By Christian De Pape

“I love both business and people, so I wanted to marry the two together.”

That’s why Debbie Bortolussi, President of Vancouver-based HR and marketing consulting firm PHR Resources (currently celebrating its twentieth year in business) got into human resources.

From salary administration systems to health and safety programs, she helps companies establish the systems they need to succeed at both scaling their business and being great, loyalty-inspiring employers.

“One startup company I worked with, when we started they were a team of five. Now they’re a billion dollar company.”

What’s the secret? How can startups set themselves up for success as an employer, even as they seek success (and crazy-fast growth) as a business?

Bortolussi agreed to share her insights in a Q&A with Recruiting Social:

When does a startup need to start thinking about a human resources function?
As soon as you have five people, you better start thinking about HR. You don’t need a full-time human resource professional – you can and should outsource your human resources function at this stage of growth. But if you’re not thinking about it yet, you’re going to be in trouble. Somebody is going to be sick. Somebody is going to quit. No one will know where their role starts or ends.

What’s HR priority number one for a fledgling company?
You need to start with clear, solid job descriptions, and create a good compensation package to match.

As a startup, you might not be able to compete with more established employers’ compensation and benefits offerings. However, you do need to understand what the competition is doing and what you can do to create an environment to attract the top talent.

When I work with companies to create solutions like this, we might implement employee benefits in phases. Start with medical, dental. You may not be able to afford an RRSP program [or 401(k) program in the US] right now, but you can do things to build a sense of community – set up a ping pong table, promote ‘company tee-shirt Friday’, that type of thing.

For a small organization, that is your edge. Your sense of community. Make them feel like they’re part of a family. You’re setting up the infrastructure – creating the environment – so you can prosper and grow.

What are the traits that make an employer great?
Here’s my list of ten things you need to do to be an exceptional employer:

1. Offer a flexible work schedule. The ‘nine to five’ age is dead. So dead.
2. Foster a culture that is creative AND fun. Startups can be so good at this, but what can a small, bootstrapped startup do to foster this type of culture? It doesn’t need to cost a lot. Put a basketball hoop out in the parking lot. Ping pong is great – get a ping pong table. You’ll get everyone – extroverts, introverts – out of their shells.
3. Cultivate the whole person. By that I mean, don’t just focus on their most obvious work-related skills and attributes. For example, at one of the company I was working with, one of the employees happened to be a kayaking teacher. Why not take advantage of that? Take the team out to go kayaking. Or at another company there was a baseball coach. Why not create a company baseball team?
4. My favourite: Do not tolerate jerks. Or toxic people. Every one of us has worked with a jerk – knows what it’s like. That’s why companies need to have a rigorous hiring process. Test your candidates’ emotional intelligence, test what they understand customer service is, internally, and externally. Maybe do some psychological testing on this. Don’t hire jerks.
5. Reward people for great customer service, both internal and external. Do that through pay for performance.
6. Understand that people have lives outside of work. Oh my God, we need balance. If someone has to leave because of a personal crisis, send them home! They’re useless at work.
7. Have a purpose. It’s okay to have a mission and vision, but does your company have a purpose? Something that inspires employees that they can buy into? For example, if you are a company that makes toasters, and your stated purpose is to bring toasted bread to the world – well I’m sorry, that is not a sense of purpose that inspires me. But say, for example, you are a pharmaceutical company whose purpose is to help people improve the quality of their lives – that is a purpose that inspires me. The best companies own a strong sense of purpose that inspires their people to do their best.
8. Listen. Employees must feel their suggestions are being listened to.
9. Offer a great incentive program – short term and long term. All the Fortune 100 companies have creative incentive plans that reward employees for a job well done. You need one too.
10. Pay a decent wage. Let’s face it, of all the reasons people work, the main one is pay. It’s Maslow’s hierarchy of needs. You can’t be a great employer if you don’t pay well. Doesn’t need to be above the norm, but you must offer a good, honest, fair wage. If you don’t have all the fancy creative benefits in the world, you have got to at least offer decent pay.

All of these things can be affordable, in different ways. And you need to focus on all of them (but especially the jerk part!).

This is an abridged article. The full article was originally published on Recruiting Social.

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Christian De Pape is the content manager and recruitment communications consultant for Recruiting Social, a social recruitment agency based in Vancouver and London, UK. For more HR and recruitment Q&As, visit the company’s Insights blog and follow them on Twitter at @RecruitingSoc.