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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.
riverside_copy_of ann & jeet_kinfolk's_studio
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[00:00:00] I was poking around trying to figure out who was an attrition risk, like who's flight risk right now. And, uh, in that conversation surfaced a name, and I was kind of... It was like I was holding a Post-it Note in my hand.
I wasn't really, but like, figuratively holding this Post-it Note in my hand and walked over to that leader,
Welcome to the Work Ops podcast. 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. It's packed with practical lessons that you'll want to bring straight back to your team. This podcast is brought to you by Kinfolk, the AI service desk built for HR.
I'm your host, Jeet Mukherjee, and with that, let's dive in.
Hey, everyone. Today, I am joined by Ann Watson, who's the CPO at Cover Genius. Ann, thank you so much for joining us today. Before we jump into things, can you tell us a little bit about yourself and how did you [00:01:00] choose HR? That's a, that's a very big question. Thank you so much for having me as a guest.
I'm really looking forward to this conversation. Of course. Um, so I'm, I'm Ann Watson. I'm the chief people officer at Cover Genius. My career started actually at Starbucks when it was essentially a startup. Tiny little company, uh, had 200 stores, three drinks, had to be over 18 to work there. It was my part-time job in college.
I stayed. Uh, I went through their management training program. The part of that that I really liked was the HR side. I liked hiring- Hmm ... and I liked coaching, and I liked performance management. I didn't necessarily like firing people, but that, that comes with it. And I-- the other thing I did for them, wh-which was w- odd, was opening up new stores.
So I did like that sort of expansion project... Oh, it's almost like massive project management of like, oh, I gotta go put all these pieces together to build something we need. Yeah. Um, and I left Starbucks because at the time they didn't hire for corporate internally, and I was really interested in recruiting.
So I left to become a recruiter, and that was sort of the [00:02:00] gateway for me. From there, I became a a more of a generalist, and then I became an HR manager, and I did that as, like, when solo HR was kind of a thing. Hmm. And then built from there. And here we are today. Here, here you are today. I was- Yeah
I was speaking to another chief people officer and, and they were saying that there's usually three routes to get to the chief people officer- Hmm ... three and a little bit. So one is the recruiter route, where talent expansion and acquisition was the main priority, or there's the people partner and business partnering route.
And then there's a, a smaller path of people operations technology, and an even smaller one of moving from legal perhaps into the, the CHRO position. Is that kinda what you see as well, or are there other paths to, to your job? Oh, this is a, this is a big question. There-- I think that's mostly right.
Uh, I think the people operations, like, the tech side of it is a little less common. Maybe that's becoming more common now. But keep in mind- Hmm ... we've only had Tech and HR for like 10 [00:03:00] years really, if you look back. I mean, maybe it's a little bit more now, but the sort of giant explosion of investment in technology for the people space doesn't happen until a lot later.
So before then it was like, you know, ADP and spreadsheets. Uh, we didn't, we didn't really have a, a lot of things. So I think that's probably taking a little longer to evolve, and I think that's gonna continue to evolve with what's in front of us. Mm. The typical path, you have the sort of talent acquisition path, and you have the more, uh, generalist business partner path.
And what I think is really interesting about those is that hire- depending on-- I think hiring for one of those two paths is sort of trend-based. So depending on what's go- especially in, in the Bay. I'm mostly talking about the Bay Area because that's where I exist. In the San Francisco Bay Area startups, I think, tend to want one of two types of people leaders, depending on what's going on.
And so when you-- Like, right now, I would say that we're in a phase of probably preferencing talent acquisition [00:04:00] based uh, leaders- Mm ... because, who came from that, because we have all these tiny baby organizations that are like, "Here's $60 kabillion. Now go- ... grow and expand and take over the world." Uh, we're sort of- Yeah
in that phase. And what'll happen is like two years from now at least in, from what I've seen- Oh my gosh ... and, uh, this is moving a lot faster, so maybe it's two months from now. As these companies become, 150 employees, 500 employees, 1,000 employees, et cetera the problems they're facing are gonna sh- are gonna shift.
You, you get from this like, "How quickly can we get people in the door?" to like- Mm ... "Oh, now we have to take care of them for the rest of their employment life cycle." So I think depending on what's happening, we favor one of those two things. But the, the th- the third path you mentioned, y- or fourth, maybe it's the fourth one, you mentioned from legal I think this is really fascinating.
In a lot of organizations, not a lot, but there was a trend for a while of, um- Right ... having the, somebody from product or having somebody from engineering or... Uh, it was almost like [00:05:00] literally anybody except an HR person come and take over. Wow. I kinda get. I mean- Oh, yeah ... it, it was, it's frustrating, but I c- I kinda get it.
But it's frustrating because the-- what really bothers me about it is the reciprocal never happens. You, you very, very rarely find a chief product officer- Mm ... who came out of HR. Sometimes even in the tech products in our own space- Yeah ... you rarely find CEOs who came out of HR. So it's a little bit of a...
I think it's, it's, it would be very common, for example, for the CPO to report to the CFO, and the reverse would be unheard of. Yeah. I feel like the- It's kinda weird ... I feel like the tables are about to turn, though, because AI- is not a tooling. I know. AI is not a tooling topic only. It's a workforce subject.
It is. And therefore, who is better placed to, to lead this and think about this, um, than a commercially minded [00:06:00] CPO? And if that's the case, then the transition to other roles may become more common sense perhaps to others. Could be, yeah. Yeah. I mean, it's- Think there's a path forward there? Th- maybe. I mean, this is playing out, this conversation about...
and sometimes it's, it... We wanna use that ownership word, which is probably not the right word for it, but, like, who owns this transformation? Mm-hmm. And is this person coming out of the people side, or are they coming out of the technology side? Um- Mm-hmm ... and it does feel a little bit some days like organizations are sort of planting a flag on one side or the other or leading from one side or the other.
Like, we're leading this transformation with technology, but we realized really quickly that we had to follow with the human side of it. I was reading a, I think it was Inc. Magazine or something, had a, an article about AI transformations that don't go well because the employees basically rebel against it.
"Okay, I'm gonna give you all this training [00:07:00] and all of this, you know, extra initiative and all of these things that you need, and now go forth." Um- Yeah ... and in at least one organization the result was that the employees were actually sabotaging those efforts- Yeah ... which I thought was really fascinating- Yeah
because that's a, that's a human problem. And I think we can all agree that we want to we want this technology to make our lives better, to make our work better, to make us more efficient, to make us more effective. But we're... That doesn't solve any of the sort of human backbone problems that, that...
Like, the human problems are always the human problems- Are still there ... whether... Yeah, right. You can have five people, you can have 500 people. Like, they're, they're still people. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, true. It's, it's a wild time, um, right now. It really is. And, uh, speaking of problems- Yeah ... let's dive into your story of a tool or a system that was dysfunctional, um, or a process.
Yeah. And, uh, what kind of company, just to add some context, was this happening at? And then we can [00:08:00] dive into your story. Well, the excellent thing about this question, first of all, is that this question, uh, you know, gives you a minute to stop and like, what didn't I like? What, what- ... what was broken?
What, what did shape yeah. And my list got real long, real fast, I tell you. Like, there, there are a lot of really- bizarre artifacts of habit in the people space. One of my, one of my favorite jokes is that when the conversation shifted to like, "Look, okay, be data-driven," and we're like, "Oh, yes.
Awesome. Here's data." And they're like, "Ew, no. Not that data. Br- Bring me data- Yeah ... that reinforces my intuition, and then we'll be happy." And I'm like, "Okay, well, that's not how data... Sorry." It was sort of like, yeah, be more data-driven, but, mm, not like that. Not that one. Yeah. Uh, yeah, not that way. And actually, the thing that really what I landed on, because it has been ev- literally every job I've had, every place I've [00:09:00] worked, this has been true, and this is the first time at Cover Genius that I've been able to try something different about it.
Yeah. Uh, and I am... And it's, it's really fun and really it's really nice to be able to h- work in an organization that allows for this kind of experimentation, but also this kind of progressive thinking. So the thing that the thing that really bothers me of the list of things that bother me-
the top of that list- Yeah ... is broadly pay for performance. And what I mean by that more specifically is, and I'll, I'll go, like, as specific as possible, the moment when a manager goes to an employee after a review cycle and says, "Thank you so much for all your hard work. Here is your 3% raise. You did such a great job."
And the employee's like, what does this mean? Like, you told me I did a great job. You actually told me I did a great job last year, but you gave me a 5%- Mm-hmm ... raise. And you told me I did a great [00:10:00] job the year before that, and you gave me no raise." Mm-hmm. "So what does this really mean?" And then the manager is really stuck in this place of, uh, inauthenticity.
They, they actually can't answer that question, uh, they... for of, of a variety of reasons. But that's really that rub, that sort of moment of a of a breakdown of integrity. The manager can no longer support what they're saying in a way that is congruent to what the employee's experiencing.
Yeah. Yeah. And- That's, that's a huge- And when I say this, when I say this to managers, they're like, "Yeah, I hate that. I've, I really- You feel it ... it's awful." Yeah. We, we've all experienced it. We've all been there. Right. Yeah. Yeah. That's what's so great about it. It's, it's incredibly universal. But we all keep doing it.
We k- on repeat. On repeat. You know, ev- every year. It's, it's interesting. Twice a year. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, you're right. And, Once or twice a year every year. Yeah. I, I- It's- ... I've had a, I've had a friend who, who left because she s- she said [00:11:00] the same thing that you did, which is, "Hey, last year you said I did great, and I got this much extra.
This year- Yeah ... you said I did great- I got nothing. Yeah. So I don't believe that I did great. That's right. And so I'm out. Yeah. And there's, there's two thi- I think there's two things going on here. One is this is actually not about performance, it's about budgets. Okay. It's always it's always fundamentally about budgets.
Every-- On the other-- 'Cause on the non-manager side of it, right, every year some variation of a conversation happens where we decide how much we can afford to give out. And that's a, that's a budget conversation. And then to some, depending on lots of different ways to do this, but at some point we turn back into the organization and say, "Okay, here's what you have available to reward people."
And maybe this is if you want to reward someone, you have to take it away from someone else. Maybe this is y-you have to... Oh, my favorite, and by that I mean not [00:12:00] favorite, you have to force this into a bell shape. Uh-huh ... or you have to-- It's, you know, connected to a number of stars or bells or whatever you give out.
Yeah ... but really it's about it's still been, the decision has still been made, uh, from a budget perspective of, of what good is going to be rewarded with as a, what the cap is, right? Yeah. But the other side of it that drives me crazy, again, with the whole, like, bring data but not that data- ... is I think there's a real disconnect in what pay for performance means and what it does, and when it works and when it doesn't.
And from all the research I've done, and I'm, I'm not claiming to be like, I've dedicated a year of my life to this. But what's really fascinating is you can find lots of studies of, we took a bunch of people, and we put them in a room, and we experimented on them. Those kinds of, of- Yeah
research studies where it doesn't matter what the task is. The task can be creative, the task can be math, the task can be, you know, cognitive [00:13:00] whatever you're asking someone to do. And if you ask them to do it, you know, as quickly as they can, and then you say, "Okay, now do it as quickly as you can, but you get $5 for every," whatever, bar, uh, over the bar line here.
Yeah. You don't improve perf- you don't improve the outcome. The exception to this is sales. So selling is- Right ... like we're gonna just put selling over there, 'cause that is- Yeah ... very clearly, you know, we have lots of, lots of data to support. That works. If you are- Yes ... selling something and you have an incentive to sell it, you will do a better job selling.
And that's, that's both like a person-personality kind of persona thing, as well as a, Right ... kind of human incentive thing. But the other side of that, like we, we aren't actually improving someone's performance, we're sort of rewarding intrinsic motivation, and I think we get confused between what is performance and what is motivation.
Yeah. And so we're, what we're, what we think we're trying to do is motivate people. Yes. And what we're calling it is [00:14:00] performance. Interesting. Okay. And I don't think those thing- I don't think those things are the same. I don't consider them the same anyway. So I li- I like to the and maybe this is, I'm getting a little ahead of myself, but now we have this third complication in this scenario, which is- pay transparency. Yes. So now we've gotten this far to this moment, right? Where we have we have said we've sort of had this, uh, n- conversation that lacks integrity around like, "You did really well. Here's your raise." It was actually a budget conversation. We said we were gonna do that because it was gonna improve your performance.
It actually doesn't improve your performance. Maybe for some po- part of the population it, it increases motivation. And then now we're like, okay, now with data, justify why you did what you did. And you see where I'm, you see where I'm going with this? Like these- Yes ... these things don't go together.
And I'm gonna complicate this even further by saying there's one other thing, and this is on us. This is on people like people, HR people. We expected [00:15:00] managers to be able to be, to provide clarity and and understanding from a process that we kept opaque and that really deeply lacks transparency.
Mm. You know, when you, w- when it comes to comp, you know, it's one of the few places left where you see at least in my experience, I see HR people and comp people put up these walls real fast, right? Like, when someone says, "Oh, let me see the data," they're like, "Ooh, no. Can't see that." Yeah.
And, and so we simultaneously made it like scary, dark science, which it's not, and tried to tell people it's simple enough that anybody could do it. And that- Yeah ... that I think is, this is again, I think this is on us. Like we, we were trying to navigate a world where all of these things were playing and trying to also sort of keep people happy and keep the peace, and this is how we did it.
And I, I think we could do better. Okay. So [00:16:00] I'd love to hear how you're doing it now- Yeah ... and also how you might do it differently with the new technologies available. There are a lot of pieces to fix. You mentioned motivation- ... separating that to performance. There's a transparency piece and, like, what level of transparency and what does transparency even mean?
Like, is it, you know, directly sharing, or is it ranges? Is it more about the transparency of the rationale of decisions behind why we've chosen these things? And then the, the providing clarity to managers of something that they don't really control. Yeah. So because of all these interconnected things, what were you seeing happening on, on the ground floor?
Were people leaving? Were managers leaving? Or what was the impact? I mean, I think... so the f- the first impact that I, I think part of what we do is try to eliminate this. The first impact is- Mm ... distraction. So as, as long as everybody's talking about, thinking about, you know, focused on compensation, they're not focused on whatever else they were [00:17:00] hired to do in the organization.
There, there's really only- Right ... one or two people in the organization who are hired to focus on compensation, and they are not all the managers and all the employees. Unless you happen to work-- I don't know, unless you're at Radford, right? Then, like- Yeah ... then sure. Yeah. But for the vast majority of companies, that is not what you're hired to do, and so any time you're spending working on this is fundamentally a distraction.
Right. So the more you can do to sort of, educate and ease concern for employees that's phenomenal. I love the idea that we could proactively go start having classes around some of the things that are a little, a little harder to understand in our world, whether it's U- US healthcare or whether it's- how a compensation survey works. What are-- w- why do we break out in hives when you ask us about, an unverified source of salary data? Yeah. And what's the difference and why do we care, and why does this matter? So I think, I think there's that piece of it. ~So, um, m- maybe you can remind me of what the original question was, because I feel like I've been- I started down a path, and I've lost- Yeah.~
~Oh, this is- ... what we were talking about. No, th- this is all good. Um, the, the, the unintended outcomes- Oh ... of this- Right ... um, based on- Yeah. Thank you ... based on all these different, different issues Right.~ So you've, you've got distraction fundamentally. I do think it's [00:18:00] part, a big part of manager burnout, right?
I think- Mm ... w- this just escalated so much during the pandemic where v- we a- we already had this sort of l- moment in their day that was incongruent, or in their, uh, in their process that was really incongruent, and that probably stayed with them for a little while. And then we added all of this additional sort of emotional labor of what everybody was going through.
Like, they, they just really got squeezed, and they, they haven't stopped. That ha- the... And now we're probably compounding that again with this, like, "Hey, try this new thing," but also it's scary and, you know, you... we're working in this environment- Yeah ... where every day there's an announcement that somebody says, "Hey, we're doing a layoff b- because of a- of AI," or we're cutting our 401 match because of AI," right?
Like, it's a nerve-wracking time to be an employee, and it's really a nerve-wracking time to be a manager trying to support those employees. Yeah. So think anything you can do to sort of, to help soothe that m- you know, because these... We d- nobody said, "Hey, let's build a [00:19:00] performance, let's build a, a pay process that will actually increase anxiety and reduce integrity in the organization."
Nobody did that. No. And so- Yeah ... th- all of this that we've created is unintentional. Yeah. Um- And a- are you now doing those kind of the financial litra- li- literacy classes or, like, the classes around this is why we do compensation the way that we do as, like, one of the changes that you've made?
No. Not yet. We're, we're, we're getting there. Yeah. But let, let me tell you a little bit about w- about what I have been able to do at Cover Genius and why Cover Genius is different in that way. Yeah. So one of the things that's really interesting about Cover Genius is, um, it's a, a little over 10 years old.
Uh, we had employees in well over 30 countries when I arrived about two years ago, and it was clear that during the pandemic... You could see this in the hiring patterns. In the, during the pandemic, like a lot of organizations, they were like, "Yes, this [00:20:00] means we can hire anybody anywhere," and we did. And so instead of having a real clear sort of location based hiring strategy, we had this, uh, just free for all.
Mm. And when you're a global organization, the impact of that is, is a little is a lot bigger than it is if you are, if you're a, a US company or you're a California company, even a California/New York company and you say- Yeah ... "Actually, you can hire anywhere you want in the US. Everybody go. Off you go.
Omaha, whatever." Y- you have a... That's a, a lot more reasonable amount of time zones to manage. What happened for- Right ... this organization is we ended up where someone, uh, you know, the manager's in London, their team is in Sydney, their manager is in California, and this burnout across the organization really from managing across really disparate time [00:21:00] zones with and sort of like the lack of efficiency of pushing things around.
So we sat back and said, "Okay, how do we start to restructure this team and start to reorganize it?" But one of the artifacts of that organization where it's very homegrown, it's very, uh, you know, it's, it's growing very organically. At one point in the organization, organization's history, I don't know when it was because I inherited it, there was a decision made that managers wouldn't be able to see compensation.
And the reason they wouldn't be able to see compensation is because the differences in geographies were so wild. Mm-hmm. It was just really uncomfortable and difficult for managers to deal with having employees who made more than they do because they were in a different geo. And so the answer to that for them was to just not do it.
And so there's just a real small, you know, five, six people in the organization who could see that, the top level leaders of the organization, but no one else could. They could kind of get a little bit of it at hiring, but not a lot, and they could maybe kind of get a [00:22:00] little bit of it at promotion or kind of recognition cycles, but again, not a lot.
And when I arrived, my first instinct was like, "Oh, obviously I have to change this." And then- Yeah ... uh, I just didn't get to because we were busy doing other things. We were moving people around. We were changing where this team was. And so we didn't do it. And the more I thought about it, and the more conversations I had, including this one with managers around, "Hey, I don't know why we ask you to do compensation 'cause it's terrible for you," the more I thought, "This is an organization where I have a, I have a chance to, to...
I don't even have to take it away. They've never had it." Right. Um, and so we could do something really different here because of because of that sort of leg up we had where managers don't see comp. And we could keep it that way and absolve them of this responsibility so they, they were literally free from it.
You don't... N- I'm telling you, I'm willing to take this on for you. Now, if I'm gonna take that on for, you know, 700 people [00:23:00] without having an army of compensation people, I have to do something more sustainable. And on top of that, I've got this like, you know, we're existing in a global pay transparency world.
Yeah. So we built you know, we, we built a- Compensation structure, same as everybody does. It was pretty much the first time the organization had done that. We aligned everybody to it. We corrected anybody who was out of our out of our n- you know, our parameters for that of what we said was acceptable for someone to exist in that structure.
And then we said, "We're switching to anniversary-based pay. Everybody's gonna get an increase on their, on, in their anniversary." Yeah. "It'll happen automatically. It doesn't matter how you performed. It doesn't matter what your review said. And and we're gonna do that every year from now on." And we'll pick...
Basically what we'll do is we'll bring everybody to our market that we wanted, that we set our market target, and then we'll, we will hedge essentially how we think the market's gonna change over the next year, and that's gonna be the percentage we choose. And [00:24:00] right now it's really crude. We do the same for everybody.
Um, but what we're leading to is being able to have a little more subtlety and a little more nuance based on different geos as we sort of consolidate into that. But the first thing we wanted to do was get this, try to get the structure as neat and as tidy as we could- Yeah ... and then start to change this.
You know, the first year, the first year of switching to anniversary is a little, a little dicey. Yeah. And I had lots of really interesting conversations with people about this, like things... And I would say things like, if we didn't do this, our raise pool was probably gonna be, 2.5%, which means your raise was gonna be somewhere between zero- Yeah
And maybe 3%. And instead, I've guaranteed you this amount, this 3% amount." And some of the people were like, "No, I'd rather, I'd rather roll the dice." Like- Interesting ... uh, whether or not that's really true and what was really interesting is some of those conversations I went back and looked and like what is their raise history and what is their performance [00:25:00] history?
Yeah. Um, and it was really not the super high performers that you would be worried. Like the, the... We have two worries, right? Of when we go to something very everybody gets the same. One is that our high performers will be under-incentivized, and we figured out- Mm-hmm ... a way to deal with that. And then the second is that our we'll be wasting money rewarding low performers.
And that actually turned out to be probably the biggest unlock for the organization was if somebody s- if somebody expressed to me that they had heartburn about giving someone the same raise as everybody else because that person wasn't performing- Mm-hmm ... that was like, "Oh, great. Let's go talk about that.
Let's go talk about how- Nice ... how we do this. And oh, by the way, I'm actually still gonna do this increase because when you're ready to replace that person with the quality level you want, I don't want you to be so far, so far behind the market because you've held that compensation for this low performer that you actually can't hire to [00:26:00] the level of quality and performance you want to hire.
Yeah. Wow, okay, so- So I'm gonna keep-- I'm gonna load... It's sort of like I'm gonna keep build- bulking up the seat- Yes ... so that when you are ready to fill it properly, it'll be the right size. Amazing. Uh, you mentioned you had to correct does that mean that you had to bring certain salaries down to the- Yeah
range? Okay, it was, it was all- No ... all increase. Okay, that's a good- All increase ... positive story. That's awesome. Yeah. And then it sounds like what you're doing is you, you are separating the performance from the pay, so there's like a fairness element of like, are we bringing everyone up to market? And then it's about incentivizing people, you mentioned your high performers, through a different mechanism- Mm-hmm
to be able to continue to keep them in, in, in their seat and, and- Yeah ... keep them motivated. Yeah. Um, and it, it sounds like you're saying that actually it... and this may not be the case for you guys, but someone in San Francisco would be getting the same salary for the job as someone in Bangalore, let's say.
Is that how it played out? No, they're not getting the same salary 'cause they're still getting a local- Okay ... salary. [00:27:00] Local, okay. But they might be getting the same increase on that salary right now. Gotcha. Okay. Yeah. Nice. Yeah, that makes a lot of sense 'cause then- Yeah ... that raises other questions, right, of like how do we- It does
do you compensate based on the, the job to be done, or do you, do you... Yeah. Whole other can of worms- Is there a local premium? ... on that. Um- Yeah. No, but like, but we did w- I mean, the... and this has been kind of a win for us facing down the EU pay transparencies. We did decide that these, this group of jobs are like work, and we're gonna, we're gonna pay them with the same ranges.
Okay. Um, and so we, we ended up with-- and this is a pretty normal practice to ha- say like, "Okay, all of these jobs are gonna be together in the same salary structure." And yeah, maybe there's one that's like a little bit lower, but honestly, the work isn't any different than this other job that's a little bit higher.
And so we don't believe there should be a punishment for, you know, maybe, or a, you know, diminishment for maybe s- something, s- a, a market force that [00:28:00] is something, maybe it's gender or maybe it's, um- Yeah ... some legacy reason why that exists- Right ... that way. Uh, so we'd already done that sort of structure.
Um- Nice ... and then what we've been doing is really looking at more global organizations and thinking about how they're applying those. But it the thing to keep in mind is that if we're testing this annually against, refreshed market data, if a market has really moved and we set these tolerances to say like, this is what is acceptable-" based on the data we find.
If a mark- if one market takes off, we will be able to respond to that 'cause we'll see that in that data. And we're looking both at... The fun thing is now we can look at both the you know, the very hard survey data, but we can also incorporate more of the intuitive hiring data. So like, if we start to see-- You know, we, we talk to, y- I talk to our hiring teams all the time about this, and we start to see a, a certain market or a certain role start to [00:29:00] have struggles, uh, with hiring.
That's, that's a really... and we did this at one point. We, um, we had a certain role in the organization that was just kind of, every time we would go hire it, it would, it would sort of pop up as a thing we needed that was contentious. And so we just went out and targeted that role and, looked at it from a data perspective and, and were able to sort of proactively make a change that helped us, not start to...
N- instead of continuing to do that for another year or something along those lines, we were able to really proactively shift that and address that right away. Yeah. Which is also great because if we hadn't done that, and then I fast-forward to the end of the year when we would do our kind of annual study, we would've, we would've had a much bigger hole to fill.
And maybe that-- A- and again, like this is all about budget, so maybe that would've been a harder ask to go back and say, "Okay, I actually found that this whole group of people are now way below market." This ability to- Yeah ... sort of hedge through the year is really kind of helping us keep things [00:30:00] sustainable, which is really nice.
Yeah, totally. Yeah. And there, there's some-- a couple things, uh, and words that stood out to me. You mentioned proactivity, um, you mentioned access to data and having it earlier on. It sounds like it's almost like, uh, you're iterating on the process itself, and you're able to iterate faster compared to what you were able to do earlier on.
Is that because of new tools? Are you using AI in any particular way to be able to help you do that? We've heard about certain companies building their own internal feeds and compensation planning tools, whereas other folks are going out and buying it. Yeah, that's a whole other topic in, in and of itself.
But what's kind of helped you, and has AI fitted into this at all, or- Not really It has and to some extent I would even put that in a category of like accidentally that has helped us. Okay. Um, and what I mean by that is so we partnered with Candor IQ a-as our sort of compensation platform.
Excellent platform. And, um, [00:31:00] and o-one of the things that we decided here at Cover Genius was that both myself and my head of talent, Greg Russell, we decided that when we looked at the tool stack we were inheriting, we were not gonna replace it with anything legacy. We would only- Mm ... start with AI native platforms.
And it's been, it's been wild because having, been in this, in the Bay Area through the whole t-technology transformation of HR, it used to... and also, I should also mention having been a really longtime member of People Tech Partners, so we've been seeing organizations, you know, we see four companies a quarter going through this incubator program where they're getting all this intense feedback from us.
And- Right ... there's a really dramatic shift. Those companies used to come back to us one and two years later and say, "Oh, hey, remember that thing you guys all told us you wanted us to fix? We just fixed it," you know, "Huzzah." And now sometimes we are on those calls, and founders are changing their platform in response to our, to our feedback.
Yeah ... so the, the rate of development is f-phenomenal. It's [00:32:00] unbelievable how different it is. It's just night and day how much- Yeah ... faster these... So we, we said we were only gonna buy, you know, these newer tools, and even that has been like even that, I'm like, "I don't even know if we do that anymore."
Because to your point earlier- Yeah ... maybe we're gonna build some of these things internally. And now we have these questions of a lot like, okay, well, what do we build internally and what w- do we build externally? So back to the story about Candor, they they have multiple agents embedded in the platform and in different areas, depending on what you're interested in.
It's really, instead of kind of traditional reporting, it's more I guess, query based. Yeah. And s-so I was poking around trying to figure out who was an attrition risk, like who's flight risk right now. And, uh, in that conversation surfaced a name, and I was kind of... It was like I was holding a Post-it Note in my hand.
I wasn't really, but like, figuratively holding this Post-it Note in my hand and walked over to that leader, and that [00:33:00] leader opened his mouth and said, "Hey, this person has asked for more money." And I was like- Wow ... "Well, awesome, because I came over here to tell you we need to give them more money" "because they're a flight risk.
And here's why, and here's the data behind this, and here's why we think this why we wanna make this case to proactively go increase this person's pay." Fascinating. And it was- Wow ... it was great because I would love for that to be before the moment when the employee asks. Like, that's- Right ... where it would be great to get to, when you understand your markets well enough and with that much, m- in the moment clarity.
But actually having it be at the moment when the employee had asked just lent credibility to that moment, and so it was like, "Okay, see? Like, this works." And- Love that story ... I can demonstrate that this was the right moment. Uh, but that was a little bit of an accident. And it hasn't really happened since.
But we'll, we'll see in our next iteration. I'm really curious- Yeah ... to see what we learn. I mean, just the ability to take... I think we have for- ever had data in pla- uh, we've all kinds of data that has been incredibly [00:34:00] difficult to s- surface insights from. Um- Yes ... and sometimes it's because it's behind a walled garden, sometimes it's because it's in five different places, sometimes it's because we just don't have the skill set or the access to support to do that.
I mean, I, I remember when I f- the first time I, I asked Claude to, "Hey, here's this set of data. Tell me blah, blah, blah, blah, blah." Yeah. And in 45 seconds, you know, it was like, "Oh, here's your answer. Oh, and six other things you didn't think of." I was actually deeply sad for, uh- Yeah
uh, for, like, a day. Walked around, moped around for, like, a day. Um, because I felt very sad for all of us who didn't... Like, this, just that this technology didn't exist earlier for us and how much of a game changer it is right now. But man, if I'd had it five and 10 years ago what we could have done, especially when it was- Yeah
like a solo HR or when it was, like- Mm-hmm ... you had a team of two and your tools weren't very good it would've [00:35:00] been incredible. It still is incredible, but, um- Yeah ... I did have a moment of sadness about that. Well, hopefully, you know, you're gonna feel sad in two years' time again when it's gonna be- I hope
another leap, right? Yeah, that's right. And it's gonna be even more. It's, it's- That's right ... yeah, it, it's a wild, wild time. Well, Ann, thank you so much. I mean, it's, it's, it's fascinating to think about what it, what all, what it means to be an employee, what it'll mean to be a manager, what, what is the role of HR.
Yeah. What is... You know, a- all of these things are up for grabs in a way that they haven't been in any of our lifetimes before. Uh, and I'm, for one, really excited about it. You're all for it. Yeah. Yeah. I wanna see where this goes too. Before we- Yeah ... before we wrap up is there any final thought you wanna leave, um, someone with who's kind of in the middle of a process optimization, like pay performance, in this new age of agentic AI?
Yeah. Pilot. I can't- Mm-hmm ... uh, you know, I learned this from an- the incredible Kara Brennan-Alamano, uh, pilot. She's awesome. Yeah. And she's right. That's why she's awesome. Because [00:36:00] if you can get a small group of people to test something, you can learn from it, they can learn something.
They will tell their, you know, someone else, like, "Oh, we did this cool thing." And so you're, you're both making the process better and building support for the process at the same time- Yes ... the, the more you can do that. And it's also, one follow-up question, I would assume it's also okay to fail a pilot, because the intention is to learn from there, and there's gonna be certain pilots that work out and certain pilots that fail, so- Yeah
I'm assuming you're building in kind of like a, a almost like a bench of like, we're gonna try these things. Some things are not gonna work, some things are gonna work. And is that how you're kind of looking at it? Or- M- yeah. I mean- Yeah ... uh, having... If you've ever failed on a grand scale, if you're like, "Hey, we have this new thing.
It's so awesome." Yeah. "We spent nine months building it. Here you go." And everyone's like, "Yeah, we, um, we're not interested in that at all." No thanks. "No, thank you." Yeah ... monumental waste. If I can learn from five people that they hate this a lot, I'm like, "Great, off we go. I'm not doing that anymore." Love.
Much, [00:37:00] much, much prefer to fail in pilot than fail for the whole organization. Good. Yeah, it feels like there's a narrative where they're saying, "Hey, there's so many failed pilots," but I feel like it's a bit of a red herring 'cause some pilots are okay to fail- Yeah ... um, because that's, that's built into the process.
But yeah, interesting. Thank you so much, Ann. Yeah. Um- You're welcome. Thank you so much ... I imagine people are probably gonna have more questions about how you did certain things. Is LinkedIn the right place for folks to reach out to you and DM you? Yes, absolutely. Please reach out on LinkedIn. I would love to hear from people.
Uh, it's a great moment. I'm, I was really excited last week, uh, when Lovable announced that they had done this, and all of a sudden everybody started sending me that article like, "Hey, didn't you guys do this?" And I was like, "Yeah, we did." Like- Yeah. "... let's get more people doing this." Yeah. Uh, because I actually think it's a, a really positive...
I think it's a win for managers, I think it's a win for employees, I think it's a win for HR, which frankly we need one. And I think it's, I think it's, uh, a much more equitable way for us to do this without having that sort [00:38:00] of lack of integrity that the way we're doing it now has. Totally. Love it.
Thank you so much, Ann. And- Thank you ... uh, for everybody else listening to the WorkOps Podcast, we'll catch you on the next one.