WhiteBIT’s CHRO on building teams in Web3: Why HR alone isn’t enough

What do organizations think about their employees? Human Resource Management treats people as units filling roles and executing tasks. Human Capital Management asks what those people have learned, built, and accumulated over time – and how that translates into a durable advantage for the business. 

For Hrachova, running the people function at one of Europe's largest crypto exchanges, that distinction has direct operational consequences. 

I work in a space where products launch faster, markets shift faster, and competition gets fiercer. That changes the demands not only on the business, but on everyone responsible for building teams, – she writes.

Why standard HR tools don't transfer to Web3

Crypto and Web3 companies hire for roles that often didn't exist a few years ago, which means the available talent pool is limited almost by definition. Specializations emerge before a professional community forms around them. Teams grow quickly, frequently before the internal processes needed to support that growth are in place. Many decisions get made with incomplete information, because waiting for full clarity isn't an option.

Under those conditions, the people function expands well beyond its conventional scope. 

You often have to simultaneously act as a project manager, analyst, communications professional, change facilitator, and someone who helps the business scale through team development, – Hrachova notes.

The components that actually build organizational value

The editorial identifies what human capital is made of in practice: deep product and domain expertise developed over years, the ability to make sound decisions under uncertainty, effective team collaboration, adaptability to new roles, initiative, and institutional memory. On that last point, Hrachova is direct about what organizations lose when experienced people leave. 

When a company loses a strong specialist, it loses much more than a person in a particular role. It loses context, expertise, connections, speed, and, in many cases, a valuable part of its institutional memory, – she writes.

None of this comes from a single hire or a training session. It accumulates through the environment a company builds over years.

Why individual talent isn't the whole answer

Assembling the strongest individual performers doesn't automatically produce the strongest team. Groups of highly skilled specialists can fall short because of communication failures and unclear accountability. Teams with less individual star power can consistently outperform them when trust and coordination are better developed. 

I've seen situations many times where a team of very strong specialists failed to deliver expected results because of poor communication, blurred accountability, or a lack of trust.

Team collaboration also happens to be one of the harder things to replicate from the outside. Technology transfers. Documented processes transfer. The shared experience and mutual understanding a team builds over years of working together doesn't.

HR as a strategic function, not a support role

The editorial touches on an old tension in the HR profession: whether the function primarily serves the business or the people inside it. Hrachova's view is that treating the two as separate interests misframes the problem. Developing people and developing the business move in the same direction. When an employee takes on more complex responsibilities and builds new capabilities, the organization becomes more capable alongside them.

That requires HR leaders to understand the product, business model, and market context well enough to anticipate what the organization will need – not just respond to gaps after they appear.

The full piece is available on the WhiteBIT blog.