods and methodologies which were exceptions till one year ago have abruptly become new normal during this period and some are likely to stay so for long or permanently so. One of such evolved normal is the new mode of working from home or WFH, its acronym, which has become one of the very common buzzwords these days. The few other common synonyms for Working From Home are remote working and mobile working though not strictly carrying the exact meaning. However, for this discussion, we will stick to WFH as much as possible.

Is WFH a new normal here to stay?

It is not to be misconstrued that work from home is a new concept that was unheard of or was never practiced before pandemic days. It has been in existence for some time though in small amounts and mostly as exceptions. Certain sections of the workforce have worked remotely since the time of the industrial revolution, though not necessarily from home. For example, sales workforces, account executives and customer care teams are often located far from corporate headquarters and spend their time with clients in the field from time immemorial.

In recent years, collaborative software tools that can address varying requirements of collaboration, high-speed internet connections, and as well the corporate efforts to reduce real estate costs, broaden talent pools to include workers who live far from office locations, and attract and retain hard-to-find skill sets have all contributed to growing popularity of WFH among companies. The high-speed internet connectivity, cloud computing and collaborative software tools were already being used by employees to work from home after office hours and during weekends and holidays when they used to work from the office.

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Organizations today are responding to a new normal, with many knowledge workers now unexpectedly working from home remotely full time.

WFH challenges and concerns

What is worrying most of the companies and their managers is whether these workers are as productive and as innovative as workers in centralised physical offices. How can organisations manage the effectiveness and measure the productivity of workers performing their job remotely without any physical supervision? This is one question that is still bothering many companies and their managers.

Before we dive into the subject of employee productivity and its measurement process, we need to be well aware that WFH is plausible only in certain sectors, segments, and functions of work. While remote working may be practically possible in areas like knowledge works, customer services, service providing, it is virtually impossible to emulate this in manufacturing or facilities management or construction or housekeeping or such similar areas where the physical presence of human beings is unavoidable and non-replaceable.

The above statement is made by being unaware of the fact that Industry 4.0 technologies like AI, IoT, Cloud, Big Data and Analytics can leverage some amount of automation or remote working but the work is not purely a human effort and a WFH mode. We are discussing here humans working remotely and not about robots replacing humans.

Enablement of WFH environment

Organizations today are responding to a new normal, with many knowledge workers now unexpectedly working from home remotely full time. The nature of this transition has sparked a major question: How do we best measure productivity in knowledge workers, and given those impacts, what is the future of mobile or remote workforces? However, I believe that more than employee productivity measurement, the enablement of employees to work remotely from home is the major challenge.

Leadership teams including Chief Human Resources Officers (CHROs) and Chief Information Officers (CIOs) have already enabled mobile workforces through collaborative technologies in many companies and others have been catching up fast. In today’s world, there is no need to lose your connection with your employees just because they work from home. Implementing the right collaboration tools like Teams, Zoom, Office 365, Google Meeting, to name a few, is the first step in enabling and consequently improving the WFH employee productivity. Supporting employees on infrastructure, connectivity, furniture needs, etc. are the other priorities.

Measurement of employee productivity while working from home

This author believes that the apprehension about how to measure employee productivity while working remotely is unwarranted to a great extent. The issue is that many companies and people are finding themselves leading a remote team for the first time, post-Covid. The transition to make managers who are used to having their team all in one place embrace the environment of managing remote teams can be hard and challenging.

Now, coming back to the question of measuring the productivity of employees working from home or remotely, a lot has already been written on this subject by companies that have put WFH in practice, researchers, human resource practitioners, media, academicians, and companies selling productivity tracking and measuring tools. I am taking a very different position on this that the productivity of workers used to be measured when they were working in physical offices too formally or otherwise.

There is not much change needed to be made in the metrics and processes adopted in measuring the productivity of employees working in the physical offices under direct observation of their supervisors or managers to be adopted in the metrics and process of measuring the productivity of work from home workers. The only difference is that tracking and measurement are also remote like the work being measured. These days, with the advancements in cloud computing and availability of high-speed internet connection, using tools and applications remotely has become very normal.

It has been easy to measure employee productivity when you could look out of your office door or bob your head above your cubicle to see what everyone is doing. A good manager can pick up on body language alone whether someone is making progress or struggling but how does that translate to virtual teams? Do you believe that the above style of tracking and measuring work is anything modern and appreciable? Before we dive into the metrics of remote employee productivity, it’s important to put things in perspective.

Some say, when your employees were at their desks, it was easy to spot who was using their time productively. When your employees are working from home, it’s much harder. I beg to disagree with this argument. You should not get tempted to put new metrics in place for your remote employees. Understand that they will still need to do the same steps, follow the same workflows they were doing earlier to achieve the same results. The difference, of course, is that you can’t now see them doing these steps. Also, be aware that it is not the effort or number of hours put in that matters but the outcome, output, and results.

When your sales force was working in the office, you saw them on their phones or searching the internet for leads. They still need to do this, even when working remotely from home. The difference is that you don’t see it.

There were many software tools available and used to track projects, tasks, and measure KPIs. Projects used to be tracked and measured by milestones, timesheeting, KPI benchmarks while the work was performed in a physical office. What companies do in the new normal WFH environment is not much different from what was done when in a physical environment.

So, what is the real issue? Good question!

It’s all about trust

It’s easy to trust your team when you see them every day, and you can see that they are at their desks working. But what about when they are working from home? Are they working, or are they just watching the latest series on Netflix or Amazon Prime or applying for new jobs?

Here’s the thing: A good worker is a good worker, no matter where they are working, whether they are being watched or not. If you know that your team usually performs well, there’s no reason to expect they’re going to suddenly become lazy workers just because they’re working from home without your physical surveillance. Trust them – and more importantly, trust yourself that you made the right decision when you hired them. That is why companies hire for attitude and cultural fit than for the skill set.
The best thing you can do to promote trust with your remote team is to be transparent with them. Communicate with them, keep them up to date with how things are going and expect regular updates from them too, whether positive or negative.

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If you can't measure it, you can't manage it

- Peter Drucker

Organization is key

One of the most effective measures for managing work from home employees is on what they deliver and not how much time they spend or when they logged in and out. But to accurately measure that, you need to know what your expectations from employees are. This is an integral part of company culture, policies, mission and vision.

Tools to Measure Employees Productivity

There are plenty of remote employee time tracking tools, but I would ask you to be cautious and careful before you use them – for two reasons:

The first is that one of the benefits of remote work is that your staff can work when they’re most productive and that might not be 9-5.

Secondly, it pays to get away from your desk sometimes. Getting outside, for example, has huge benefits for creativity.

That said, there are many remote work monitoring software that are micromanaging tools. You may use them judicially. There are also tools out there that let you view your remote workers’ screens without them knowing. But that’s creepy to say the least.

Encourage communication

One adjustment that you will need to make when managing remote teams is in your communication. We advise managers who are new to remote teams to communicate with the teams as much as possible, because remote work can be isolating, and you don’t want your team to feel overlooked. Comments and feedback on tasks aren’t enough; try and check-in via chat or other media daily to touch base and see how they’re doing.

Avoid micromanagement whether it be of workers working from the office or home. Just don’t because that one thing most employees hate. Even you might have hated it somewhere in your career. We know it can be tempting to check up, especially when they work remotely but if you do that you will do two things; firstly you will keep interrupting your team when they’re trying to do their job, and secondly you’ll make them feel that they’re not trusted and incapable.

Things to consider when evaluating Employee Productivity in WFH

You must be well aware that not all employees’ productivity will be measured by the same metrics. Some employee productivity will be based on things the employee cannot control, such as meetings, answering phone calls, and re-scheduled priorities.

You can help your remote employees work more efficiently by:

Providing the right tools for connectivity and collaboration

Limiting the amount of time the employee spends on things unrelated to his or her tasks like meetings, calls, emails

Having a firm accountability policy and practice in place

Touching base with employees regularly without interfering with their workflow

Having one-on-one’s that allow the employee to address any issues or concerns with his or her work

Providing flexible metrics to measure employee productivity

Providing clear outlines and timelines of each task

Letting each employee see where their projects fit in with other projects

By investing in the required tools, platforms, and mindsets and taking a more data-driven and analytics-based approach to monitoring productivity, innovation and performance, team managers and human resources can position their companies to both recover and thrive as the world returns to work.

A knowledge worker’s productivity will not be one simple measure or formula, as it must allow for the changing nature of work and include both direct and indirect factors. It will also vary based on the nature of the business and industry. An accounting firm might measure accuracy and timeliness of reports and analysis while a technology company would measure not just the output of a DevOps professional in terms of lines of code but also how efficient the code is and how bug-free the code is.

As Peter Drucker said, “If you can’t measure it, you can’t manage it.” And if you can’t manage it, you can’t bring that knowledge into remote workforces and ensure the effectiveness of workers who may no longer be in their supervisors’ line of sight. This is, however, applicable to both environments.

It is more of mindset than metrics

Let me conclude this discussion by stating that measurement of productivity of remote or work from home workers is not any game changer. It will almost be the same way these knowledge workers were measured when they were working from office, only that the mode has changed.

It all boils down to a couple of things which may look off the track; one is that you must have trust in your employees wherever they work from, then that you should hire your employees for their attitude and cultural fit. If you struggle to track and measure the productivity of employees whether in offline or online mode, it shows the misjudgments and errors that crept into your recruiting process.

The post How do You Measure Workers’ Productivity When Working From Home? appeared first on Dutch Uncles.

Why You Should Work at a Startup?

Preeti Verma — Mon, 19 Apr 2021 10:35:04 +0000

Have you ever experienced any difference between working at a startup and working for big companies? Sure, you must have, if you have worked in both. Well, there are few things that are really exciting about startups. Working hard together as a teammate and seeing the company evolve and grow from the scratch is a great journey to follow. You tend to take new challenges and explore possibilities to build the company. There is a constant flow of new and innovative ideas, development in the workflows that best fit the company. Working at a startup is an adventure every day.

On the other hand, big companies have already done most of the work and you just have to follow an established plan. Your job is focused mainly on getting your assigned tasks done. On the other hand, working at a startup is a wonderful way to acquire experience and continue learning, while doing real work in a dynamic environment. For experienced professionals, swapping from a corporate business to a startup is usually the best way to break years of routine, get new goals, regain passion and continue growing by using your knowledge to help create something new.

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Flooded with fresh funding and strong growth projection, the $1 billion valuation startups are planning to scale up teams by 10-100 per cent. The sectors that are bullish on hiring this year include logistics, digital media, e-commerce and deep tech.

People who have worked with startups must know that they are famous for their relaxed environment and entrepreneurial spirit. CEOs and founders interact with each and every level working in the organisation. These startups give everyone opportunities to help design and deploy organisational strategies and drive innovation. And that is the reason every employee comes with the best ideas to take it forward. There are a lot of intangible rewards working with a startup. You can take real ownership over your work, be proud of your contributions, and have a measurable impact on the company’s performance. There is a greater sense of individualism and self-governance at a startup compared to a large corporation, where most of the time rules are lax. You will likely to find more flexibility when it comes to your work schedule, dress code and telecommuting options.

In general, you can also expect a more collaborative environment. When there’s a smaller workforce, you’ll spend more time interacting with your colleagues. This can present unique and fulfilling learning opportunities. You will have unparalleled access to organisation leaders and work alongside some of the most dedicated and creative individuals in the industry. There is a big emphasis on team dynamics and work culture. This can facilitate lifelong and meaningful relationships with colleagues and mentors. Working at a startup gives every individual the power to shape the organisation as a whole and the way to interact with each other.

Making The Curve Straight

The pandemic had not only hindered businesses but also slowed the financial growth last year. As a result, many companies were forced to shut their doors forever. On the same side, there were few startups that entered the unicorn club after reaching $1 billion in valuation. This year, startups are likely to observe a strong hiring uptick this year. This is expected due to a bounce back in business and revenue, with the growth for some even outstanding the pre-pandemic levels.

A survey by debt fund InnoVen Capital in its annual Startup Outlook Report showed that 72 per cent of respondents expect higher hiring in 2021 as compared with the last year. The sectors that are bullish on hiring this year, include logistics, digital media, e-commerce and deep tech. Similarly, health tech, enterprise and fintech expect hiring at the same level. Also, less than one fourth of respondents have over 20 per cent women among their leadership teams, compared to 21 per cent last year.

However, gender diversity continues to be a challenge and there has been no improvement over the last few years. In the same way, the survey also highlighted that the top challenge for startup founders is in finding the right talent. Over 52 per cent of founders said hiring right is their biggest challenge, consistent with last year’s survey.

On A Hiring Spree

When the coronavirus pandemic has ravaged most businesses and the economy at large is moving southward, most of the startups are looking to speed up their hiring process in 2021. When most of the companies are shrinking or putting their shutters down, startups are taking major steps this year. Last year, the startups that have entered the unicorn club are planning to expand their horizons this year. Flooded with fresh funding and strong growth projection, these $1 billion valuation startups are planning to scale up teams by 10-100 per cent. The aim is to drive market expansion and invest in product development. Fintech has been the best performing sector in terms of funding deals for startups, with $543 million raised from 62 deals last year. And, it is followed by edtech startups with $452 million from 44 deals.

In the coming months, startup unicorns such as Pine Labs, Zenoti, Postman, Cars24, Glance and Razorpay are planning to hire over 2,000-2,500 employees. This may include an upgradation of their product, tech, engineering, sales, operations, and data sciences teams. On the other hand, edtech startup Byju’s is planning to hire 6,000-8,000 people in the next 12 months. This will include top-level executives to spearhead its initiatives. The salaries at these startups are expected to range between Rs 15 lakh per annum and Rs 60 lakh per annum, along with a crore-plus package at the senior levels.

Indian startups that are dealing in the e-commerce and logistics sectors are also planning to accelerate their hiring process. And this will be mainly for blue-collar workers, who function as their hands for on-ground deliveries and supply chain support. These startups are now looking to launch new products, upgrade their tech capabilities and expand leadership as they grow. Similarly, e-commerce giant Amazon India is planning to create around 2 lakh jobs. This will be mainly for information technology, skill development, content creation, retail, logistics, and manufacturing departments. And this will include direct and indirect roles in Amazon Web Services, Alexa, Amazon Advertising, Technology, Retail and Operations, Amazon Payments, Prime Video.

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Edtech startup Byju’s is planning to hire 6,000-8,000 people in the next 12 months, where as e-commerce giant Amazon India is planning to create around 2 lakh jobs

The Right Choice

The concept behind a startup heavily depends upon the customer requirements and possible market transformations. The chances of succeeding with the best approaches are bright. And it also provides you with the benefits as your company takes the best efforts to bring out your best. Here are some of the reasons why you should work in a startup:

Friendly Work Culture

Startups heavily differ in terms of work culture and employee lifestyle when compared to other typical corporate environments. You get to make the best out of your free time; social gatherings, a lot of fun activities to do, and there are various ways startups keep their employees engaged. It allows you to work in a culture that is real and dynamic at the same time. The credit for achieving success in a task never gets snatched away from you. Because your small team strength helps you get identified easily, and you get credits in your sack.

Moreover, this fun collaboration with your co-workers develops relations with them and makes your regular work life fun and enjoyable. They ensure their employees stay fresh and efficient throughout and become more productive than ever. You can never go wrong with music, good food, and a friendly environment. Employees love to participate in such activities. Hence, the first benefit you earn is co-workers’ support.

More Than Work

If you are an introvert, this might come as a blast for you. But with time, you get habituated to this routine and start enjoying. You learn to make and keep relations with not only co-workers but with person with other departments. This is one of the crucial skills for an entrepreneur. There are startups which give their employees a friendly work environment by arranging monthly movie nights, holiday rewards, gym, and swimming pool, and many more. The point is to keep engaging their employees in activities to lead a healthy and happy life.

Shaping Up Your Career

The work culture of a company is an important aspect that affects your career. A friendly work culture lets you learn many skills from other co-workers working with you. This positive, friendly work environment helps you find what you are best at and shape your career in the best way possible. The skills you learn from your work makes all the difference.

Growth And Exposure

A typical corporate company is highly structured, where each employee has to report to their superior. The chances of getting enough exposure are low, if you are a slow learner. But startups are the best bet for you. They give their employees equal attention and a chance to grow at the best pace.

Best Use of Latest Technologies

The concepts of artificial intelligence, blockchain, cybersecurity, machine learning, internet of things and more are the fundamental technologies these startups expertise in. This includes the website security measures like generating SSL certificates, preventing hacks, securing online payments, and more are their work areas. This helps you earn knowledge on the practical implementations of technology. It prepares you for the future, where technology rules the world. The e-commerce websites owners have a flat structure, where every employee is handed over responsibilities equally. It helps learn the aspects that the company assigns you and expertise in the same field.

Productivity And Creativity

Startups are best at measuring employee productivity. As every employee holds significance and contributes to the success of the company, they strive to maintain work productivity. The perks of friendly work culture include increased work productivity. As the responsibility to manage and maintain your work front is on you, you can learn to plan out your work strategy and improve productivity. Similarly, your surroundings also affect your thinking. Like the corporate hierarchy, startups tend to integrate each and every employee in every process. The innovators or the founders of the startup can teach you many things from their experiences. But the primary benefit you earn is, you get to experience their innovative thinking. Thinking creative and innovating new solutions to solve common problems is what startups are good at. If you work at a startup, you get to experience their creativity.

The post Why You Should Work at a Startup? appeared first on Dutch Uncles.

How to Build Team for Your New Venture

Chayanika Sen — Tue, 19 Jan 2021 16:41:03 +0000

A team can make or break a business.

No, it’s not just a vague claim or a random speech, but based on a research analysis done after post mortems of 101 startup failures. The study revealed that the wrong team is one of the top three reasons why startups fail. So, if you’re starting your business, it is essential to have your recruitment strategy in place to build your team from scratch. But have you thought, how do you make your first team? If not, we have some actionable insights for you to ponder.

How do you want to build a team?

Before we explore how you can build your first team, let’s understand what a great team is and how you want your ideal team to be. To begin with, set a clear and definitive goal for the team. If you’re assigning tasks to the team, each team should understand the broader picture behind it and shouldn’t be doing it for its sake. Define clear roles for each of the members. There shouldn’t be any scope of ambiguity in it. Establish a culture of open and transparent communication between the team members. Whenever one has an idea, they should be able to communicate it. Remember, a strong team is not about individual achievements but is all about collaboration and teamwork.

Now that you know how your team should look like, here are some recruitment strategies and actionable insights to consider.

Introspect and self-analyze

No matter how cliché it sounds, it is true to the core and it is now backed by research evidence which states that we’re not much self-aware. So, take out time to introspect and self-analyze. List down things that you’re skilled at. Consider all sorts of skills and not just technical skills. Remember, soft skills are equally important for a leader to have. Are you a good listener? Do you consider yourself as a good orator? Write them down all. Next is, behavioral skills. This is extremely important, which will help you decide your management style and choose your team accordingly later on. Here is a simple table to help you get started.

Technical Skills	Soft Skills	Behavioural Skills
JAVA	Communication	Assertive
Testing	Writing

Sample table for self-analysis

Your top skills and where you lack

It is obvious that you won’t have all the skills to run a business successfully. For example, to thrive, your business might need a great product developer, a project manager, and a marketeer. If you are a good project manager, list it as your top skill. And note down the other two skills that are must for your business, but you lack it. Once you work on the above table, build your team on this finding. Your ideal team members should have skills that you don’t.

Hire the right people to get the job done: Build a team with a long-term vision in mind

Now that you are done with the second activity, it is pretty clear what kind of people you want to have in your team. Hire people who just don’t spur off ideas, but are hands-on and can get things done. Remember, you cannot be lavish in having too many team resources, especially when you are starting up. So, hire people who can work on strategies and are also hands-on.

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Good management consists in showing average people how to do the work of superior people.

- John Rockefeller, American Business Magnate

Focus on core functions, great to have leaders who can multitask

Build your team with a long-term vision. This will become easy if you have the architecture of your business ready. Start off with identifying the core functions that you’re going to have. Will you need IT support? Do you need to focus on sales and marketing? Choose team members who are hands-on in these areas. It is always great to have team members who can multitask. For example, there is no harm in hiring someone who can manage Finance and look after HR activities too.

Avoid homogeneity in the team

While selecting your team members, ensure you’re building a diverse team where you have people from different backgrounds, experiences, cultures, etc. That’s because when you have a homogenous team, all team members will have a similar personality, they will work the same way and will be driven by the same factors. They might even think the same way too! But when you have people from different backgrounds, they bring in with them fresh perspectives, and you can explore other avenues. The way they work, the way they think would be different, giving you a huge opportunity to explore and diversify into areas you might not have considered otherwise. In short, diversity brings in creativity.

Build a connection between each other and a connection with you

Your job doesn’t end by bringing some great minds under one roof. You need to handhold and guide so that each member starts understanding others and comes together to work collaboratively. Teams who can work collaboratively show marked improvement in productivity and boost up the overall team morale. Team building exercises are a great way to establish team bonding between each member. It helps to build trust and let them know that they can depend on one another. Team lunches are another great way to know each other. If you’re building a virtual team, then keep aside a day every week when team members can discuss stuff outside work and bond with one another. Virtual tours of home, fun games, ice breaker sessions are some cool ways to get to know each other.

Not just your team members should know each other; it is equally important that you know each of your team members well. When you know their strong areas, interests, and weak points, you can delegate tasks accordingly. Make efforts to know each of your team members well. Connect over one-on-one calls to learn about them. However, remember, you are the leader, so you should maintain a professional decorum all the time.

Encourage contribution and collaboration

A progressive organization is the one that encourages contribution and collaboration between team members. Harness the power of your employees’ ideas and leverage them for organizational growth.

Set the right culture and stick to it

You can’t start your startup without having a compelling culture and a vision. And be open to communicating it to your team even before you hire them. To make a business successful, it is important that every team member buy-in your vision and work towards it collaboratively to achieve success. A compelling work culture helps to convey the vision. Building an org culture is not easy, and it takes time, so stick to it and promote it on every occasion. Be it your company website, social media posts, how you deal with your customers — all should reflect your workplace culture. A strong work culture can speak a thousand words on behalf of you. In the long run, the work culture will be the handiest tool to hire top talents.

Monitor and review

Finally, you need to continually monitor and review the team’s overall performance and lead from the front. Be the ringmaster who orchestrates every employee’s performance because 97 percent of employees say that they feel a drop in productivity and team outcome due to the lack of alignment in the team. Do not shy away from removing a person from the team who is a misfit, do not align to the company culture, do not agree to the company vision, or anything else that may come in the way of building a strong team culture. In this regard, the ‘hire slow fire fast’ mantra can come in handy. Take your time to evaluate a person well before hiring because reports have shown that a bad hire can cost you a lot more. The cost of recruiting, hiring, and onboarding a new employee can be as high as $24,000. It’s not just expensive, but time-consuming too. So, have patience and choose the right candidate to build your first team.

You cannot do without a recruitment strategy. Period.

“Let me have some sales, see the revenue growth, and then I can consider having a recruitment strategy to build up the team.”

Many first-time entrepreneurs do not consider having a recruitment strategy in the first place.

If that’s what you’re thinking, then stop there. Because you simply can’t just do without a recruitment strategy, especially while building your first team.

A recruitment strategy is not just writing a job description and hiring for the open roles, but much more to it. Remember, all the top talents are right out there; all you need to do is draft the right hiring strategy to tap the potential candidates. And when you’re building your first team, you just can’t afford to hire randomly. Your plan must be thought through and carefully drafted. An effective recruitment strategy can do wonders for you. Here are the top three reasons you should have a hiring strategy to build your first team.

1. Hire candidates with niche skills

Does your business need employees with some niche skills? Do you want your CTO to have the experience of handling a specialized business scenario? Brainstorm all these finer points, list them, and hire to fulfil these requirements instead of hiring a random candidate.

2. Consider hiring budget

If you’re working on a tight budget, work out different options that may attract a potential candidate even if it’s not monetary. For example, you can consider giving a stock of the company to the CHRO if you cannot match up the expected remuneration. Offering a senior designation or some essential responsibilities can also compensate well if your budget is tight.

3. Woo the passive candidates

As LinkedIn mentions, passive candidates are considered to be the cream of the candidates. They are the candidates who have a job but might consider joining you at a later point in time. A recruitment strategy can help you identify these candidates and woo them to pick you when they have a job change in mind

Where to find the right candidate to build team?

Now that you know what kind of employees you want to have in your team, the next obvious question is where you find such candidates. Here are some ideas to help you get started:

Hire a recruiter to do the job

If you have the budget, invest in a good recruiter who can help you find the ideal candidates.

Explore LinkedIn

If you do not have the budget to invest in a recruiter, leveraging professional networking sites like LinkedIn is another great idea to tap potential candidates. Build your network there and start interacting with people before you make them the offer.

Leverage social media

It is always a great idea to tap candidates on social media because you get to follow them and see how they interact and behave with others for months before approaching them.

Some important tips:

1.Avoid the usual interview questions. Be creative and innovative with your hiring approach.

2. Put the candidates in challenging situations to understand their true selves.

3.Create a workplace simulation. Let the candidate solve a real-life scenario that he or she will face on a day-to-day job. This will help you to gauge how the candidate would perform on-the-job.

4.Finally, do not neglect culture fit while hiring. Determine if the candidate can adapt to your company culture and can work in a team.

5.Last but not the least, keep improving your hiring strategy. Review it every six months and see what worked and what didn’t, fine-tune it accordingly. Doing an employee survey among the new recruits is also a great way to get fresh perspectives on your hiring strategy.

‘‘

Unity is strength,when there is teamwork and collaboration, wonderful things can be achieved.

- Mattie Stepanek, American Poet

Easier said than done!

All of these are easier said than done. It would help if you had the right recruitment strategy in place to hire the right candidate because the wrong people can take your team to the ground while your business can reach heights when you have the right team in place. Take the points discussed here and work on it to build your dream team.

What is your suggestion to build a rocking team?

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