Kristin Gaarder, Chief People Officer at Perforce Software

Show Notes

Empathy at Scale: Perforce’s CPO on AI, Authentic Hiring, and Leading Individuals

Summary

When change is constant and AI is rewriting work, how do you create clarity, safety, and performance for a global workforce?

Kristin Gaarder, Chief People Officer at Perforce Software (2,000 employees across 30+ countries), shares how her team supports technologists navigating rapid transformation, geopolitical uncertainty, and change fatigue—without losing the human thread.

She unpacks the real risks AI introduces to talent acquisition (think synthetic candidates and system infiltration) and why Perforce is reintroducing in-person touchpoints to validate skills and character.

Kristin details a company-wide leadership learning journey: from building high-performing teams on trust and healthy conflict to leading each individual with empathy and precision.

She also breaks down Perforce’s listening architecture—small group sessions, town halls, pulse and engagement surveys, CEO surveys, and always-on feedback forms—to replace “hallway chatter” in distributed teams and rebuild trust through action.

Expect practical ways to teach curiosity and critical thinking, normalize not having all the answers, and anchor change in empathy, stability, and clarity.

Timestamps

[00:45] – Guest intro: Perforce’s global footprint and technical workforce

[01:37] – The pace and volume of change: AI’s impact, global uncertainty, and employee anxiety

[04:10] – Skills for the next decade: curiosity, critical thinking, and discerning AI outputs

[06:21] – Talent acquisition in an AI era: preventing “synthetic candidates” and bot infiltration

[07:55] – Back to basics: why in-person interviews may return—and what to look for in humans

[09:24] – Leading without all the answers: humility, listening widely, and pivoting fast

[10:35] – Replacing hallway feedback: listening sessions, surveys, and building trust remotely

[13:08] – Perforce’s leadership journey: high-performing teams to individualized leadership

[15:36] – Development in practice: better feedback, personalized plans, and AI as a tool

[17:22] – Closing principles: meeting people with empathy, stability, and clarity

Takeaways

- Fortify talent acquisition against AI risks—verify identity, add human touchpoints, and assess learnability, not perfection.

- Build a multi-channel listening system (small groups, pulse/engagement/CEO surveys, town halls) and act visibly on feedback.

- Coach leaders to run high-performing teams grounded in trust, healthy conflict, and clear results.

- Shift from team-only leadership to individualized leadership—meet each person where they are, when they need it.

- Teach curiosity and critical thinking so employees can evaluate AI outputs and navigate ambiguity.

- Anchor change in empathy, stability, and clarity to create psychological safety and enable faster, better decisions.

Sponsor

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What is HR Voices?

HR Voices is a scenario-based podcast for People Leaders who’ve actually had to make the call.

Each episode brings experienced HR and People leaders into realistic, anonymized workplace scenarios—the kind you recognize immediately. Performance issues. Messy conflicts. Investigations that don’t fit neatly into a policy box. Instead of talking about their own companies, guests react to outside cases and walk through how they’d think it through in real time.

There are no right answers here. What you’ll hear is judgment: how seasoned leaders balance risk, fairness, legal reality, and humanity when the stakes are high and the path isn’t obvious.

HR Voices is for HR, People Ops, legal, and leaders who want to hear how other smart humans actually handle employee relations—without confidentiality breaches, hypotheticals that feel fake, or a lecture on “best practices.”

Rebecca Taylor (00:17)
Hello and welcome to HR Voices. I'm your host, Rebecca Taylor, and I'm here with Kristin Gaarder the Chief People Officer at Perforce Software. Kristin, welcome.

Kristin Gaarder (00:26)
Thank you. Thanks for having me, Rebecca.

Rebecca Taylor (00:28)
Yeah, thank you so much for being here. I know I feel like we were chatting about some really cool stuff before we hit record. So now it's like, now that we're recording, we can really kind of get into some of the pieces that we were chatting about. But before we really kind of dive in, do you mind telling us a little bit about Perforce Software and your role and what your demographics look like, what your people look like?

Kristin Gaarder (00:48)
Yeah, absolutely, absolutely. So I'm the Chief People Officer at Perforce Software. Perforce Software is a global software development company. We span over 30 countries. A majority of our team members are technical professionals. So think software developers, think technical support, professional services. And the global nature of the organization just brings such a wealth of ⁓ experience.

to the organization. It's a great place to be.

Rebecca Taylor (01:17)
Yeah, that's awesome. And how many employees do you have, roughly?

Kristin Gaarder (01:22)
About 2,000 employees globally. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Indeed. Indeed.

Rebecca Taylor (01:25)
It's a healthy size, right? It's a good amount of people to kind of be covering.

Yeah. And so I have to ask, since you're in sort of the software space to an extent, What challenges are you facing with the way that technology is changing so quickly now? Like, what are some of the challenges that you're experiencing, even from the seat of what I might assume to be a more software savvy company, but maybe I'm wrong.

Kristin Gaarder (01:51)
No, it's totally true. Thanks for the question. So, ⁓ you know, I think the most significant challenge our people are facing today is just the sheer volume, pace, and intensity of change happening around them. You know, so when you think about how fast AI has shifted the way we work and... ⁓

Rebecca Taylor (01:54)
You

Kristin Gaarder (02:14)
the way the world is changing around us, it's just, the pace is incredible and the volume is incredible. And so our team members are really balancing quite a few changes and trying to do it in a way that is really productive for themselves and their families. Yeah, one of the things that I mentioned is we're in over 30 countries around the world. And so the world is changing in unpredictable manners.

and it's affecting our global workforce. In some places that we operate, we have had global conflict, we've had war, and that causes emotional and physical disruption for our team members and their families. And so that, from an HR standpoint, it just, like it really creates a whole different set of challenges for us in the HR team.

And then as we talked about, we're a technology company. And so our team members are curious, they're innovative. And so they are working with all the different AI tools right now. And we're piloting and testing. We're rolling out AI in our products. And so with all that innovation and with that excitement comes a little bit of anxiety. Like, what does this mean for my job in the future? Maybe what does this mean for my kids?

How are they going to enter the workplace and what does the workplace look like for the next generation of people entering? Yeah.

Rebecca Taylor (03:43)
Yeah,

it is kind of this generational question that it's funny because it's come up a few times, you know, just as I've spoken to people to is like there is this excitement, this curiosity, especially from groups that kind of maybe are a little bit more comfortable with experimentation. So those that are a little bit more tech savvy are, you know, understand enough about how these tools work so they feel comfortable kind of playing around with it and learning it that way. But there is sort of this existential question of, you know, are

my kids learning the skills that they need now that they're gonna need in the next 10 years when they enter the workforce or however long that might be, right?

Kristin Gaarder (04:20)
Yeah, and think about it, the skills that we're learning today are not gonna be the same skills we need in 10 years. The way we work is going to continue to evolve and shift dramatically and the pace will just continue to just increase. Yeah, it's really interesting. I just spoke at a university to a of a business 101 class as they are learning about the different functions in a corporation.

Rebecca Taylor (04:35)
Yeah.

Kristin Gaarder (04:47)
And they were asking me, know, what skills do I need? How do I approach this? And honestly, to me, it's curiosity and critical thinking. Yeah. Well, you have to be able to discern if what AI is providing you is actually accurate. It will work. Yeah. And so that discernment, that critical thinking and the curiosity, all that combined.

Rebecca Taylor (04:56)
Please, more critical thinking in the world, please.

Exactly. Yep. Yep.

Kristin Gaarder (05:15)
are going to be critical skills to gain. And those are hard. Like those are things that, you know, how do you practice curiosity? How do you practice that? Yeah.

Rebecca Taylor (05:19)
Yeah.

Yeah, it's funny you mention that because I think that there's sort of this call to almost go back to basics in some ways, where the challenge with AI almost, it's not that it doesn't have anything to do with AI. There are challenges with the technology itself, with learning that, but I think a lot of the challenge that I've seen and that I've heard is more about the people side of it. So the navigating emotion around it, navigating the uncertainty.

And I think also just navigating change fatigue, right? Because you mentioned this earlier, where just in the last, what, five years, six years, we look at a global pandemic shifting, especially from the HR perspective, shifting from whatever the status quo was to fully remote, then back to whatever we're calling, whatever we're in now. And then now you introduce something like AI, which is also just changing so quickly. It's almost like, you know,

I think there's almost this call to almost come back to basics to say, what are we really doing here? Let's just slow down for a second.

Kristin Gaarder (06:29)
Yeah, we're really tackling this in our ⁓ talent acquisition function. It's the first place we're really seeing a lot of impact. So to your point, six years ago, I was issuing laptops to people who had never had laptops so they could go and figure out how to work remote, which six years is not a long timeframe. now we're talking about synthetic humans.

Rebecca Taylor (06:34)
Mmm.

Yeah.

but it feels like 20, doesn't it? Yeah.

Kristin Gaarder (06:53)
And how do we not hire bots or synthetic humans through the TA process, right? And how do we not get infiltrated in our talent acquisition systems to be able to really evaluate the human and what the human skill is. Yeah, I mean, so we're literally talking about, we bring people back in for in-person interviews? Do we? So some of what's old is still coming back a little.

Rebecca Taylor (07:07)
Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

Yeah, yeah. Because it's like, least then you know that they're the actual human. can't, you know, it's funny because I remember when I was working in, when I was a headhunter, I was in recruiting and, sometimes you would get a fake resume for someone, right? And then someone completely different would just show up and, you know, they just didn't have those skills. That is maximized so much now because of, you know, bot accounts, people can masquerade as other people. And so I get sort of the call to almost just coming back to basics again, it's just.

You know, if you meet face to face, at least I know that you exist as a real human being, which is a great place to start.

Kristin Gaarder (07:58)
Well, and honestly, I don't expect every candidate to know everything, right? So there's a bit of where I want to see and I want to know the human that I'm talking to, right? Because you want to bring people in to your organization that have that, capabilities to learn, to fail, fail fast, acknowledge when they did something wrong and quickly work to improve it, right?

Rebecca Taylor (08:02)
Yeah.

Mm-hmm.

Kristin Gaarder (08:23)
And so, like, I love that human aspect of the interview process. So we'll see what the next six to 12 months bring for us as it relates to talent acquisition. I think it's gonna continue to evolve.

Rebecca Taylor (08:34)
Yeah.

Yeah. I think so too, especially with looking at how there's different talk about different talent acquisition software is kind of coming under fire. I think it's an interesting time to kind of see how it's going to play out. And I want to kind of touch on something that we were talking about a little bit before we started recording too that's kind of coming up again is the concept of not having to have all the answers all the time.

You know, there's, think that there's a lot of people feel a lot of pressure to, you know, show up perfectly, right? And, you know, just sort of say, I know, you know, there's no answer, there's no question that I can't not, that I can't answer. There's no, you know, thing that I don't know and understand. And you were talking about sort of embracing the opposite perspective, right? Of just kind of like embracing failures and just being open about learning. Can you talk a little bit more about that?

Kristin Gaarder (09:20)
Yeah, I mean we were talking in the context of not ever knowing the answer, right? Sometimes we're in situations, and I've talked about it, right? We are in an unimaginable time of our history. so there's nothing in the history that would tell me what to do next. And so I think we have to listen to voices, listen to lots of different voices.

formulate what we believe is the right answer and move forward. If it's not the right answer, being able to say, huh, I did that wrong. That was not the way to go and then pivot and keep moving. That takes a lot of humility. It takes empathy, takes listening. But right now, this is such an unprecedented time and I know that word is overused, but it really is, right? The word is overused. So, right?

Rebecca Taylor (10:08)
Yeah, it's like I've never lived in a precedent in time ever.

Kristin Gaarder (10:12)
But at the same time, there's no history to tell me what to do at this moment in this juncture. So we just have to do what we believe is the right answer with empathy and then acknowledge when we did it wrong. Say we did it wrong and move on, right? Keep going.

Rebecca Taylor (10:25)
Yeah. Yeah, I

agree. Especially in remote environments too, where you don't overhear conversations in the kitchen. There's less of that sort of casual feedback that you get when you're in HR, right? In an office environment, you might walk the floors, you might hear, you might have a little bit more unstructured conversations with employees. And that doesn't really happen the same way anymore.

in remote environments because they're usually, you know, when you put time on someone's calendar, it's usually for a specific meeting, there's an agenda, you know, et cetera. And it's why I think that there's, there is a growth in using tools that actually help to collect employee feedback. ⁓ so that HR can get the, you know, can get sort of where people's perspective is, whether it's in an engagement survey or, know, we see with all voices, there's an anonymous reporting tool. It's kind of just like, you know, you can create.

situations for employees to just sort of share where they're at so that you as HR can get the data that you need to act on it or acknowledge if something that you did act on, like you said, didn't go according to plan. you know, there's an element of humility, like you mentioned, that's really, really important. And I think that's how we have a chance of rebuilding trust in some environments where it may have been lost.

Kristin Gaarder (11:45)
Yeah, yeah, I would say that's one thing I think Perforce is doing really well, not to brag, but we have, I mean, we have people in over 30 countries. It's really hard to connect one-on-one. You know, we're not traveling around to 30 countries on a regular basis, right? It's it's impossible. So we do small group feedback sessions. ⁓ We do listening sessions. We have town halls. We have

Rebecca Taylor (11:51)
You should brag, that's what this is for.

Yeah.

Kristin Gaarder (12:10)
pulse survey, engagement survey, we do a CEO survey, we have feedback forms on the, ⁓ so we try to listen quite a bit to our team members and try to take action based on their feedback. Again, we're not always perfect. We listen, we act where we believe it is the right place to act, and then to your point, we keep learning and we keep growing, we evolve. Yeah, yeah.

Rebecca Taylor (12:20)
Yeah.

Yeah, I love that.

And so, you we talked, we talked about challenges, right? And sort of what makes things difficult, but I'm curious, what are you excited about? Is there anything that you're working on right now that you're excited about, that you're experimenting with?

Kristin Gaarder (12:48)
Yeah. So our organization, the People and Culture team have embarked on a total leadership journey and a total leadership learning journey. So it's really fun and I'm excited about it. ⁓ I think being a leader is really difficult. Everybody has their own work they have to complete. know, most leaders today are working managers, so they're managing people and they have their own tasks to do. And so

Rebecca Taylor (13:01)
I love this.

Yup.

Kristin Gaarder (13:17)
ensuring that we are enabling our leaders to deal with the sheer volume and pace of change, to anchor their work and empathy. To me, it's a really powerful journey. So last year we focused on high performing teams. So how do you as a leader build a high performing team with a foundation of trust, being able to have conflict, and deliver results? Like all of that is possible in a high performing team.

Rebecca Taylor (13:41)
Yeah.

Kristin Gaarder (13:42)
And then this year we're working on how do you lead that one person? So not just how do you lead your team to success, but how do you lead every single unique individual? And so that's the journey we're going on this year. Yeah, I'm really excited about it. I'm proud because that allows our leaders to feel confident.

Rebecca Taylor (13:55)
Hmm.

Kristin Gaarder (14:05)
in how they're leading forward and how they're engaging with their team members and how to also ⁓ acknowledge that everybody needs something different at a different point in their career.

Rebecca Taylor (14:16)
Yeah,

yeah. think that's kind of, it's like this concept of, I read it somewhere, it was like the 10-year garden. It's kind of just like every employee, if you think of them as a garden, you know, flowers are gonna need different light and water than a vegetable. And it's kind of just understanding what each individual person needs and giving them that so they can all thrive instead of just blanket practices or pieces.

Kristin Gaarder (14:40)
Yeah, well, and even think about in your own career, know, highly competent, knew everything that was going on, but then maybe you got thrown a task you'd never done before. So even at that moment, you were kind of like, I need some help here. I need some coaching. I don't need coaching all over here. I got this, but I need support and I need help. So to your point, you need different things at different points in your...

Rebecca Taylor (14:53)
Right. Yep.

Yeah. This. Yeah.

Kristin Gaarder (15:04)
career journey. so enabling our leads, I'm excited about it. I'm excited to enable our leaders. I'm excited to bring them a learning journey that allows them to build high performing teams and high performing individuals. Yeah. Yeah.

Rebecca Taylor (15:06)
Yeah.

I think it's cool.

Yeah, that's great. I love that focus.

mean, development is something that's just so near and dear to my heart. just, you know, it's funny because a lot of the times, well, I used to deal with managers who, managers or employees who would struggle to give feedback or struggle to receive feedback because they weren't sure how to take it. Sometimes they weren't sure how to phrase it in a way that was impactful, but not too abrasive, right? Or the other way around. And

It's, you I think that there are a lot of great situations now for employees and managers to kind of learn how to better share feedback. ⁓ That's grounded in reality and truth. It's where I see a lot of really great tools and resources, especially in the AI space, that are kind of innovating in this. And it's actually something that All Voices has seen a lot too, is that there's been more employees and managers leveraging our software to actually help manage performance as well. So creating

Kristin Gaarder (16:11)
Nice.

Rebecca Taylor (16:12)
performance development plans, segueing away from the concept of a PIP, right, but really putting it as like, hey, I want you to do well. It's in everybody's best interest for you to do well. Let's help you do well. Let's identify exactly what it is that you need. That's kind of where AI is really great, because you can hyper-personalize without, you know, in a scalable way. And then just kind of let people, you know, work the way that they need to and make it really clear on what it is that they have to accomplish. I love that. Yeah.

Kristin Gaarder (16:26)
Yes.

Totally agree. Yeah.

Yeah.

Rebecca Taylor (16:39)
Well, you know, we're just at time. Do you have any closing thoughts you'd like to share? Because I feel like I could chat with you all day. I feel like I always say that, but I definitely could.

Kristin Gaarder (16:48)
I think, I mean, I mentioned it, right? We are navigating this unimaginable volume of change that has global uncertainty, technological transformation, and we've got people doing side hustles because they're worried about financial pressures. so, yeah, there's just a cacophony of things that are in the world today and affecting our team members.

So our goal at the People and Culture function is to meet our team members with empathy. It's to meet them with stability and with clarity. And so to me, if we can foster that type of environment, I think our team members will thrive. I think it will enable them to have that curiosity, have the desire to fail fast, to be nimble.

But we all need to have that as we continue to navigate the unknown.

Rebecca Taylor (17:43)
love that the safety part the safety part is what really kind of helps people be curious too I love that yeah well thank you so much Kristen for sharing your wisdom for sharing your wins your challenges and for chatting with me and thank you everybody for listening and I hope you have a great rest of your day bye