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The WorkOps Podcast is your weekly conversation with HR leaders and People Ops practitioners doing the real work.
In every episode we dig into one story. A process that went sideways, a system that just didn't work, and what someone actually did about it. Packed with practical lessons you'll want to bring back to your team. Whether you're supporting 500 employees or 5,000, this is how the best People leaders are building for what comes next.
Amie (00:00)
day zero to day one experience there. That's a critical window between a candidate signing the offer and their first day.
This process was extremely high touch on the outside, but it was actually powered by what I call human APIs. the talented people doing the manual copy and paste work.
and then that poor person had to then start a manual IT ticket to say, ⁓ here's Bob, he's gonna want this laptop, and we're gonna need you to make the email.
Jeet (00:26)
Hmm.
Amie (00:32)
And then that person was also looking up headshots on LinkedIn for the welcoming slides, right?
was good intentions behind it. All of these things came with good intentions. We want to feature these people, make them feel welcome, but kind of felt like we were making a marketing brochure at the same
Jeet (01:21)
Hey everybody, today I'm joined by Amie Taylor, who's the Senior Director of PORT and she's gonna explain what that is at an influencer marketing SaaS company. Amie, thank you for joining us ⁓ today. So before we jump in, can you tell us a little bit more about yourself? How did you end up choosing HR and what is PORT?
Amie (01:43)
Oh yeah, of So a little bit about me and why I chose HR first. I have a psychology degree for my bachelor's and I planned to get my doctorate, however I needed to get into the workforce and support my family. So I was looking for an intersection of people.
and business and came to HR. I worked for a manufacturing company straight out of college, which was great experience. Blue collar is another beast in terms of HR. And you're dealing with people on the ground, know, boots on the feet or whatever expression they say. And I worked two jobs for
Jeet (02:27)
Yeah.
Amie (02:31)
quite a long time, two full-time jobs, and I worked at a hotel to keep my benefits because that was only a contractor basically role that I needed to get some experience. Because as I think many people know, the hardest part sometimes about getting in HR is having experience to be able to find a role. ⁓
Jeet (02:42)
Hmm.
So crazy.
Amie (02:51)
Yeah, it's a Catch-22 for sure. So I learned a lot. ⁓ This was in the automotive industry at Valeo. Their headquarters is in France. It was very relatable for me. I also studied French in college. I learned all of the basics of HR there.
They extended my ⁓ time there until the industry sank back in that long ago when the automotive industry crashed for a bit. I think that was the recession. So not to age me or anything. But that's how I got into HR.
Jeet (03:16)
Okay.
Amie (03:29)
However, I started to migrate towards the, I'll call it the machine of HR, the product. I like to produce things, I like to have measurable things. I like to feel like I've given something tangible to the business. So I'll fast forward to what I do now and I oversee people operations, rewards and technology. So that is the PORT acronym and that is all things that most people think about when they think about HR.
are outside of recruiting. So that is onboarding to transitioning to alumni status when someone exits the business and everything in between. That includes the payroll team, which I took over last year. And that is when I transitioned to a PORT team. And my team loves the acronym. We are the PORT masters and we have a good time.
Jeet (04:01)
Hmm.
Amie (04:23)
So that includes benefits, compensation, systems. It really is the machine behind the HR team.
Jeet (04:23)
Love it. Thank you.
Yeah, I'm sensing your, as you did psychology and then systems thinking, France, I hear their employment law is pretty tough. So a lot of, yeah, a lot of rich experiences there and now building up this team, which is taking care of everything aside from recruitment. So that's awesome.
Amie (04:40)
It is?
Yeah.
I also,
⁓ in between there, I did global payroll. So for, I think it was 39 countries at a clinical operation company. So France was included. So I know all about France and their complicated RTT days and everything in between. ⁓ But 39 countries was a lot. I learned a lot of international experience and how to juggle the gray areas for sure.
Jeet (04:55)
Yikes.
Hmm.
Yeah, lot of gray areas, imagine. And gray skies while you're in France, I imagine too. So, Amie, we agreed before we jumped on that we're not going to share the company name because we here today, we have a potentially juicy story for you to share. as with every episode, we're going to look at a particular process or system that didn't quite work out. So without mentioning the company name, what kind of company were you working for where this process existed?
Amie (05:18)
Yeah.
⁓
I was working for a technology consulting company.
Jeet (05:48)
Nice. Okay. And then what ⁓ prompted this processor system or did it already exist before you got there?
Amie (05:56)
⁓ It
existed, this company grew very fast. They grew by ways of mergers and acquisitions. Throughout my time there, every year was a merger or an acquisition and you were constantly on your toes. So I'll talk about
Jeet (06:03)
Hmm.
Wow.
Amie (06:11)
day zero to day one experience there. That's a critical window between a candidate signing the offer and their first day.
This process was extremely high touch on the outside, but it was actually powered by what I call human APIs. So the talented people doing the manual copy and paste work.
Yes. So I helped transform it from disjointed.
Jeet (06:32)
Yikes, I love that term. I'm gonna use that. Human APIs.
Amie (06:40)
We'll call it a boutique experience into a scalable automated engine that finally gave our team and our candidates their time back.
Jeet (06:49)
That's really great to hear. The human API thing is going to stick with me, I think, for a while now. And it sounds like it was a really high touch experience. And when you're growing with M &A, that's going to break pretty quickly, I imagine. And of course, some parts of it needs to be high touch because it's a really important time for a new join around the business. But the rest of it should be automated. what?
what was the process that was actually taking place between that kind of signing to pre-boarding and first day time.
Amie (07:19)
So trying to test my memory here, whereas I was always thinking of this experience, it was after they signed the offer, Google Forms went out to collect various information. So imagine a Google Form went out and you said, what laptop would you like? What is your address? And then afterwards you might get another Google Form.
Jeet (07:23)
Haha
Wow.
Hmm.
You
Amie (07:41)
closer
to your first day that says, you know, tell me about your...
or you graduated college or some fun facts, kind of like a get to know you, like we want to introduce you to the team. Again, they had started like a small company and that was still the experience that warm and fuzzy, we're a family, we're gonna introduce you, we're gonna announce you on town halls, right? Like when they have the town hall, there's the new hires. So they might use some of this information.
Jeet (07:57)
Hmm.
Hmm.
Amie (08:12)
And then they were onboarded through UKG, which could handle a lot of that. And then they had another part to do. So you would have candidates miss pieces, right? Because they have an email here, an email there, and they're like, ⁓ crap, I didn't know I had to do that. So for me, it felt like we were almost.
Jeet (08:17)
Yeah.
Amie (08:36)
creating an experience where the candidates thought they might have missed something or done something wrong before they started and you don't want that. You're starting a new company, you're worried about your first impression, you're like, no, I forgot something, I hope they aren't mad at me. Or a critical piece of getting your laptop to you was telling you what type of laptop you wanted. ⁓
Jeet (08:57)
Yeah, in a Google
form, right? And that can not always get tracked easily. And you mentioned from the employee experience side that there's of course that anxiety or hesitation. It's like, Hey, this is actually on me and I want to make sure I have a successful start, but I don't feel equipped to have that successful start. What were some of the other unintended impacts that you were seeing within the business within your teams or let's say within the IT team or for the managers?
Amie (09:24)
Yeah, I mean, it would go from, it was just a time trap. So you would get the Google form, someone has to collate the information,
and then that poor person had to then start a manual IT ticket to say, ⁓ here's Bob, he's gonna want this laptop, and we're gonna need you to make the email.
Jeet (09:40)
Hmm.
Amie (09:46)
And then that person was also looking up headshots on LinkedIn for the welcoming slides, right? So think about a hyper growth company. And if you're in a quarterly town hall and you have at a minimum 20 new hires a month, you're probably not going to be able to feature all of these people, right? It's going to start looking weird and yes, you can make your pictures smaller and smaller to get them all on there. Then you lose the value of the picture. ⁓
Jeet (10:02)
Yeah.
Yeah.
Amie (10:16)
So this was kind of a directive from the CMO there. it was very much, there was good intentions behind it. All of these things came with good intentions. We want to feature these people, make them feel welcome, but kind of felt like we were making a marketing brochure at the same time. So.
Jeet (10:24)
Mm-hmm.
Amie (10:40)
We were able to
Jeet (10:41)
Yes.
Amie (10:41)
transition that to pictures of the onboarding class every week. That way we're like, here's the onboarding class. And so it still had a personal touch, but a person wasn't going out Googling for these people's pictures, manually saving them somewhere, putting them on the UKG profile. And then, and when the town halls came up, manually collating them all for the CMO to put into the deck, right? Like all it was.
Jeet (11:10)
Yeah.
Amie (11:11)
was
hours and hours of work.
Jeet (11:14)
It's kind crazy how all these little things land on HR or in HR's lap when this is not really an HR responsibility. Copy-pasting photos from Google into a slide is not the best use of an HR team member's time, no matter how junior they are. So there's making that judgment call and decision of what are the things that's going to be high leverage but still...
provide that human impact for both sides, people joining in the business versus what is not. Was it like the, like the 40th picture that you were seeing being copy pasted? Was that the time when you realized that something had to be done or was there another moment?
Amie (11:50)
Well, this is where it gets juicy. ⁓ It was actually a topic for three years, trying to make links to various stakeholders involved. As you can imagine, the CMO and the town hall was an area.
Jeet (11:54)
Alright.
Well.
Amie (12:07)
And then there were other areas of simply connecting the ATS to UKG, but that had to be a coordinated effort and I needed the TA director on board. There was concerns about employee experience for some reason. I'm sorry, I was trying to remember what it was.
Jeet (12:13)
Hmm.
Yeah.
Amie (12:29)
I think it was because you had to get all of the different details into the ATS. So like the requisition details of the organizational levels. But those were actually collected. Can you guess where? There you go. And so those weren't actually in the ATS. So it was a large scale project to get this off the ground.
Jeet (12:43)
in a Google form.
Amie (12:57)
We finally agreed and the breaking point was really because we were able to transition that work to the TA team and that person was submitting overtime to get all of this work done.
So I and expressed a lot of concern like this is pretty difficult. I have to go figure out the requisition organization levels to put into the employee records that the employees write because if it's wrong, then finance is not happy. They get their first payroll and they're like this money does not match what we budgeted. Why is it over in this department? So all kinds of ⁓ gaps here were happening just because your system isn't automated. I actually got agreement for this to go forward the last year.
Jeet (13:10)
Okay.
Amie (13:39)
there and then I quickly resigned.
Jeet (13:41)
Congrats.
Amie (13:44)
I had a new opportunity
and left her a new opportunity, but I was able to get this basically off the ground. I teed it up. I had a very, very talented HRS senior there. She had been on UKG for 20 years. Honestly, one of the most talented people I know still today. I still connect with her today every month.
Jeet (13:48)
Yeah.
Amie (14:09)
and pick her brain and she picks my brain. So she took it over and was able to work with the ATS consultant and get it almost off the ground and then she resigned for a new opportunity. And if you can imagine, then they finally finished the project and the un-automatable project that was
Jeet (14:14)
Yeah.
you
Amie (14:36)
not able to be automated because we were super high touch and too many things were just so unique. But then the biggest critic of all took the victory lap and finished the project out. So that TA director then finished the project out and I'm sure it's all working nicely now.
Jeet (14:51)
You
Yeah, wow. It was like
your last hurrah, your final gift to the company and for your colleague as well. ⁓ And I guess the biggest gift for you guys back is knowing that now that process is improved and fixed, regardless of where the applause landed, I suppose. And it's really interesting to hear, you know, we see how do we kind of quantify the manual work that goes into these processes and how do we actually look at it beyond quote unquote employee experience.
Amie (15:02)
Absolutely.
Jeet (15:24)
And what you just mentioned there is a direct impact to the bottom line. People are charging overtime for this work. There is nothing more direct than that piece. So I'm glad that it's a quantification to at least surface the problem really well. And if you had to revisit that same process, how would you look at it differently today? Assume you can have all the technology to hand, full buy-in and expertise from all sides.
Amie (15:48)
I would probably think about how I can portray it to the business in a logical way that they think it's their decision or their aha moment. I've learned now as I became a senior executive, sometimes it takes.
Jeet (15:56)
Mm-hmm.
Amie (16:08)
creating a path where people feel like they made the decision and that's how you actually get things done.
Jeet (16:16)
Yeah,
I imagine there's a lot of conversations also around build versus buy, particularly in the age of AI and making sure that that kind of change management piece all the way from starting with ROI conversations and where it's just really going to add value, which is going to be really, really important. And I guess in your current role, what would you say is kind of the nearest equivalent of the process that we just discussed and how does that work if you're okay to share?
Amie (16:41)
Yeah, actually in my current role, came in effectively to build similar processes. So they were using two HRASs, one for payroll.
Jeet (16:51)
There you go.
Amie (16:55)
was called Exponent HR. It is ⁓ very much an archaic system. I think it's based in Texas. I can definitely see some value of it, especially for a labor workforce. Bamboo and greenhouse, but nothing talk to each other. So, PeopleOps on my team was entering it across three systems. We also had an org charting system, ChartHop. And so really I came into
Jeet (16:57)
Hmm.
Hmm.
Amie (17:21)
break it all down and streamline it. So I came in, we ⁓ transitioned to UKG and streamlined and integrated everything. But the difference was this business was ready for change and wanted change. And so I didn't have to spend time, know, architecting and socializing the change and making sure I got all my stakeholders on board. The stakeholders were already ready.
Jeet (17:37)
Hmm.
That's awesome to hear. are there still areas to optimize, would you say, an opportunity to optimize in the process, or is it tick done? I know where this answer is going, but I'll...
Amie (18:00)
I was also brought in probably because it is never done for me. My team always is working on something we can continuously do better. ⁓ One of our team mottoes is not to accept the status quo. So the status quo is now that foundation. And we already have improvements on what can we use to automate like our leave process. We put that through a more automated form. I know it'll sound cliche, but I first came in and I took that process.
Jeet (18:13)
Hmm.
Amie (18:30)
from PDF forms to a Google form as a transition, and now we are automating it through workflows and connected forms through Chart Hop. And that builds automated dashboards that have AI analytics. So we just actually got that off the ground a weeks ago. So there's always room to improve, and if you don't think that there is, then you haven't really thought about it and zoomed out enough.
Jeet (18:46)
Excellent.
Congrats.
Excellent. Yeah. It feels like things are moving so fast with AI these days. There's always kind of a new goalpost, right? Every week based on what the large language models allow you to do. So that's good to hear that it's kind of constant iteration and almost like a product management mindset of let's get the data and see what we can do to improve it incrementally. And if we're zooming out a little bit further in your role today, what are some of the other people ops processes would you say that take up most time or let's say cause the most trouble or redundancies?
Amie (19:26)
I think we've got a lot of them under control.
I would say the ones that are always going to take up the most time are leave processes, not the actual submission to the system. But it does really require that high touch when someone's going through something critical in their life. Someone's having a baby for the first time and they don't know how things work. How will I be paid? So I think there's always going to be that human high touch in certain processes and you have to be careful. You can't just automate, automate and apply AI agents everywhere.
Jeet (19:47)
Hmm.
Amie (19:59)
Someone doesn't want to talk to an AI agent and when they're asking, you know, how things are going to work when I'm about to go out on medical leave because I have cancer, you you have to keep the human still in HR.
Jeet (19:59)
Yes.
Totally. How are you thinking about that these days? Because I imagine from what we hear from other folks too, there's kind of this pressure to at least explore AI and do more with AI. It used to be generative and now it's agentic. How do you kind of communicate that balance to make sure, hey, this is as far as we go. These are the areas where you want to encourage your team to look at AI agents. But actually these are the areas that it needs to hand off to a human or we're just going to pause here. What's that balance and what does that dialogue look like?
Amie (20:39)
Yeah, my team is very much into exploring AI. We are trying to build. We're working on it ⁓ with agentic agents using Glean that our company has. Really what we've thought about is when you're doing this, are you using critical thought or are you acting like a machine? If you're acting like a machine, that's where you should start considering AI.
Jeet (20:47)
Great.
That's a really great way to think about it. I've also had another mental model of like, if you get this same question or the same request more than X number of times, then maybe don't answer it. And maybe think about what is another way to be able to handle this particular request. Cause the data already exists probably somewhere. there's probably, even if you start with Google forms, you could still, you could still automate parts of it.
Well, Amie, we're almost out of time. So I really want to thank you for jumping on. Before we finish up and wrap up here, were there any other final thoughts that you want to leave someone who is in the middle of optimizing a process with in this new world of AI agents?
Amie (21:47)
say I would just continuously think how much time does this take and is it worth my time?
and understand that we are in a very new world of AI agents. So you're gonna get frustrated trying to use one and build one. It's going to take time, but.
I mean, even with importing into systems, ⁓ when you're entering 20, 25 pieces of data into a system for 25 employee records, could you do it all manually one by one? Yes. Does it gonna take you a little bit longer to learn how to do an import? Yes. But once you learn and you do it that way, you've now saved yourself time. So do you wanna work smarter or do you wanna work harder? You're gonna have to ask yourself those questions.
Jeet (22:19)
Hmm.
That's great to
hear. And it sounds like you've created that environment for your team to say, hey, let's take a little bit of a step back and let's slow down so we can speed up further, which isn't always the case. We're always kind of being a little bit reactive. So that's really, really good to hear, Amie. Thank you so much.
Amie (22:46)
I wanted
to give one closing thought that this process update really taught me that if the process doesn't scale, it's not your culture. It is just tech debt. So I think that's another good closing tip.
Jeet (22:49)
Yeah, please.
Thank you so much, Amie, for joining us on the WorkOps podcast. And I guess people can find you on LinkedIn if they search for your name.
Amie (23:08)
Absolutely,
yeah. I am always looking to network, share ideas. That's probably one of my strengths. My team knows I always have a network out there that I'm always asking questions on, going to other people saying, how do you do it? Because I don't know everything. that's, ⁓ I don't want to know everything, but surely people have done these things before or are thinking about them.
Jeet (23:25)
You
Awesome.
So we'll share your LinkedIn profile URL in our show notes. And thank you everyone for listening and we'll catch you next time.