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Why software employees leave and how to understand why
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Information Technology and Software · HRTech startups
HR for HRTech Startups: Product Teams, Customer Success and Sales to HR Buyers
An HRTech startup builds software for the people function, so its own HR is watched by every customer. Here is how to run engineers, product staff, customer success and sales teams while practising what you sell.
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Share your requirementsAn HRTech startup builds products for recruitment, payroll, attendance, performance, engagement or learning, sold to companies and used by their HR teams and employees. Its staff include engineers, product managers, designers, data analysts, implementation consultants, customer success managers, support agents and sales staff who speak to HR heads and founders. Because the buyer is an HR professional, the startup's own people practices are noticed: how it hires, how it treats staff and whether its own team uses the product. Product teams work in short cycles, implementation teams meet clients' messy data, and customer success handles demands from many different employers. Funding rounds change hiring plans quickly, and fast growth often leaves roles unclear. Domain knowledge of HR is rare among engineers and sales staff. See also HR for IT and software.
- Plan
- Hire
- Onboard
- Manage
- Develop
- Perform
- Engage
- Retain
- Exit
- Improve
When HR is weak in HRTech startups, you may see
- Engineers lack HR domain knowledge
- Sales promises outpace the product
- Implementation staff absorb customer chaos
- Customer success meets conflicting demands
- The startup does not use its own product
- Hiring is rushed after funding
- Sensitive data raises trust stakes
- Burnout comes from the release cycle
These are the places the people side of this kind of business tends to give way. The rest of this page works through them.
Who does the work in HRTech startups
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.
- Software engineers and QA staff
- Product managers and designers
- Implementation consultants
- Customer success managers
- Support agents
- Sales and business development executives
- HR domain specialists and content staff
Roles we help you hire in HRTech startups
GullyHR runs talent acquisition for permanent roles in HRTech startups. For each role we agree the job description with you, find and screen candidates against it, and support the offer through to joining. Tell us the role and the number of people, and we start there.
Job descriptions for this sector
Share a hiring requirementTalent acquisition services →IT and specialised recruitment →Role design and job descriptions →
We recruit permanent employees. We do not supply contract or temporary staff.
We set up the interview and hiring process for HRTech startups
Every business interviews, but few have a written process that works the same way for every role and every interviewer. GullyHR designs yours, from the role brief to the offer, trains your managers to run it, and can run it for you on the roles you hand us.
1. Role brief and scorecard
We agree what the role must deliver, the must-have and nice-to-have skills, and how each will be scored.
2. Stages and sequence
Screening call, assessment, interview rounds and decision points, sized to the role and the number of people you hire.
3. Question bank and scoring
Structured questions for each role family and a rating guide, so two interviewers judge the same answer the same way.
4. Interviewer readiness
A short briefing for your managers on what to ask, what to avoid and how to give a clear yes or no.
5. Offer and follow-up
Who approves, how the offer is made, and how candidates are kept informed from first call to joining.
Where HR strains in HRTech startups
Engineers lack HR domain knowledge
Features are built without an understanding of how real HR teams work, and rework follows each customer complaint.
Sales promises outpace the product
Executives promise features in meetings with HR heads, and engineering learns of them after the deal is signed.
Implementation staff absorb customer chaos
They clean data, adjust workflows and handle demands from several clients at once, with long hours and no clear scope.
Customer success meets conflicting demands
Each client wants something different, and the team has no rule on what to refuse or send to product.
The startup does not use its own product
Its attendance, leave and review processes are on spreadsheets, and customers who ask for a demo of the company's own HR are disappointed.
Hiring is rushed after funding
A round leads to many offers within weeks, onboarding is thin and role clarity is lost.
Sensitive data raises trust stakes
Staff handle payroll and personal details of customers' employees, but access rules and conduct expectations are informal.
Burnout comes from the release cycle
Engineers and support teams carry release pressure and escalations, with weekend work becoming routine.
HR topics for HRTech startups
Start with the topics that matter most here: Onboarding and Probation; HR Technology and Automation; Learning and Development. Then work through the rest. Each topic is written for information technology and software, not in general.
Onboarding and Probation
A first day that is the same for the fifth joiner as the first.
HR Technology and Automation
Records that survive people, and approvals that do not queue.
Learning and Development
Training planned from need rather than from the calendar.
HR Strategy and Workforce Planning
How many people, in which roles, by when — and what they will cost.
Organisation Design
Structure, reporting lines and who is allowed to decide what.
Recruitment and Talent Acquisition
Requisition to joining, the same way every time.
Employee Administration
Records, attendance, leave and the day-to-day HR that must simply work.
Compensation, Payroll and Benefits
Salary structure, payroll inputs and a month that closes on time.
Performance Management
Goals, reviews and ratings that hold up in a conversation.
Career and Succession Management
Named backups for the roles that cannot be vacant.
Employee Engagement and Experience
Communication, recognition and the conditions people actually work in.
Employee Relations
Two routes — one for complaints, one for conduct — kept separate.
Policies, Compliance and Governance
Policies a manager can apply, and obligations with owners and dates.
Health, Safety and Wellbeing
Induction, records, incident reporting and follow-through.
Retention and Attrition Management
Who leaves, when, why — and which of them mattered.
Exit and Alumni Management
Resignation to relieving letter, in a defined order.
HR Analytics and Management Reporting
A short monthly pack management actually reads.
HR Operations and Governance
An HR function that runs the same way every month.
What a working HR set-up looks like
The pieces a HRTech startups business puts in place, in an order that makes each easier. Open any card for the detail.
Bring HR domain learning into the team
Regular sessions with practising HR professionals, customer visits for engineers and a glossary of HR terms, using the learning and development process.
What this coversHide
Bring HR domain learning into the team
Regular sessions with practising HR professionals, customer visits for engineers and a glossary of HR terms, using the learning and development process.
What this coversHide
Regular sessions with practising HR professionals, customer visits for engineers and a glossary of HR terms, using the learning and development process.
Create a sales-to-product check
A simple form where sales confirms any feature promise with product before including it in a proposal.
What this coversHide
Create a sales-to-product check
A simple form where sales confirms any feature promise with product before including it in a proposal.
What this coversHide
A simple form where sales confirms any feature promise with product before including it in a proposal.
Define implementation scope
A standard statement of what implementation includes, how extra requests are handled and who approves them.
What this coversHide
Define implementation scope
A standard statement of what implementation includes, how extra requests are handled and who approves them.
What this coversHide
A standard statement of what implementation includes, how extra requests are handled and who approves them.
Use your own product internally
Run your attendance, leave, performance and onboarding on your own system, and let staff give feedback.
What this coversHide
Use your own product internally
Run your attendance, leave, performance and onboarding on your own system, and let staff give feedback.
What this coversHide
Run your attendance, leave, performance and onboarding on your own system, and let staff give feedback. See the employee onboarding process for the structure.
Plan hiring in waves
A hiring plan tied to funding with role definitions and a standard first-month plan for every joiner.
What this coversHide
Plan hiring in waves
A hiring plan tied to funding with role definitions and a standard first-month plan for every joiner.
What this coversHide
A hiring plan tied to funding with role definitions and a standard first-month plan for every joiner.
Set data access and conduct rules
Who may see customers' employee data, why and how it is logged.
What this coversHide
Set data access and conduct rules
Who may see customers' employee data, why and how it is logged.
What this coversHide
Who may see customers' employee data, why and how it is logged. Confirm with a qualified professional the data protection duties that apply to you. HR documentation helps put it in writing.
Start by checking where you stand
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 requirements- Ask an engineer how many HR users they have watched using the product.
- List the last three features promised by sales and who approved them.
- Ask an implementation consultant how much unscoped work they did last month.
- Check whether your own leave and review processes run on your own product.
- Review the onboarding of the last five joiners after your latest hiring wave.
- Find who can see customer employee data and whether it is logged.
- Confirm with a qualified professional the data protection, employment and contractual obligations that apply to your startup.
Confirm 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.
How GullyHR helps
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.
- Employee onboarding process
A first-month plan so rapid hiring does not leave new joiners lost.
- Learning and development process
Building HR domain knowledge inside product and engineering teams.
- HR policy packages
Policies on data access, conduct and leave that you can show to customers.
- Performance management process
A review process that also tests your own product's fit.
Start with a free conversation, or see the paid HR Diagnostic.
Our HR transformation approach
- 1
Assess
Understand the business, its workforce, current processes and HR challenges.
- 2
Identify gaps
Find the missing, weak, inconsistent or person-dependent processes.
- 3
Design
Create the structure, processes, policies, SOPs, dashboards and systems needed.
- 4
Implement
Help HR and department managers actually adopt the new system.
- 5
Automate
Digitise repetitive and approval-based workflows where it is worth doing.
- 6
Measure
Track hiring, attendance, employee cost, performance, training and attrition.
- 7
Improve
Strengthen the people-management system continuously, not once.
Blogs worth reading first
From the GullyHR blog: one on HR in information technology and software, and one on each of the topics this page points to.
HR Process
Onboarding a freelancer: access, data and confidentiality in the first week
A first-week plan for bringing in an outside specialist: what access to give, how to protect client data, and the confidentiality steps to settle on day one.
7 min readRead article
Industries
Timesheets that people actually fill in: a simple routine for services teams
A simple timesheet routine for IT services teams: a short form, daily entry, light approval and a month-end lock that finance can bill from.
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Industries
Fresher hiring and a first-year training programme for a small IT services company
A founder's guide to hiring freshers and running a first-year programme: campus or open drives, a screening round, a training plan by quarter, mentors and checkpoints.
6 min readRead articleMore on the GullyHR blog.
Questions owners ask
Arrange customer visits, sessions with practising HR professionals and a shared glossary. Seeing real users changes how features are built.
Use a short product check before any proposal contains a feature promise. It saves rework and relationships.
Write a standard scope, record extras and approve them. Without it, the team absorbs everything.
Yes, where it fits. It improves the product and gives customers a credible reference.
Hire in waves, define each role and give every joiner a standard first month. Fast hiring needs a repeatable start.
We would look at how your own HR runs, how promises reach product and how new joiners start. A sensible first piece of work is an onboarding plan and a data access policy. Scope follows in writing, so you can accept or trim it.
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