ESSENTIALS MANAGEMENT When your company is your baby, you’ve already lost perspective. The thing is, that’s okay, Guthrie says. “Hire or contract someone who has the ability to tell you hard things you don’t necessarily want to hear — someone you can trust to give you a good reality check when you need it.” Many times, HR is a good choice to serve this purpose given the conifdentiality and bird’s-eye view of the business. Sometimes, especially if you’re running an early-stage company with limited funds, contracting can be the best way to go because that person exists outside the company and has no skin in the game. “When that’s the case, this person is really there just to help you. Then, when you get to 40 people, you’ve already ifgured out what your relationship with People Operations should look like. Being a founder can get extremely lonely. I think it’s easy to forget that. But bringing in someone who sees the things you don’t, and who puts your people front and center can make it a little less lonely.” TO SUMMARIZE There are a number of ways to keep your best people, but no silver bullet. As you think through your own retention strategy, remember the following: Recognize that employees have lives outside of work — cultivate a deep respect for employees’ time. When employees leave because of their boss, it rarely comes from personality mismatches; it stems from a lack of conifdence. Counteroffers are (an expensive) band-aid; they won’t ifx an employee’s fundamental unhappiness. Building a genuine sense of community is crucial to employee retention. Make sure your hiring process incorporates and heavily weighs cultural ift. 127