There’s a moment in every startup where the team starts growing faster than the systems holding it up. Someone resigns and you realise there’s no leaver process. A new hire asks for their contract and you find a half-edited template from 2023. Nothing’s on fire yet. But you can smell smoke.

This HR checklist for startups covers what to put in place as you scale from 10 to 100 people, in the order it actually starts to bite. Not the order an HR textbook would give you. The order in which things break.

The whole checklist is on this page. If you’d rather have it pinned above your desk, the free printable PDF is in the box above, with the sequencing notes I use with clients.

How to use this checklist

Work through the six stages in order. Stages 1 and 2 are about staying legal and paying people properly; if anything there is missing, it goes to the top of your list regardless of size. Stages 3 to 6 are about scaling without the wheels coming off, and the right timing depends on headcount. As a rough guide: stages 1 to 3 should be solid by 20 people, stage 4 by 30, stages 5 and 6 by 50.

It’s written for UK companies. The legal specifics (and there are a few big changes landing in 2026 and 2027) are UK employment law.

Stage 1: Foundations and compliance

The unglamorous layer. None of this makes anyone’s day better, but missing any of it can end very badly. Most of it is legally required from your first hire, not your fiftieth.

• Employment contracts. Every employee has one, issued on or before day one. That’s the law (a written statement of particulars), and a proper contract does the job. No “we’ll sort the paperwork later”.
• Right to work checks. Done and documented before anyone starts. Fines for getting this wrong run to £60,000 per person.
• Employer’s liability insurance. Legally required from your first employee, minimum £5m cover. Takes an hour to sort.
• Payroll and PAYE. PAYE registered with HMRC, payslips issued, RTI submissions on time. If you’re doing this on a spreadsheet, stop; payroll is the cheapest thing to outsource.
• Pension. Auto-enrolment isn’t optional. Minimum 8% of qualifying earnings, at least 3% from you.
• Core policies. Disciplinary and grievance procedures that follow the Acas Code, and a written health and safety policy once you hit five staff. These are the legal floor; a short, human handbook beats a 90-page one nobody reads.
• GDPR for employee data. A privacy notice for staff, employee data stored somewhere sensible, and an answer to “who can see what?”.
• Holiday. At least 5.6 weeks statutory minimum, tracked somewhere that isn’t someone’s memory.

Stage 2: Pay and payroll

Pay is where trust lives. Founders who wing it here spend years untangling the results, usually at the exact moment they’re trying to raise or hire senior people.

• A salary banding structure. Even a rough one. Three or four levels per function with a range for each. It doesn’t need to be scientific; it needs to exist, so every offer stops being a one-off negotiation.
• National Minimum Wage compliance. From April 2026 the main rate is £12.71 an hour for 21 and over. Check interns and junior roles against it.
• Equity sorted properly. If you’re granting options, get the EMI scheme set up properly and the paperwork done at grant, not at exit. Retrofitting equity is expensive.
• Sick pay brought up to date. Since April 2026, statutory sick pay applies from day one of sickness and the lower earnings limit has gone. If your sickness policy still talks about three waiting days, it’s out of date.
• Fair pay habits early. You won’t hit the gender pay gap reporting threshold for a while, but pay transparency habits (consistent bands, explainable gaps) are far easier to build at 30 people than to repair at 150.

Stage 3: Hiring and onboarding

Hiring is the highest-stakes thing you do at this size. One structured process beats ten heroic gut calls.

• Structured interviews. Same questions, same scorecard, every candidate for a role. It’s fairer, it’s faster, and it makes your gut calls better, not redundant.
• Templated offers. Offer letter and contract templates that don’t need a founder to rewrite them at 11pm.
• Real onboarding. A first-week plan for every new starter: kit ready, accounts set up, a named person to have lunch with, and a clear picture of what good looks like in month one.
• Probation with actual milestones. Objectives set in week one, a mid-point check-in, a decision before the end date. This is about to matter much more: from January 2027, unfair dismissal protection kicks in at six months’ service instead of two years. Sloppy probation management is about to get expensive.
• Pre-employment checks as routine. References, right to work and background checks running as a workflow, not a memory test.

Stage 4: HR systems and operations

Somewhere around 20 people, the spreadsheet dies. Nobody announces it; you just notice that holiday balances are wrong, three versions of the org chart exist, and finding anyone’s start date takes twenty minutes.

• An HRIS before you desperately need one. One system that holds contracts, personal details, holiday, absence and documents. At this size you don’t need an enterprise platform, you need a single source of truth.
• Absence tracking. Sickness patterns you can actually see. You can’t support someone through a rough patch you haven’t noticed.
• A document trail. Signed contracts, policy acknowledgements, right to work documents, all findable in minutes. Your future self (and any due diligence process) will thank you.
• A named owner. By 30 people, HR admin should have a named owner who isn’t a founder. That might be an office manager with support, or a part-time People coordinator. What it can’t be is “whoever notices”.

Stage 5: Managers and culture

Around 30 to 50 people, your biggest people risk stops being compliance and becomes management. Most first-time managers were promoted for being good at something else, and nobody’s told them what the job actually is.

• First-time manager training. Not a course for the sake of it: the basics of 1:1s, feedback, and having the awkward conversation early instead of never.
• A 1:1 rhythm. Every person has a regular 1:1 that isn’t a status update. This is the single cheapest retention tool you have.
• Performance conversations on a schedule. Lightweight, honest, twice a year minimum. Performance problems age like milk.
• Values that mean something. Written down as behaviours you hire, promote and part ways over. If your values could hang in any company’s office, they aren’t values yet.
• Listening that leads somewhere. A simple engagement pulse a couple of times a year, with results you actually act on. Asking and ignoring is worse than not asking.

Stage 6: Leadership and planning

This is the stage founders reach last, because nothing is visibly on fire. It’s also where the biggest value sits: the difference between a team that happened and a team that was designed.

• The org, one year out. An org design for 12 months ahead, not just today. Which roles unlock the plan? Which are pure backfill?
• A headcount plan. Headcount tied to budget and revenue triggers, so hiring is a decision, not a reflex.
• Key person risk, named. Who are the three people you genuinely can’t lose this year, and what are you doing about it beyond hoping?
• Senior People capability. At some point the people agenda needs senior ownership: comp strategy, org design, the hard cases. That doesn’t have to mean a full-time CHRO at 60 people. This is exactly the gap fractional HR leadership exists to fill; if you’re weighing it up, here’s what a fractional HR director costs in the UK.

FAQ

What should an HR checklist for startups include?

Six things, in order: legal foundations and compliance, pay and payroll, hiring and onboarding, HR systems, manager capability, and org planning. Most checklists list the what; the useful part is the when. Compliance and pay problems bite at any size, systems break around 20 people, and management gaps show from 30 onwards.

Which HR policies are legally required in the UK?

Surprisingly few, which is why bloated handbooks are a choice, not a requirement. You must have written disciplinary and grievance procedures, and a written health and safety policy once you employ five or more people. Every employee also needs a written statement of particulars from day one, which a decent contract covers. Everything else (remote working, parental leave detail, expenses) is about clarity rather than legal obligation.

When should a startup hire its first HR person?

Later than most founders think for admin, earlier than most founders think for leadership. HR admin needs a named owner by around 30 people. Senior People thinking (comp, org design, difficult cases) is usually needed well before a full-time CHRO is affordable, which is where fractional support fits: a day or two a week of experienced leadership without the full-time overhead.

What’s changing in UK employment law in 2026 and 2027?

A lot, under the Employment Rights Act. Already in force since April 2026: statutory sick pay from day one with no lower earnings limit, and day-one paternity leave. From January 2027, the unfair dismissal qualifying period drops from two years to six months and the compensation caps go. The practical takeaway for founders: probation stops being a formality and starts being a process you need to run properly.

Do I really need all of this at 10 people?

No. At 10 people you need Stage 1 completely, Stage 2 mostly, and Stage 3 for your next hire. The rest is a map, not a to-do list for this quarter. The mistake isn’t doing these things late; it’s not knowing they’re coming.

And if you’d rather talk it through than work through it alone, get in touch. Helping founder-led companies build exactly this is the day job.