Signs Your Startup Has Outgrown "We Handle HR on WhatsApp" 😅
There's a specific stage in every startup's life where the founder is still personally approving leave requests on WhatsApp, payroll is a shared Google Sheet, and "HR policy" means whatever was decided in that one all-hands six months ago.
It works. Until it very much doesn't.
Here are the signs you've already crossed that line — even if it doesn't feel like it yet.
😬 An employee has asked three different people the same HR question and gotten three different answers. Leave balance, notice period, expense reimbursement process — nobody quite knows, so everyone guesses differently. The employee has stopped asking.
📋 You've never issued a formal offer letter — or you have, but they were all worded differently, and you're not sure which version is legally defensible. This becomes a real problem at exit.
📅 Someone reminded you about a PF filing deadline after it had already passed. Bonus sign: this has happened more than once, and you've responded by paying the penalty and moving on.
💸 Payroll takes two to three days to close each month and involves at least four people across finance, ops, and the founder. It's technically getting done. It's also using a disproportionate amount of senior time.
🚪 An employee left, and the full and final settlement took six weeks, involved two spreadsheets, and still wasn't fully accurate. The person has already started their new job. You're still reconciling leave encashment.
📣 Someone raised a grievance informally to the founder, and the founder handled it personally because there was no other channel. This is fine at 5 people. At 25, it's a structural gap waiting to create a serious problem.
🤷 You genuinely don't know what your company's HR policies are, because they were never written down, and the person who knew them left eight months ago.
None of these are catastrophic in isolation. All of them together are a picture of an organisation where HR infrastructure hasn't kept pace with headcount — which means it's costing you compliance risk, employee trust, and founder time simultaneously.
The good news: this is entirely fixable, and it doesn't require hiring a full HR team.
If several of these hit close to home, HRTailor builds and runs a proper HR function for Indian startups — policies, payroll, compliance, onboarding, grievance handling — starting at ₹10,000/month. One dedicated HR Manager, a supporting pod, Cloud HRMS included. Setup takes three weeks. WhatsApp stays for the team chat, not the leave approvals.