How can HR support the growth of a scaleup?

In The New Office podcast, we talk about Future of Work, office management, employee experience and CSR. Marie Wecxsteen (Content Manager at rzilient) invites experts from a wide range of fields, including human resources, management, remote and flex, employee well-being, productivity and more.

In this episode, we have the pleasure of interviewing Amandine Braillard, who was in charge of human resources at Vestiaire Collective for 5 years, then worked at Payfit for 6 years. She was present during the scale years of these two startups and structured their HR teams. Today, she is launching Taleni, her own human resources agency!

In this article, we'd like to give you a few tips on how to make your onboarding processes a success, so that you can create a successful employee experience and build loyalty among your staff.

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How can HR support scale?

Before setting up her consultancy business, as we mentioned earlier, Amandine worked in human resources for a number of tech companies. She now offers HR consulting and support services to companies of all sizes.

Amandine knows the world of scaleups inside out! She has just left Payfit, the company she joined when the startup had 20 employees. Today, the company employs over 1,000 people, with very different HR challenges. The HR team has also grown from 1 to 30 people.

Amandine experienced the same kind of explosive growth at Vestiaire Collective, where the HR team grew from 1 to 10 people and the total number of employees from 10 to 400, during her time with the company.

At the head of her own HR agency, Taleni, Amandine holds a strong conviction: to create a more innovative, formative and inspiring world of work for everyone. To achieve this ideal, she puts to good use what she has learned in the field, working in teams that are growing by the day!

Responding to changes in the world of work

The Covid-19 period has profoundly changed the traditional way of working, forcing companies to adapt. For example, office lay outs are changing to promote employee well-being. Companies must also adapt their HR strategy to cope with greater contractual diversity (freelancers, fixed-term contracts, permanent contracts, etc.).

Added to these changes is the contractual diversity of work. Part-time work, the 4-day week, mobility, telecommuting and other changes are all generating changes.

Employee commitment is another key issue. As you probably know, employees don't stay with a company indefinitely!

Companies need to embrace these changes, to energize their HR function and improve the working environment.

Making employees want to work is no longer just a question of pay, but also of the working environment, professional fulfillment and career development.

As Amandine Braillard explains, "you have to create positive employee experiences to generate commitment". And to achieve this, onboarding has to be a success!

Employee retention: the importance of onboarding

A company that fails to onboard an employee misses out on their integration.

And if the integration isn't a success, the employee runs the risk of leaving the company. The whole process has to start all over again, from recruitment, through the job interview, to the assumption of the position and the training of the new employee.

By missing out on onboarding, your company loses precious time. There are also financial issues not to be overlooked. According to a 2017 report by Mozart Consulting, a failed onboarding can cost €5,000 or even €10,000 per employee.

Poorly conducted onboarding can also affect your employer brand image, as an employee who has not stayed with your company may give unfavorable feedback about it on the Internet and in his or her network.

There are also internal consequences. The lack of manpower in your teams increases the workload of the remaining employees, and can also lead to increased turnover. In the long term, the social climate within the company can deteriorate as a result of stress.

What to do? Empathy and preparation are the keys to quality onboarding.

As Amandine Braillard makes clear in her interview with Marie: "You have to develop this empathy and ask yourself the question: how am I going to offer the best, gentlest experience to my new employee? People must be at the heart of the process. It's all about creating a bond and supporting the new employee, from start to finish.

You can apply these tips from Amandine Braillard to make your onboarding a success:

• Before the employee arrives: After signing the contract, don't leave your future employee without news. Send them an email once a month, for example, to establish a bond of commitment. You can also invite them to meet their manager and team.
• Before the trial period : you can automate and simplify the tools part, by preparing the equipment required by the new employee in advance. At rzilient, for example, we simplify theonboarding process by offering you suitable equipment that you can choose, pre-configure and deliver to the postal address and date of your choice. You can also give your new employee the chance to get to know your company in detail (the departments, how the company came into being, its culture, values, etc.) before he or she starts on the job.
• During the trial period: continue to build relationships through check-ins, meetings and other activities, to make sure your new employee feels comfortable and motivated. Take the opportunity to find out if there's anything you can do to improve his or her day-to-day work life!

You'll find information on the administrative, IT and material preparations required for a successful onboarding in our ebook: "Onboarding: welcome your new employees, without forgetting anything".

How do you measure the effectiveness of HR team actions?

In a small company, it's easy to measure the effectiveness of onboarding by talking directly to employees.

On the other hand, in a large company, HR can't talk to all the employees individually, to find out whether they feel good and are happy at work.

Amandine's advice for measuring the effectiveness of HR actions is touse eNPS (Employee Net Promoter Score) tools, which help to determine which themes need to be worked on.

Measuring employees' emotional state is another important action. The best way to do this is to build a partner business culture. Collaborate with other members of your company to find out how your colleagues are feeling. You can, for example, organize regular interviews with managers.

The Vis ma vie principle also enables you to better understand the emotional state of your employees. Follow your employees, look at what they do on a daily basis, put yourself in their shoes and try to understand what's at stake in their work, to better understand their emotional dimension.