6 tools to help cultivate a happy workforce for your growing startup

Running your startup was fine when it was just you, your co-founder, and your jane-of-all-trades hire. But now that you’ve raised investment (woohoo!), you want to focus on strategy and expand your team.

It’s not hard telling people you want to hire a kick-ass developer, but it’s time-consuming to find the perfect fit. When you finally get the kick-ass developer who’s also pretty kick-ass in-person, you then need to find a way to keep them happy so they don’t leave. It’s quite a ride.

You don’t need to go it alone though. Here are six companies in the business of helping you run yours.

Cocoon

Change the way you hire with Cocoon, the self-proclaimed Tinder for jobs. Working at a startup is no joke; it’s an intimate environment where culture fit is as important as technical skills. Swipe interested candidates, arrange a coffee meeting, and test the waters to see whether they’re really a great match – technically and in-person.

Because you should probably find out whether your potential new hire is the type of person to leave passive aggressive sticky notes all over the office before you proceed to interview stage. Unless you like passive aggressive sticky notes, in which case, you do you.

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Assistant.to

Arrange meetings quickly and easily with Assistant.to, a handy extension for Gmail and Google Calendar. It monitors your availability and lets you schedule meetings with one e-mail. Trust me, your recipient will adore the lack of tedious back-and-forths.

If you’d rather be working on product than dealing with your calendar, you’ll definitely appreciate having the whole thing streamlined too. From automatic timezone detection and calendar event creation, it leaves you time to do other, important things.

Charlie

Leave the bulk of administration matters with Charlie, a free human resources platform for small companies. It was built by startup founders like you who would prefer to spend more time on product.

Onboarding new hires will feel like a breeze. They’ll be prompted to provide their information into the system directly and, at the same time, get an idea of the company culture. They can ask you to clarify “unlimited vacation policy” later so it doesn’t get bogged down in your official office tour speech.

Peakon

As your team grows, it’s important for you to keep an eye on what’s happening internally. Enter Peakon and its mission to add value, not administration, to your company through “people analytics.”

It works by collecting quantitative and qualitative feedback from your team in a simple way to identify issues before they become problems. Do you have a teeny tiny suspicion that your designer isn’t happy in the new office? Back up that gut feeling with cold, hard data and then solve it before it becomes a critical issue.

Pingboard

If a fully-fledged human resources platform isn’t required for your startup just yet, start with Pingboard. It’s a team directory where your employees can share important details like how to contact them and days they’re taking off alongside their T-shirt size and favorite restaurant.

It’s a great way to keep everybody in the loop, with integrations to services like Slack and Google Calendar.

AnyPerk

Once team expansion has really started to get going, AnyPerk is a way to give a little somethin’ extra to your employees. Create a rewarding work environment with meaningful perks from reduced gym rates, savings on those cool-as-beans headphones to discounted trips to Las Vegas and Disneyland.

Has anyone ever been mad at getting 50 percent off to see Mickey Mouse and co? (… No. The answer is no.)