by Kim Kiyingi, author of “From campus to career“
Most founders treat HR the same way. Push it back. There are products to ship, investors to pitch, customers to close. HR is like something you build once the company is bigger, once there’s more time, once there’s more money.
This thinking is expensive. And the bill arrives when you can least afford to pay it.
I have spent over two decades working in organizations at various stages of growth. The pattern repeats itself regardless of industry, size or geography. Companies that consider people strategy as infrastructure from the outset are building something lasting. Those who installed it later spent years repairing structural damage that should not have happened.
The numbers that should concern every founder
Gallup’s most recent study estimates the annual cost of disengaged employees to the global economy at $8.9 trillion. For a founder leading a small team of 15 or 50 people, the overall figure means nothing. But the base version does.
A disengaged employee on a small team is not a rounding error. This is a hindrance to performance that all other members of the team feel. This slows down decisions. This creates friction in customer interactions. This lowers the bar for what the team accepts as normal.
And when does this person leave? Research places the replacement cost between 50 and 200% of their annual salary. For a startup that monitors burn rate, this figure is not theoretical. It’s a funding problem.
What Early-Stage HR Really Looks Like
There is a misconception that building an HR culture from the start means hiring a people manager and creating a function. This is not the case. This means making deliberate decisions about how you treat people from the first hire.
Early in my career, I saw what happened when these decisions weren’t made deliberately. A rapidly growing company began losing its best people faster than it could replace them. Not to competitors who offer more money. To competitors offering clarity. Clarity about where the role would go, what good performance looked like, and whether the person mattered beyond their performance. The business had generated revenue. It didn’t build a culture. The two things are not the same and you cannot trade one for the other once the gap has opened.
Founders who succeed early on do three things differently.
They hire to be fit before fit becomes a problem to solve. This means knowing what type of organization you are building before you involve people in it, not determining it after conflict arises. This means being honest in interviews about the reality of working there. Retention begins upon recruitment.
They integrate feedback into the functioning of the team, not just in performance review cycles. People need to feel heard all the time, not once a year. When communication channels are clear and secure, problems arise while they can still be resolved. Otherwise, problems manifest themselves in the form of resignations.
They view internal growth as a retention tool, not an afterthought. The fastest-growing teams I’ve seen retain talent not by paying the most but by making the path forward visible. When people see where they’re going, they stay to get there.
AI is already a game changer in recruiting for founders
Startups competing for talent against well-resourced companies have always been at a recruiting disadvantage. This gap is narrowing. AI-powered recruiting tools are now available at a price that makes them viable for startups, and the impact on recruiting quality is real.
When initial screening is handled by a system built around capabilities rather than resume templates, small businesses surface strong candidates who otherwise might have self-selected because a big brand wasn’t attached to the position. The playing field is changing.
Founders who pay attention build better teams faster. Those who still rely on instinct and word of mouth fill roles rather than building lists.
The reframing that changes your trajectory
HR is not a compliance necessity that you manage. This is the operating system your business runs on. Every time you hire, you’re making a decision that will last for years. Every time you make a promotion, you send a message about what the organization values. Every time someone leaves, you learn something about what you’ve built.
Founders who treat these moments casually at first spend a tremendous amount of energy later trying to rebuild something that should have been built right the first time. Those who treat people decisions as seriously as product decisions consistently outperform their peers. Not occasionally. Constantly.
A practical starting point for founders
You don’t need a large team or a formal HR department to get started. You need three things.
A clear answer to the question: what does good performance look like in this organization? If your team can’t answer this question independently, you’re faced with a clarity problem that gets worse with each new hire.
An honest pulse on commitment. This is not a formal investigation. A real conversation with everyone about what works and what doesn’t. Performed regularly, this is the cheapest performance improvement tool available.
A mindset of internal mobility. Before hiring externally, ask if anyone already at the company could move into this role with the right support. The answer will not always be yes. But asking the question signals to your team that growth is possible here.
Founders who build great companies don’t do it by accident. They make deliberate decisions about people early on and stick with them when scaling gets complicated.
This is not an HR philosophy. This is how competitive advantage is built.
Kim Kiyingi is a Human Resources Career Specialist with over 20 years of experience leading people operations in multi-property environments in the GCC. He is the author of “From campus to career» (Austin Macauley Publishers, 2024) and written to inspireambitions.com.
