An EdTech company mixes product builders, academic experts and a large sales team, and the three rarely want the same thing. Funding cycles and sales targets decide when a team grows or shrinks, so hiring plans and sales pay need steady rules.
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Share your requirementsAn EdTech company builds learning products such as apps, platforms, test-preparation programmes and school software. The team has three distinct groups: engineers, designers and product managers who build the platform; academic staff such as subject experts, content writers and teachers who shape the learning; and a sales and counselling force that reaches parents, students or schools. Sales is often the largest group, paid mainly on conversions, with high turnover. Seasons follow the academic calendar, and funding conditions can change hiring plans quickly. See also HR for education.
These are the places the people side of this kind of business tends to give way. The rest of this page works through them.
HR here has to work for each of these groups, not only the office. The set-up below is written with all of them in mind.
Sellers promise results and the academic team knows the product cannot guarantee them, so customers are disappointed and staff blame each other.
The sales team turns over every few months, so training, ramp-up and morale are always starting again.
Content and teaching staff have the knowledge but lower pay and a smaller voice in product decisions.
A round brings fast hiring, a slow quarter freezes it, and a layoff damages trust across the company.
Admission and exam seasons push all teams hard, and quiet months leave capacity idle.
Refund requests and angry calls land on support and sales staff who had little control over the problem.
Team leaders spend their days on numbers and miss the conversations that would help a struggling seller improve.
Start with the topics that matter most here: Performance Management; Onboarding and Probation; HR Strategy and Workforce Planning. Then work through the rest. Each topic is written for education, not in general.
Goals, reviews and ratings that hold up in a conversation.
A first day that is the same for the fifth joiner as the first.
How many people, in which roles, by when — and what they will cost.
Structure, reporting lines and who is allowed to decide what.
Requisition to joining, the same way every time.
Records, attendance, leave and the day-to-day HR that must simply work.
Salary structure, payroll inputs and a month that closes on time.
Training planned from need rather than from the calendar.
Named backups for the roles that cannot be vacant.
Communication, recognition and the conditions people actually work in.
Two routes — one for complaints, one for conduct — kept separate.
Policies a manager can apply, and obligations with owners and dates.
Induction, records, incident reporting and follow-through.
Who leaves, when, why — and which of them mattered.
Resignation to relieving letter, in a defined order.
Records that survive people, and approvals that do not queue.
A short monthly pack management actually reads.
An HR function that runs the same way every month.
The pieces a edtech companies business puts in place, in an order that makes each easier. Open any card for the detail.
A written list of claims that sales can make, reviewed with the academic team, and enforced through call reviews.
What this coversHideA written list of claims that sales can make, reviewed with the academic team, and enforced through call reviews. See performance management and incentive design.
A structured first month with product learning, practice calls and graded leads, using the onboarding and probation process.
What this coversHideA structured first month with product learning, practice calls and graded leads, using the onboarding and probation process.
Defined roles for subject experts in design reviews and a pay structure benchmarked fairly with product roles.
What this coversHideDefined roles for subject experts in design reviews and a pay structure benchmarked fairly with product roles. See organisation design.
Hiring tied to realistic runway and revenue, with a rule for how freezes and reductions are decided and communicated, drawing on HR strategy and workforce planning.
What this coversHideHiring tied to realistic runway and revenue, with a rule for how freezes and reductions are decided and communicated, drawing on HR strategy and workforce planning.
A weekly one-to-one and call review for each seller, and a short course for team leaders from the leadership and people management programme.
What this coversHideA weekly one-to-one and call review for each seller, and a short course for team leaders from the leadership and people management programme.
Before changing anything, find out what is true today. These checks take an afternoon and tell you which of the topics above to start with.
Share your requirementsConfirm with a qualified professional. What applies to you depends on your business, your state and your arrangements, and it changes. This page describes practice. It does not state a legal position.
The services below fit this kind of business best. Each starts by recording where you stand, and every later report compares against that. We do not promise outcomes.
Incentives that reward sound enrolments and honest selling.
A structured first month that cuts early sales exits.
Roles and decision rights between product, academics and sales.
A clear hiring process for engineers and product staff.
Start with a free conversation, or see the paid HR Diagnostic.
Understand the business, its workforce, current processes and HR challenges.
Find the missing, weak, inconsistent or person-dependent processes.
Create the structure, processes, policies, SOPs, dashboards and systems needed.
Help HR and department managers actually adopt the new system.
Digitise repetitive and approval-based workflows where it is worth doing.
Track hiring, attendance, employee cost, performance, training and attrition.
Strengthen the people-management system continuously, not once.
From the GullyHR blog: one on HR in education, and one on each of the topics this page points to.
Faculty, administrative and support staff leave for different reasons. How to ask what shaped their decision and act on it within the academic calendar.
7 min readRead article
A review can only judge what was agreed beforehand. How to set expectations that are specific, written and revisited, so the review stops being a surprise.
5 min readRead article
A practical joining checklist covering documents, assets, system access and statutory enrolments, with owners and timings, so nobody's first salary is wrong.
8 min readRead article
Hiring decisions made one request at a time, in the month the pain is worst. What a workforce plan contains and why a twelve-month view changes what you hire.
7 min readRead articleMore on the GullyHR blog.
Write down what can and cannot be said, train on it, review a sample of calls and tie part of the incentive to retained learners rather than only to sign-ups.
Targets are hard, leads vary in quality, training is brief and feedback is thin. Better onboarding, coaching and lead allocation reduce early exits.
Benchmark each against its own market and be open about the logic. Pay differences need an explanation, and academics should see a growth path of their own.
Set the criteria in advance, communicate directly and treat people with respect. Seek advice from a qualified professional on legal obligations before acting.
Yes. We start with a conversation about the team and the problems you face, and can work on specific processes or offer part-time HR support.
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