Almost every CEO I meet for the first time tells me the same thing: “I need to set up HR, but I don’t have the budget for a whole department.”
That’s the wrong way to look at it. You don’t need a department. You need a minimal, functional system.
I have built and reorganised HR functions in dozens of Italian companies over the last 27 years. The minimum that works is always the same combination.
3 tools.
2 processes.
1 dedicated person.
🟥 The 3 tools without which there is no HR function: A standard job description system; for every role, there must be a document describing responsibilities, expected KPIs and required skills. Without this, you’re recruiting in a vacuum and assessing based on gut feeling. A written onboarding protocol; the first 30–90 days of a new hire must be planned, not improvised. 20% of voluntary resignations occur within this window. An HR dashboard with at least 4 KPIs: turnover by department, time-to-hire, absenteeism, and cost per hire. If you don’t measure it, you can’t manage it.
🟥 The 2 processes that keep everything else running: Structured recruitment; not a free-form interview, but a process with defined stages, explicit assessment criteria and traceability of decisions. It takes the same amount of time and significantly reduces hiring errors. Performance appraisal; at least two or three structured sessions a year where manager and employee discuss objectives, feedback and development. An informal chat in the corridor isn’t enough.
🟥 The dedicated person: They do not need to be a full-time senior figure, at least initially, and must have one essential thing: dedicated time to do HR work. Not half an hour squeezed in between emergencies. Not whenever there’s a spare moment. HR done this way doesn’t exist; there’s only emergency management disguised as staff management. This is the bare minimum. It doesn’t solve everything, but it creates the conditions for people to be managed methodically rather than on a whim.
And this alone, in an average company, translates to a 10–20% reduction in staff turnover within 12–18 months.
Message me privately if you want to know where to start in your specific situation.