Ag and food tech startups have challenges unique to our industry regarding finding, hiring, and retaining their top talent and workforce.
CS Partners’ recently published Agri-FoodTech Talent Insights Report is a 12-month review of hiring and employee data specific to Agri-FoodTech early and growth stage companies. It’s the first jobs data insight report specific to our sector. And as such, this report gives us a unique look at the hiring and team-building challenges that face our industry.
Based on our jobs data research and our own insight into Agri-FoodTech hiring, what are the key takeaways and strategies Agri-FoodTech startups need to know?
#1 – Be Ready
Early and growth stage startups experience a significant increase in hiring. Nothing truly shocking about that. After all, a successful ‘startup’ meets the definition of the name, i.e. ‘starting up a successful business endeavor when one didn’t previously exist.
What is surprising is how often startups are unprepared for their inevitable hiring crisis.
According to our insight research, early-stage Agri-FoodTech companies increase their average number of employees by 36%. Growth stage companies add 23%. But you also need to combine those figures with typical employee attrition. Early stage Agri-FoodTech companies lose about 17% of their employees in a year-long period to attrition. Growth stage companies lose 23%, according to our research.
Over a single-year period, an early-stage company of 50 team members can expect they will need to hire about 27 new employees to compensate for attrition and new growth. A growth stage company of 270 employees will need to hire about 124.
There’s chaos in an environment with that much employee growth and chaos can be expensive. You need to maximize your investment to get the best ROI in your inevitable hiring push.
Be ready and prepared for your workforce growth. Identify your team leaders and invest in management leadership programs to develop their skills. Develop lean management processes and institute onboarding processes. Create a talent pipeline to attract both new potential future hires and to develop talent from within your current team members.
#2 – Be Flexible
Agri-FoodTech was already a nimble sector pre-Covid 19, approaching world problems through a tech-enabled lens. The pandemic only reinforced that. It’s not, then, any surprise that the Agri-FoodTech workforce expects a high level of flexibility in their work environment.
According to our data insight report, a remarkable percentage of Agri-FoodTech team members work away from the company’s main headquarters. Forty-six percent of employees in the early stage and 55% in the growth stage companies work remotely.
Even though remote work can be challenging to coordinate, from a business and hiring perspective, there are multiple strategic reasons to embrace a remote or flex-hybrid work model.
You can funnel money that would have been tied up in expensive real estate to more attractive salaries, a crucial advantage, especially when hiring for senior talent that often will have their pick of job offers. Remote work models give you access to a much broader talent pool. How many top talent potentials are out in the world but prefer to make their home away from traditional ‘tech’ centers? And letting people work from their home communities, with a lower cost of living, can make your salary offers even more attractive. Also, having your talent located in the communities your technology or science directly serves can build stronger bonds between your company and your customer base. Farmers don’t live and work in Silicon Valley.
But, perhaps most importantly, it’s what the current workforce generation wants and expects. Being flexible about where and how your team works is an advantage in the hiring process. Not doing so puts you at a distinct disadvantage.
#3 – Be Forward Thinking
Startups universally dread the “Death Valley” transition period, the conversion of their idea and visions into a product, sales, and delivery.
Your team must be stacked with the talent to help you successfully navigate the scale-up challenge. But you also need a team that can competently transverse your current needs. It makes hiring particularly tricky. Do you hire for your current needs? Or the ones you know you’ll need at some distant point in the future that will probably be here sooner than you think?
Our data insight report highlights this shift in hiring strategy. As startups move between early and growth stages, their workforce priorities change. Outside of administrative needs (66% of the workforce), early-stage companies concentrate the bulk of their positions on research and development. Twenty percent of the workforce of an early-stage company is in R&D, 10% is in commercial (business development), and 14% is in operations (supply chain and manufacturing). By the growth stage, twenty-six percent of the company’s workforce are engaged in their operational needs, 22% in business, and their R&D department shifts down to just 10% (the remainder, 42% of their workforce, fulfills administrative needs).
The best way to hire with the future in mind is to resist getting too specific around your wish list of skills. Look forward, but not too far when hiring into work categories (I typically recommend looking about 18 months ahead). But most importantly, remember that as your company grows and needs shift, specific skills will be less important than the quality and competence of the people you hire to grow with you.
#4 Be Committed (to Your Executive Talent Hires)
The most critical hires you’ll make are your senior team members. It’s imperative that you commit to hiring the right talent.
According to our data research, the most common senior hires for early-stage Agri-FoodTech startups (in order of importance) are the chief financial officer (CFO), chief executive officer (CEO), chief operating officer (COO), chief business officer (CBO) and chief marketing officer (CMO). For growth stage companies, the most common senior hires shift slightly, with the CFO remaining the most common hire, followed by a chief commercial officer (CCO), chief technology officer (CTO), CEO, and chief human resources officer (CHRO).
Hiring the wrong person into an executive position has the same negative consequences as workforce employee attrition but is much more devastating. Your marketing and business talent develop the strategic path to revenue. The commercial and operating team builds your manufacturing and supply chain pipeline. The CFO creates financial resiliency to accommodate rapid growth. Get any of these critical hires wrong and you’ll set your startup’s growth back a year or more.
Be committed to getting the right people on board. Understand they aren’t just going to fall into your lap. Build a talent pipeline. Offer competitive salary and bonus structures. Create a rigorous interviewing, hiring, and onboarding process.
#5 – Be True (To Your Diversity Goals)
Hiring for diversity in Agri-FoodTech is much discussed but not so successfully achieved.
According to our data research, only 25% of Agri-FoodTech hires in the last twelve months were women at both the early and growth stages. This is even though CS Partners’ previously published Salary Guide for Agri-FoodTech Executive Roles found that women executives in Agri-FoodTech commanded seven out of 10 top paid executive level salaries.
Based on our experience, companies enter into talent searches with the goal of more gender diversity in their hiring but typically don’t end up meeting those goals. There are many reasons for that- See our illuminating blog post with Marrone Bio founder Pam Marrone on this topic.
Ultimately, however, Agri-FoodTech startups committed to gender diversity in their talent team need to reassess their hiring priorities. Don’t be so prescriptive in hiring based on skills. Look for a general type of talent that you can nurture and develop. Be prepared to invest in their development. Bring in female talent from an adjacent industry and create a growth opportunity for them.
Need More Help?
Need more help? That’s what CS Partners is here to do. We provide executive recruitment services to the Agri-FoodTech and Life Science Technology markets.
Contact CS Partners or feel free to email me directly at s.leich@cs-partners.net.
