NoDoubt is an Independent Consultancy Firm founded in 2015 and active in Human Resources & Organization. It is one of the professionals of the Fintech District network and we asked Elena Ghilardi, what was her vision of the sector and the activities carried out by the company that could be useful to the Italian startup ecosystem.
What are, in your point of view, the most important issues the fintech sector is facing, from the HR stand?
Beyond the ordinary HR needs, the contingent period is leading us to face a number of changes that will certainly affect the business of tomorrow. I read that 70% of FinTech do not agree with their banking partner either on a cultural or organizational level. It is important that traditional banks consider them as strategic partners with whom to work together to quickly face the changing expectations of consumers. From an organizational point of view, there could be a great need to work on the organizational culture shared between FinTech and its banking partner.
What kind of advice do you give to startups/scaleups in the tech/fintech sector?
NoDoubt, in addition to its Executive Search and HR Consultancy activity, NoDoubt proposes itself as HR Advisor for start-ups, possibly with different needs, according to their growth phase, offering flexible support plus a dedicated and highly customized HR team.
For start-ups in the launch phase, we propose activities of organization, construction of skills models, identity & brand reputation, privacy models and recruitment service focused mainly on entrepreneurial soft skills as well as technical ones.
For companies in the Warm Up phase, we generally suggest an activity focused on building up an organizational culture, development and training plans, as well as recruitment service and employer branding.
Finally, we support Scale Up realities mainly for Talent Acquisition, Performance Management, Leadership Consulting and Assessment/Development Center activities, in order to accompany them to the next phase in which they will be able to internalize an HR Manager who will lead, together with NoDoubt or autonomously, the construction of the internal Human Resources function.
Have you launched any initiatives related to the Covid19 emergency? What kind?
NoDoubt has not launched specific initiatives related to the Covid19 emergency, mainly because we have been faced with a workload that hasn’changed much from what we were used to before.
However, we have had the opportunity to discuss and reflect on what may be the main HR activities we can put forward in a delicate moment such as this: reorganization (which does not necessarily mean cutting down, but rather reorganizing its resources, to respond more efficiently to the new normality), capabilities assessment (facing a cultural and business change requires a new assessment of the capabilities of its resources, ensuring a quick and effective response to the market), climate survey (in a period of great change, how arethe resources operating in my organization living through it? This offers the possibility of designing possible ad hoc interventions able to restore security, determination and orientation to the new objective), leadership coaching (the context changes, the approaches change: hence the importance of a leader who is able to stay on track as far as the business is concerned but also to management his team). In addition to the fact that leadesrhip in start-ups is often strongly entrepreneurial and less managerial, it is important to have the right combination. Crises reveal leadership style for better or for worse and consequently the ability to maintain a balance between strategy and medium-long term vision versus an opportunistic decision making (that sees only the short term), training (new contexts, new objectives: all this means new skills) and employer branding (the market is uncertain, the perception of brands changes: how to remain attractive to resources on the market?).
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