It’s a common scenario, employee gets a job with a small company, they get excellent experience, become a valued employee, and then they leave for a bigger salary than you can afford. So how exactly do small businesses and new ventures attract and retain talented employees even when they can’t match the wage?
In this article, I highlight the employee engagement and development practices used by the founder of Shaadisaga (India’s largest growing wedding planning platform), Mr Himanshu Kapsime. Shaadisaga started in 2014 with one man and his idea to profitably streamline the huge Indian marriage market. Two years later and Shaadisaga was already India’s largest growing wedding planning platform with a team of 25 individuals, funding from the largest marriage portal in India and had organized around 10,000 weddings. What enabled Shaadisaga’s success? “Our team of committed and motivated people”, says Himanshu.
Below are the five factors which have enabled Shaadisaga to successfully retain its talented and valuable employees.
1. Make your staff partners of your growth story
If employees feel that they will also benefit from the company growth, they are more likely to work towards its success. At Shaadisaga, all the employees who are able to consistently deliver as per the expectations, and stick to the organization for a certain period of time, are promised a share in the organization. “The employees who have it in them feel extremely motivated to become partners in the organization”, says Himanshu.
2. Provide informal learning opportunities
When employees are exposed to new roles and opportunities to expand their skillset, they begin to enjoy their work and start finding their work meaningful. If organizations spend more amount of money on informal rather than formal learning mechanisms, employee outcomes such as job satisfaction could be superior. Informal learning opportunities give an opportunity to employees interact with others within and outside the organization and enhance their skills more readily.
3. Offer a flexible work environment
New ventures and small businesses are not necessarily disadvantaged when it comes to organizational design and structure. Given the size of the organization, there is no place for hierarchies and bureaucracy. New ventures need to build their organizations around merit and performance. “We do not have any fixed times of work. We do not see the time when employees come and go. We ensure that the targets are difficult and work is meaningful to the employees, so they themselves stretch their limits”, claims Himanshu.
4. Communicate a clear organizational vision
The employees must know what their organization stands for. Shaadisaga, founder Himanshu, makes sure that his team is clearly informed of the overall purpose and vision of the organization, and at the same time informal brainstorming sessions keep happening so everyone feels a contributor of the organizational success.
5. Empower your employees
Shaadisaga made it a point from the first day to ensure employee empowerment, enabling employees to make crucial decisions in their roles, on their own. A flat hierarchy makes it easy for the employees to share the ideas and issues with management to proactively respond to the customer needs.
This is a precis taken from the article ‘How do ventures attract and retain talented employees? The case of Shaadisaga’ by Safal Batra from the journal Human Resource Management International Digest.
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