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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_sarika_& jeet_kinfolk's_studio
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[00:00:00] Do you know doing this three and a half years ago- Yeah ... took me two quarters, and took a lot more- Yeah ... headcount on my team to actually do this work?
I can't even imagine how much money we spent, not-let alone me doing this six years, seven years ago. Yeah. And it took me a whole fricking year to do it. ~Mm. Like, ~it's amazing what I could... And like the out-the output is amazing.
So ~then, ~then a-as that's now getting iterated on and I'm getting feedback on, I then thought about, okay, what am I hearing from in engagement surveys? What am I hearing from exit surveys? What am I hearing from people the most, from employees?
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 wanna 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, ~uh,~ Sarika Lamont, who's the [00:01:00] chief people officer at Vidyard. Sarika, thank you so much for joining us today. Thank you for having me. I have been waiting for this podcast and this moment, so I'm excited. Same here. Same here. So before we dive right in, ~uh,~ into your juicy story-
~um, ~can you tell us a little bit more about yourself, and how did you end up choosing HR? Oh, look, ~uh,~ I didn't choose HR, man, the HR life chose me. That's what happened. But, ~uh,~ okay, so you already mentioned it, chief people officer at Vidyard. ~Uh, ~so I roam the entire people function, but I also own, ~um,~ the, our AI transformation and enablement journey over this last year, which has been quite exciting.
~Uh, ~how did I get into HR? But truly, I, all jokes aside, I fell into it truly, ~like,~ by way of a need of an organization that I had been at for quite some time. I think I'd been at that organization, it was a startup. I was probably employee 60 or 70, and I think we were-- ~I, ~I had maybe been there for four or five years at that point, and I actually came from the [00:02:00] business side.
I was a management consultant. I joined there. I was a program manager. ~Mm-hmm. ~I led a particular, ~um, you know, ~contracting program supporting the federal government, worked with our federal customers, had a team, and then eventually that grew into a portfolio of a number of different, ~um, you know, ~projects and customers and different people across different agencies ~in, ~in the government.
But, ~you know, ~as you can do in a startup, as you all know at Kinfolk, ~um,~ as you're growing, we're so lucky to be able to grow as fast as we did. I sat at the corporate office, and so I was able to just ~sort of ~see what all-- like, what was going on across other parts of the business, and then I could insert myself in places where they needed help because we maybe didn't have all the resources.
And at that time, I always had in the back of my mind that I wanted to start my own business, and I would start my own government consulting firm. That was once upon a time. So my mindset then was, "I gotta learn everything I possibly can." ~Uh- Mm-hmm ~... and so I'm gonna throw myself into other facets of the business.
So n-I naturally, I started doing [00:03:00] things on business development, and I started doing more on proposal writing because that felt like the right next thing or felt like a good thing I needed to do in conjunction with being a manager and growing my business and growing my portfolio. That then turned into, wow, we're winning a lot of new contracts.
How do we start up these contracts such that we're thinking about recruitment, and we're hiring the right people? Because a lot of the work that we did was professional services, and so you made your money and your revenue based off of having people in seat delivering those particular services to your government customers.
~Mm-hmm. ~And then it, as we kept growing, it then became ~like, well, ~wait a second, we can't just keep hiring all new managers externally. There's something to be said about hiring, ~you know, ~or, ~you know, um, ~giving people opportunities from within. And then you have people- ~Mm-hmm ~... that really understand your system, your infrastructure, your culture, and then it's easier to scale that element.
And so then it was like, oh, ~well,~ we need to think about our next gen leaders, and we need to develop that bench of talent, and we need to think about how do we level up our current manager talent. So I didn't know then, like my first role that I pitched outside of when I kinda moved away from [00:04:00] program project management was, "Oh, I'm gonna be this director of client delivery excellence, and here's what the role is."
And part of that was about building your next gen pipeline of talent and then also- ~Mm ~... building the management and leadership community and bringing that community and then thinking about how that community thinks about career development. I didn't know then, that was like, I don't know, eight, nine years ago, ~um- ~Yeah
maybe a little less, ~that ~that was strategic talent development. And then eventually, as I ~sort of ~stepped into that role, eventually I started to see as we then went from 60 people to 500 people, then we were getting acquired by a private equity firm to be a platform. We were gonna be acquiring more companies.
It, it-- So much was changing. What I also saw was we need to differentiate ourselves 'cause this is a pretty, ~um, you know, ~crowded market where I live and, ~you know, uh, ~just outside of Washington, DC. How do we differentiate ourselves such that people-- we become the employer of choice ~or the, ~or the consulting company of choice?
~Hmm. ~And then I started to see in the business where there were gaps and silos where HR at the time wasn't talking to the business as much [00:05:00] and, ~um, you know, ~even business development and the proposal writing team needed to talk to the frontline folks more, and there was, ~you know, ~just these things, these silos were happening.
Then I created something called an integrated talent management framework, which was about breaking those silos and really putting the people, our employees, and the customer at the center. So I designed this framework on how to break down those silos and what all the things that we need to do because I saw actual gaps in the business.
And then it was, I pitched this idea, and then fast-forward, I was like, "Let me do this for one year. Here are the three things I'm gonna deliver in a year. I'll do it cross-functionally." Yeah. "I don't need a team, but if I can deliver these three KPIs in this year alone, then you have to let me build a team."
And that's how it happened. It was really ju- That's amazing ... purely like the organization had the need. I saw the need. Yeah. I knew the organization really well. I knew the people really well, and I loved the company so much, and I helped build that and shape that culture. Yeah. It felt just ~sort of like ~the natural next thing I was gonna do.
And then once I sorta did it and kinda fell into it, I was like, "Oh my God, I love this," because it just felt like a really great [00:06:00] use of my strengths. ~Um, ~and I was learning a lot, and I loved learning, and so ~that's, ~that's what happened Yeah. And then eventually when I did that for some time, I'm like, "Wait, I wanna own all of it."
~Like, ~I wanna- ... ~I, ~I have a different way in which I would wanna lever- I would, how I would wanna position the HR function to be more proactive versus reactive. And because I had been on the business side and the customer side for so long, I just felt like I had a different perspective. But back then, seven, eight years ago, ~you know, ~HR wasn't really looked at.
That function wasn't positioned that way. Exactly. But also, you didn't see a lot of people making their way out of HR from a different function into HR. ~Mm-hmm. ~And ~quite, ~quite vulnerably, I was being told, "Oh, ~well,~ you don't know. You haven't been in HR your whole career, so you just don't know. ~Like, ~you're not positioned to be able to do this."
N- now, I only ever heard that from HR folks. I never heard that from, ~you know, ~people outside of HR. And it was, for me, it was like, ~well,~ why not? ~Like, ~I understand the business really well. I know our people really well. I know-- I helped build a lot of these systems and infrastructure. It feels like I could really do this and be a great connector between the [00:07:00] two.
~Uh, ~and then eventually, ~um, uh, ~when I made my way out of that organization, I, into my first tech organization, then I got to own a lot more of that function on a global scale. So ~that's how, ~that's how it happened. I love that. Yeah. I love that. It, I, it feels like you are doing HR differently. ~Uh, ~and you know, we, for the listeners, we do talk a lot, Sar- Sarika and I, and- Yeah.
~Um, ~it's ~so, ~it's refreshing to, it's always refreshing to hear your approach, and it feels like all of that business experience and that commercial experience- ~Mm-hmm ... um, has, ~has really informed how you see HR today. ~Um- ~Absolutely ... how would you-- Before we ~kind of ~dive into the story itself, for folks ~that are, ~that are listening, by the way, great pitch for getting into HR for anybody listening.
~Um, ~how would you recommend someone who is in HR to get closer to the business and bring ~kind of ~that, and build that muscle that you built before coming into HR? Yeah, that's such a great question and an important question. ~Um, ~get-- You need to build partnerships with all your business leaders, right? You can't sit in a silo.
You can't build in a silo. You can't design strategies and solutions for the business if you don't actually [00:08:00] understand the business. So I would say get really close with your finance team. You need to understand the dollars and the cents. You need to understand our P&L. You need to understand our budget.
You need to understand why our targets are what our targets are and how they're built up. You need to understand that whole waterfall because that'll help you ~sort of ~understand the levers that you have to pull and the puts and takes that, ~you know, ~any functional business leader ~has to, ~has to think about on any daily, on, really on a daily basis.
~Um, ~really build partnerships with the different functional leaders, whether that's in your engineering leader, whether that's your revenue leaders. ~Uh, ~it's important to understand what their problems are, what challenges they're trying to solve, what their KPIs and their metrics are. ~Um, ~that's how you really learn the business, and it's also okay to say that you don't understand or to say that you don't know that.
Yeah. And that-- And it's important, ~uh,~ to be vulnerable and tell your leaders, ~like,~ "Hey, I really wanna understand your business 'cause I wanna be a better partner, and I wanna make sure that we're designing these solutions for what's really gonna help you drive your metrics, your KPIs, which ultimately tie to business outcomes and the bottom [00:09:00] line."
I think the more you can be honest about that, you'll find a lot of the functional leaders on the other side are going to welcome that energy and are gonna- Yes ... bring you into the fold. It is time-consuming. You can ask any of my business partners, anybody ~on, ~on my team, that they spend a lot of time sitting in business, ~you know, ~like in their leadership meetings for all the functional areas and those business meetings and their all-hand meetings ~and, ~and having one-on-ones, offset one-on-ones with their managers and really getting in there, but that is how you learn the business, and then that's how you think about becoming like a real solutions partner to drive real outcomes in the business.
You can't do that- Love it ... in a vacuum. Love that. ~And, ~and one slight segue from there too, it feels like, would you say that now that we have AI at our fingertips, ~um,~ it feels like AI is democratizing the ability to surface the data from your- That's right ... different departments of the business. So has it made it easier or harder to work more closely with the different parts of the [00:10:00] business as someone in HR, do you think?
So I still think there's an el-- obviously, there's still a lot in the human-to-human connection that's going to be- ~Right ~... important, at least in the beginning if, especially if you don't have those relationships and partnerships today and you're ~sort of ~starting from scratch in a way. ~Like, ~I do think that human-to-human connection is going to be important because there's something to be sa-said about you can build trust a lot faster, ~uh,~ when you're doing this, like- Human to human, face to face, right?
Yes. ~Um, ~so whether you do it through Zoom or you can get in person, that can happen. That really accelerates ~that, ~that, ~you know, ~getting to know them. And it's also about getting to know them as human beings outside of work. That's just as important in building that partnership and that trust between you and your business, between you and the business and the functional leaders.
Yeah. But yes, I do think there is still an element where AI, there, AI can make that easier, but you do have to have the right infrastructure and the right sort of system set up because AI also has the ability, if you don't think about where your data is coming from- ... and you don't have good clean data- Yeah
~uh, ~and it's [00:11:00] not something that you're paying attention to, it could also democratize and surface a lot of bad data and a lot of bad context. And so that is something to be very wary of. ~Uh- ~Yes ... there's a lot of work that needs to be done to make sure that the right information is being surfaced at all times, and there's always still going to be the element of validating the information that you have and not taking that data just 'cause AI gave it to you as ~like, ~"Oh, then this is obviously the way that it is."
You have to validate. You have to use ~your, you know, ~critical thinking skills. That b- I would say that becomes even more important than ever before. S- that's why the human connection and the human partnership is still wildly important because you still need that validation layer that you- Yes ... and that there's a context layer that you get that you might not necessarily always get with AI, especially if you're still early in your sort of transformation and enablement journey inside of your organization as well.
Love it. Okay, let's, ~uh,~ let's get into your story. ~So, um, ~can you tell us a little bit about that process or system that didn't- Yeah ... quite work out, ~uh,~ previously? ~I mean, ~there's a number of them. ~Uh, ~I think the one I'm gonna start w- I think the one for this conversation today is [00:12:00] going to be around performance, which is everyone's favorite topic.
~Uh, ~and it's an interesting one because I will say where I'll start the story is, like, where performance was when I first started at my organization three and a half years ago, and so then where it is, what I'm doing, like, where I'm getting to today, like what I'm working on today. ~Mm-hmm. ~But then I'm building something for today to, ~like,~ solve for, ~like,~ we are now in our end of year process.
~Like, ~we're kick, we just kicked that off. Our fiscal year runs from, ~you know, ~May to April, and then I'm already thinking and designing for what this next fiscal year process is gonna look like because I wanna iterate and change some things that I couldn't change now because I can't change the goalpost for folks- Yeah
when they need to be, we need to be assessing performance for the last, ~you know, ~performance year and thinking about the future. So it's a, I'm in, ~like,~ a very interesting- Yes ... just, ~like,~ point in my journey. ~Um, ~but yeah, happy to start wherever you think makes sense. Yeah. ~Let's, ~let's start at the beginning.
~Um, ~what was- Yeah ... what was it like? What was not working, and why did you wanna change it? None of it. I'm gonna be frank. [00:13:00] I walked in and I was like, "Yeah, this isn't gonna work," and I'll tell you why. Because performance was one-sided in terms of what I was walking into- Yeah ... ~you know, ~like almost three, it was about three and a half, almost four years ago, meaning they used the nine box.
Okay, which I wouldn't use as, ~like,~ your performance management, ~you know, ~framework ever. Uh, that's not- ~Mm ~... what the nine box was ever designed for. It was more designed for succession planning, but story for another day. So basically, managers used a nine box that wasn't really defined by any set of real expectations.
~Like, ~there weren't, there wasn't a career framework. There wasn't, ~like,~ a set of, ~like,~ competencies or behavioral indicators that sat at those levels that was then aligned to, ~you know, ~people's expectations or their jobs or even compensation. ~So, ~like, n- there was no, ~like,~ connected ecosystem. And then what was happening was managers were placing employees in a box with no clarity of expectation, which th- and then that those decisions were incredibly biased because it was not based on a review that a employee did of themselves and then a manager.
~Mm. ~It was [00:14:00] managers deciding this in a silo, putting people in a box based off of conversations they were having, and then making decisions on people's compensation- Wow ... riddled with a ton of bias because what were you putting people in those boxes for? Like, how were you- Yeah ... deciding what box they were in if you don't have a set of expectations or competencies?
And you weren't-- ~It, ~it wasn't a two-way conversation. So performance wasn't ever about career growth and development and about employees having the opportunity to talk about their own performance and managers giving sound feedback and managers giving feedback along the way. None of that was built into the system.
~Hmm. ~So ~I'll, ~I'll, I'll pause there because that's, ~like,~ a lot to sit with. There, ~there are, ~there are so many threads I wanna pull from there. I know. But, ~uh, it, ~it, it'd be helpful to understand what were you seeing, ~um,~ actually happen to employees or to managers given that. ~Like, were, ~were people leaving?
Were they complaining? Were people just getting promoted left, ~right,~ and center without ~any, ~any rationale? What was going on? Yeah. Yeah, it was a little bit of everything. ~Um, you know, uh, ~interestingly enough, they still had pretty solid retention numbers. ~Um, ~but [00:15:00] you did see folks from, ~you know, ~looking at, ~you know, ~past engagement survey data or any data that I had- ~Mm~
could get my fingertips on. Then, of course, doing s- a survey, ~um,~ pretty quickly, pretty soon after I joined. A lot of the feedback, even on my listening tour, my first 90 days, was about, ~like,~ there's no clarity in, ~you know, ~performance. There's no clarity in growth and development. There's no-- Everything feels very biased.
There feels like in different functional areas, it's about who you know and who you are friends with. ~Like, ~that felt a lot like the sentiment- Yeah ... that, ~uh,~ that employees were feeling. ~Like, ~it didn't feel like there was a lot of transparency. It didn't feel like things were equitable, how were decisions made.
~Like, ~none of that stuff was documented, let alone they weren't really executing against any type of real equitable, transparent framework. And you then had varying opinions from managers and leaders. And this is what's always interesting being a new leader coming in, is- Oh, it's not equitable. We don't have these things.
There's all these gaps. And then you start to design and talk about what you're designing and building the framework, and then [00:16:00] people realizing what they're actually asking for is- Yeah ... a little more rigor, is process, is a framework I'm gonna hold you accountable to, is something I'm gonna tell you no to because that's biased, or no, you can't do that.
So when people start to realize, oh, hold on a second. I want these things, but I don't actually want these things, because what that means is you're gonna tell me no. Because what ended up happening is it then had downstream impact on hiring decisions. Oh, so you mean some of these leaders were making decisions based off of who they wanted to go have a beer with?
~Mm-hmm. ~And those are the most... That's not equitable. That's, ~like,~ biased in the most incredulous way. And so when folks start to realize what they're asking for means all of this stuff, they think it's red tape. No, it's not red tape, but it's process- Yeah ... and it's, ~um,~ building a framework so that we can be equitable, we can be fair, we can be transparent, we can have better conversations- Exactly
and we can give people more clarity on how to build or how to develop the skills, and then that's inevitably how [00:17:00] you're going to drive a more high-performing business. Yes. Yeah. ~Um, ~so that's- So- ... a lot of what I was hearing and seeing, and then so it kinda went both ways. And then that sounds like a lot to work with ~when, ~when you're- Yeah
coming in cold. ~What did you, ~what did you change, and where are you up to now ~with the, ~with the journey? Yeah. So the first thing, ~you know, ~obviously I did was went on a listening tour to really understand what was there, what was working, what was not working, what we felt like the gaps were, ~what,~ what people, ~uh,~ most focused on in terms of their biggest frustrations from an employee's perspective as well as from a manager's perspective.
So from that, what we decided was the first thing we really needed to do was to create an actual career framework. ~Um, ~the business had grown quite a bit, especially during COVID, being a video-based, ~um,~ tool. ~Uh, ~and so the business was ripe to create a little bit more structure and some rigor and a process and a framework to be able to really build from.
So we started with the career framework. Okay, let's really think about- What are all the jobs we have in this business? ~You know, ~what does the design of the org look like today? Where do we think we're gonna be in the next couple years? And so we wanna make sure that [00:18:00] as we're designing the fre- the framework and the leveling, that we're designing not just for today, but enough to, ~like,~ withstand the next couple of years of growth.
~Uh, ~and so we designed it that-- with that mind, so we had individual contributor levels. One thing I heard was you shouldn't have to feel like you can grow your career only by being-- going into management, because then at certain point, obviously that funnels up and there's not as many- Yes ... of those roles to go around.
So you had a lot of younger talent or growing talent that was like, "I don't wanna be a manager. I-- But I really wanna be a subject matter expert, and I wanna bring that subject matter expertise and democratize that across the business and, and be part of driving a lot of that impact by way of the skills that I can bring to the table, and..."
So great, we need to build an individual contributor path that allows for people to grow down that path as well from a skills perspective, but also from a compensation perspective. ~Um, ~and then we also wanna make sure that it's clear where that can then, ~um,~ spider off into a management leadership levels, and then also the sort of leadership executive levels.
So we designed- ~Right ~... with that in mind. We then were, okay, the next thing that's important is to make sure that there are real [00:19:00] clear expectations, performance anchors, and behavioral expectations. You'll often hear that being called competencies. And then making sure- ~Right ... that ~that's clear level to level, and then also being clear the distinction and the differentiation level to level so that employees can see, "Oh, okay, so in order for me to go from an IC-3 to a 4, so intermediate software developer to a senior software developer, here's what it means to be an intermediate developer, and then here's what it would mean when I want to grow and maybe get promoted one day.
Here are the, the next level, and here's what I need to go do, ~like,~ to grow into that next level." So that we wanted more differentiation and clarity there. ~Um- Right ~... and then eventually that also then ti- that then tied back to a, okay, we need to build, ~like,~ that's the job architecture that then will tie to compensation, and then allowed us to build bands, and allowed us to h- then eventually down the line would create a lot more transparency around compensation, right?
So I was thinking, I'm not gonna get there today, but this is gonna build that foundational architecture to which then to build compensation- Yes ... and transparency down the line. Because at that point I [00:20:00] also knew that pay transparency would become, ~um, a, ~a policy, especially within Canada, which is where my business- Yes
which is where my organization resides, ~that ~that was gonna be something that, ~um, you know, ~Ontario in specific was gonna become a requirement. ~Um, ~so that's where we started from. Then that, of course, was a very large input into then how we would design performance review-- actually have a performance review both-
both ways, right? Yeah. ~Like, ~it's not just the manager putting people in, ~like,~ a rating or in a box. ~Like, ~do away with the nine box because that's, ~like,~ a thing of the past, and design for, okay, let's-- i- if the Problem we're trying to solve for is clarity of expectations, driving higher performance across the business, and making sure employees have clarity of what's expected of them and where their role will, ~um,~ have an impact on business outcomes and OKRs.
And then the other side of that is managers being able to have clarity on how they are coaching and what they need to coach their people on, and what they need to be giving feedback on to drive that next level of performance. It would give employees and managers both each [00:21:00] of those things, and ultimately the business will, ~um,~ thrive because the end outcome is to drive better business outcomes with a higher performing organization, right?
Love it. So I made sure that I anchored in more on what were, what did employees need and what did managers need, and what do these things do to drive business outcomes. Love it. And you're, you, you were mentioning that this is almost like a phase two before the phase three that's coming in future. What is, what does that look like?
~Well, ~so I'll-- But part of that process was, okay, then we needed to have a system. Yeah. We didn't have a system. We didn't have any type of technology, so we, ~you know, ~I assessed a number of different technologies. ~Uh, ~I landed on a particular, ~you know, ~performance and engagement tool that then would allow us to actually build a technology-enabled, ~um- ~Mm
performance process that would then allow for continuous feedback, ~you know, uh, ~whether that's public, private, et cetera. Allowed for the competencies, the career framework to live within that. Build the actual performance review where employees could self-assess themselves. We could also get peer [00:22:00] feedback.
Employees could also give upward feedback about their managers- ~Interesting, ~interesting ... and then managers could give their feedback, right? So I needed the ecosystem to not live inside of Google Sheets- Yeah ... because at that point we were over 300 employees and growing. ~Uh, ~and so I- Wow ... I needed to think about scale as well, right?
I'm building for scale- Yeah ... at that point. ~Mm. Uh, ~and so then that was implemented, and then obviously driving. So it was a lot happening at once, right? 'Cause I had to- Yeah ... design this new system, get people bought into the system, help managers understand how to use that system, help employees understand how to, ~like,~ self-assess and understand what their expectations are, and then layer the technology- Yeah
and to do all the other elements of the process. So that's what we, that's what we built for in those- Nice ... first ~sort of, ~that first, ~I guess, ~let's say give it eight months to a year that I was there. Okay. Great. Nice. Awesome. Okay? But because it was a new sort of way of doing performance and reviews and there was, which main-- meant it was a lot more, right?
There's a lot more on the managers, a lot more on the employees. Yeah. Everybody wanted it, but they didn't know what they were asking for type of thing. Yeah. So there's a lot of enablement that has to happen over the course of time, a [00:23:00] lot of constant, ~you know, ~driving the adoption. What we didn't get to was, I eventually wanted to get to a place where you could assess yourself against each of the competencies, but that felt too heavy Right?
Mm-hmm. That was like six competency. I think it was like five competencies for ICs, and then eventually there was like six competencies as you got into manager, and that felt very cumbersome. And so we eventually needed to stair-step that over time. And so then we designed the performance review questions and everything to be a little bit more of a catchall.
~Mm-hmm. ~And then you ~sort of like ~talked about competencies, but it wasn't, ~you know, ~layer, like one by one. And that made sense for the moment that we were in, but we then what happened was insert 2023, 2024, 2023, what happened? Yes. The downturn in SaaS. Yeah. Then you had the dis- ~then, ~then a pretty s- then you had ~like ~a year later the AI, the first wave of AI disruption.
Yeah. And then you had, okay, then contraction, right? ~Mm-hmm. ~The business was contracting, and so we were having... And then we needed to think about how we [00:24:00] were gonna layer AI into our part. So there was a lot of priorities happening inside of the business as it, as that happens, right? Yeah. So then not that performance wasn't important, of course it was, but the ability to iterate on that and what the process was gonna look like, ~it,~ it just became a lot harder.
And mind you, we had a system for that, but we didn't have a system necessarily at the time, 'cause it didn't exist really, for how we were going to drive ongoing adoption and enablement short of my team having to put in a lot of manual effort to do that and track managers down and do it right. That's what we were doing.
We were tracking people down. We were constantly doing one-on-ones with managers or we were doing, ~you know, ~big, ~uh, you know, ~manager trainings, but you had lay- different layers of managers. Some were really much more well-versed in it, some were more early on. Yeah. So then the people that were like, "I've done this before, I don't need to..."
~You know, ~there's just a lot of that common friction that a lot of HR leaders probably listening to this are gonna be like, "Oh, I know exactly what she's talking about." And yet we were, ~um,~ also distracted by a lot of other things happening inside of the business. So performance- Yeah ... the iterations and the phases we wanted to get to, we [00:25:00] just didn't quite get there.
And so it just ~sort of ~sat stagnant, and then people forgot about the career framework. They weren't really using it as much. We were des- just a lot happening. Yeah. But great, we made really great headway where we did. And then we had calibration. ~Mm-hmm. ~We could do that automated, so we were having really, we were having really great conversations, managers having conversations across the functions so we could really level set what like being like, ~you know, ~being a strong contributor at like maybe a rating of a three looked like versus being like, "Oh, you're the next gen leader.
Like you are ri-" We could have better conversations. None of these things were happening three and a half years ago, right? Gotcha. And so already we're making really great progress. Yeah. And we were stair-stepping that progress. Awesome. Yeah. But then all this change happens- ... and the skills change and who we were as a business changed, the product changed.
AI- ~Mm-hmm ~... has changed everything. ~Well ~then, shit What I haven't done now in the last year or two with all this change happening is evolve the process- ~Mm-hmm ~... but also evolve the actual career framework, the expectations, [00:26:00] the competencies, whatever. ~Like, ~none of that has evolved in the system itself, so then people stop paying attention to it, and we were trying to solve all these other problems, or not problems, but opportunities.
Yes. Yeah. And now fast-forward to where I am today. Yeah. ~So, ~right? Go ahead. Yeah. I wanna hear about today. So today is, oh, I gotta, I, I-- people are like, "This isn't transparent. The promotion process isn't transparent." And ~like, ~my manager isn't having conversations with me about my, ~you know, ~my, what's based in the career framework.
Some people are new. They don't even know about the career framework, even though they've gone through it with onboarding. But of course, if you don't have that, ~like,~ regular cadence of talking about these things, managers have more resources. We have less managers. I have less people on my team, so I can't just be doing these things manually.
So how do I leverage AI? How do I leverage automation? Where can I really start designing for these things to be a regular cadence of things that are happening? And I have new managers coming in or new managers coming up. Oh my gosh, I gotta think- Yeah ... about how I bring them into the fold. ~Like, ~there's just so many things happening that then you forget about this ecosystem of performance and [00:27:00] development and skills and whatever.
~Well, ~enter in AI, right? Enter in my- Yeah ... best friend Claude. And I'm like- ... Cla- Claude is who I call as my Claude. ~Well, ~okay, I have this competency framework that nobody touches. Very few. ~Uh-huh. ~I shouldn't say nobody, but very small segment. It lives in a Google Doc. It may live in our new perform-- ~you know, ~now we have a different performance system that is AI native, so there's a lot that it can do where it's, ~you know, ~recording one-on-ones.
~Mm-hmm. ~It's pulling context from different places. Great. So I'm solving for some of that, and there's a lot of context layer that we gotta pull from the business that comes from different places that maybe doesn't-- we shouldn't just be waiting for a performance review that happens twice a year. We should think about how does this become like regular cadence of information and context setting ~and, ~and where does that live, and then how do managers- Mm-hmm
and employees get that without feeling like they have to, ~like,~ manually pull it from different places. Great. AI can help us with that. But then also, the competencies don't make sense anymore. It's for a business that was three and a half years ago that was growing, and that's not where we are anymore.
And now there's AI, and now we, ~uh,~ we spent a year now driving more of that transformation and enablement, and the skills have changed, [00:28:00] right? And there's the soft skills that are no longer soft skills. They've actually become hard skills. Great. I threw my competency framework into Claude and gave a whole bunch of context on where the business is today and what it was when I designed this.
And ask Claude to be a thought partner to me on ~like, ~okay, so I've given you all this context on where we are. I'm pulling in, ~like,~ I'm pulling in a bunch of stuff into this project that's giving you a lot of other background context on the business and how our performance works, the system that we use, our managers, all this stuff.
~Mm-hmm. ~What-- And AI's become a much more important component of our business, but it's not just about AI fluency, it's about redesigning how we work and rethinking that and those critical thinking skills. What do you think I need to do differently? What do you propose I do differently to simplify these competencies such that I wanna now build it inside a performance in a different way?
All that, right? Yeah. Wow, the outco- the output, like even just the first draft was so eye-opening. ~Uh-huh. ~And then it was a lot of back and forth on ~like, ~okay, great, so I wanna update this. I want it to be the moment that we're in. I wanna consolidate. You have way too many competencies. This doesn't make sense from this context to [00:29:00] this context.
I propose you simplify down to four. Here's what it could look like. Here's how you pull it in. Great. Now let me go line by line at the behavioral expectations. I wanna make these actionable. There needs to be differentiation. I want people to be able to clearly see the shift. Great. Lot of iterations over a couple of days going back and forth.
And then it was like, okay, I got to a place after a few days of ~like, ~oh, I feel really good about this. Now I'm gonna go to dif- my team and then different functional leaders to get feedback. Do you know doing this three and a half years ago- Yeah ... took me two quarters, and took a lot more- Yeah ... headcount on my team to actually do this work?
Like four terms. Yeah. If I put that into dollars and cents, your CPO, your director of talent, your f-- ~I mean, ~it was-- I can't even imagine how much money we spent, not-let alone me doing this six years, seven years ago. Yeah. And it took me a whole fricking year to do it. ~Mm. Like, ~it's amazing what I could... And like the out-the output is amazing.
So ~then, ~then a-as that's now getting iterated on and I'm getting feedback on, I then thought about, okay, what am I hearing from in engagement surveys? What am I hearing from exit surveys? What am I hearing from [00:30:00] people the most, from employees? Yeah. 'Cause what I wanted to do, I knew what the business needed, but I knew where the gap was coming from, and it came from employees being bought in and feeling like they're getting what they need, they're getting the clarity.
Yeah. It comes down to managers are taxed, and they're not having those conversations e- not because they don't want to. They're just-- Like how do I make it easier for managers to enable them to have these conversations, but how do I make it so that employees are owning their career, but they understand what that means to own their career?
'Cause that's the biggest thing I'm hearing is, "I hear you say that a lot, Sarika, but I don't know what that means, and how do I do that?" Like there's- Yeah ... everything's documented, but how do they know where to go and when to use what? ~Right. ~They don't have that layer of context. And then how do I help my managers who do care, but they got so much on their plate?
Okay, Claude, this is the context. This is what I'm dealing with. I wanna build an interactive tool or an app- ~Mm ~... that employees could do, that I'm solving for A, B, C for the m- for the employees. I'm solving for X, Y, Z for the managers. I have all this context and all this document. And what I inevitably need it to do is [00:31:00] to have people bought in and ~like ~understand how what they do in their day-to-day drive, it connects back to ~like ~the company's biggest priorities, and ultimately I'm driving to the business priorities and outcomes.
~Like ~that is the context. That is what I'm trying to build. ~Yeah, ~yeah. And holy shit. Like you've seen that iteration. ~I mean, ~I've done multiple iterations of this. Yeah. I've been on this journey for a few weeks. But my mind was blown, ~um- ~I love that ... G- Yeah ... on what it built on just iteration one. And I- Yeah
why I'm blown by that is seven years, it was six, seven years ago when I had done all this work. ~Mm-hmm. ~And then I was like, "Oh, I would love to build a tool where people could go in and see, oh, I'm at this level, but I wanna compare to the next level." Like just for people to visually see it and then give them examples of work that they could do or skills or examples of things they could actually do inside the business.
Oh my gosh. Yeah. Do you-- I couldn't build that because I wasn't technical. I'm not a developer. I can't code. Yeah. And six, seven years ago, you needed to be able to code, and we had ServiceNow as like a layer, as like a pane of glass that you could interface with. ~Mm. ~But only if I had someone. I had to [00:32:00] beg people in my business that were more technical, who were delivering on-site to customers, beg somebody- Yeah
"Please, please, if you could just help me design this." Yeah. And that took six months to even find anybody that would be willing to do it. Yeah. And then another three to six months to build it. Yeah. And then ~sort of ~iterate on it. It took almost a year to do something that took me five minutes, G. Five minutes.
And now granted, I had to update the competencies, which took me like a week later. Yes, yeah. But five minutes to actually- Give it the context to tell it what I wanted, what I was trying to solve for- Yeah ... and then give me an example of a tool. Okay. And then from there it's like you're just playing with it and giving it more context.
~So, ~so I have two more questions for you. ~Um, ~one-- I have ~many, ~many more questions for you, but two more that we have time for today. ~Um, ~one question is, so something that took maybe two, two quarters, maybe ~even, ~even longer that is happening way faster now, that doesn't mean that ~you're, ~you're done, and you're- No
you're going on vacation. It feels like the time is being filled up with other stuff. So ~what, what is, ~what is the role now since now [00:33:00] you're not having ~to, ~to focus on those pieces which is about building and waiting and something for it to happen? Yeah. What are you doing with that time now? It's a good question.
S- so it was what we were always missing on because we spent so much time building and then got it out. ~Hmm. ~And then we were ~sort of like ~on-- not onto the next thing, but ~kind of, ~was you cannot understate how critical the ongoing enablement of- ~Right ~... your employees and your managers, and then the ongoing focus on adoption, how much time that takes.
~Mm. ~And then so a lot of it is think-- And then it's also about I'm building for something to solve for right now, and ~like I, ~like I mentioned, like we're in our end-of-year process right now. So I'm designing for something that will work to dissolve, to help make this process right now easier, so we like updated questions and all that stuff, right?
And now I'm in like a more of an AI native tool, so it's pulling context from a lot of places, and it can draft, ~you know, ~whole swaths of questions as, right? So the, it's saving a lot of time on that front for employee and manager. But I'm still having to [00:34:00] design what I want the proc- what I want this whole ecosystem to look like for this next fiscal year.
~Right. ~But the thing that is also helping me is having more focus on the enablement of our employees and our managers, because I can't just give them this tool- ~Mm ~... and then be like, "Okay, go use this tool, and now it solves everything." ~I have to, ~I have to enable them. I have to teach them how to use this tool, when to use this tool as an employee.
I have to then bring managers into fold on how to use this tool to their advantage. But how to then connect the dots to the ~other, ~other sort of tools that we-- like our whole ecosystem. Like, where do you pull context from? Eventually, we'll have an MCP- ~Mm ... you know, ~that we can pull from like our performance engagement layer, like w- the tool that we use, ~you know, ~and then having Claude be an interface, and we can connect a bunch of different tools, right?
But also, I'm now already thinking about how can I use my tool-- You didn't know that I was gonna drop this, but like I am thinking about how do I use the Kinfolk runbook to then automate- Yeah ... some of that enablement. Because think about it, the business is gonna keep running. Changes are gonna keep happening.
Yeah. People are gonna keep coming and going, right? Yeah. That's never gonna change, and I would say even more so [00:35:00] now because so much is changing in the world of AI and like we're moving faster than we ever have. Yes. And so I need this constant layer of engagement and adoption that is- ~Mm-hmm ~... always living and breathing, that doesn't take- A person having to constantly chase people down.
So now I'm designing for the ongoing adoption and enablement so that there's that sort of, again, that tier zero, tier one ongoing things that people can self-serve in a more dynamic fashion. Yeah. So then the time is spent on, okay, we're doing that initial layer human to human. Now I have this ongoing automation layer.
Now that, right? And then there is always gonna be ~the, ~the need for the human context and the human layer where a manager's having a challenge with someone, "Hey, like this person isn't performing. ~Like, ~I really need your help on how to coach them." And like where the AI and a tool isn't gonna solve that for them.
Exactly. ~Like, ~there's gonna be that tier zero, tier one, but then where they really need the human in the loop to really problem solve these things with them, right? And that is [00:36:00] where- Yeah ... my team gets to spend a little bit more time is more of that human to human connection that is just as valuable- Yes
at a different level, and that entry point is just different. And it was the entry point that always existed before that we just never, ~uh,~ that when we spent time there, we didn't-- then we lost that layer of like ongoing adoption and enablement, which is important because that's where we ended up losing people.
And with work and ch- h- things changing so fast on a weekly basis at times, I need that layer to constantly be living and breathing and pulling in context and then updating, ~right?~ And so there's a lot that we're gonna be able to do on that front with just the technology that exists today that we didn't have before.
Mm-hmm. Love that. So that I can be more in the loop with my people. So it sounds like to probably a lot of the listeners that, hey, Sarika has done a lot here, and she's pretty far down the journey, and there might be some folks ~who are, ~who are with you and some folks who are like, "Where the heck do I even start?"
Yeah. So if there's one piece of advice that you could give someone who's ~like, ~great, you mentioned Claude, you mentioned Skills, you mentioned [00:37:00] MCP. ~Uh, we'll, ~we'll probably put in the show notes what MCP stands for. That's a- Yeah ... that's a, ~um, uh, ~a Model Context Protocol, which is a way ~of, ~of pulling information.
~Um, ~and, ~uh,~ so what advice would you give folks who might find some of this quite confusing? ~Where do they, ~where do they go? Where do they start? I would say start first with understanding what your business needs. ~Like what is, ~what is the problem that you're solving? Yeah. And is it really the problem that you're solving?
Because I found sometimes, like even me, someone that is like pretty ~like ~dialed into the business, sometimes as HR leaders or HR folks, we get in the habit of ~like ~designing for what HR needs, and not necessarily for what the people and the business needs. Even though my intent was always to solve for what the employee and the manager needs, we're solving, right?
And so you gotta really find-- You gotta really make sure that you're validating that. So that is like- ~Mm ~... pulling the data that you do have access to, whether it's exit interview data, stay interview data, recruiting, even your re- inter- interview data, your em- employee engagement survey, or just have conversations with your leaders, have conversations with your employees to make sure that you're solving for the right thing first.
~Mm. Um, ~that's always-- I'm gonna tell you what your starting point is, because then that'll [00:38:00] tell you a lot on where you start. I knew from a lot of the conversations is what people really desire is transparency. Like- ... how do you make decisions on how-- who gets promoted and who doesn't, right? But transparency on expectations.
So I knew that a starting point had to be, was ~sort of ~two starting points, but one was, okay, I'm solving for the tomorrow because it's the tomorrow for the next performance year is I really gotta update this career framework. I really have to consolidate, I have to simplify, and I have to make it like layman's terms, easy for someone to digest and take it and action it with it.
And the moment that we're in today in our business, not what we were three and a half years ago, right? So that was one thing. Yeah. That's the career framework. But the other element was I also knew that ~what, ~what we were doing in the actual performance reviews themselves, the questions we were asking, not having a peer review, having a peer review, all of those things, we needed to simplify that, but also get laser focused and like being clear on what those questions were to make sure- Mm
that employees are able to talk about the things that are really important to them, but are also [00:39:00] important to the business, and managers are getting the context that they need that is important for the business and also important for them to accurately and fairly and equitably assess where somebody's performance lies today.
So I had ~like ~two concurrent things happening that would've been- ~Mm ~... impossible pre-AI, just because I wouldn't have had that ~sort of like ~thought partner that had-- that could pull in a lot of that context from places, right? Yeah. But it ultimately it starts with what does your business need? What are your people asking for?
And then designing, and then thinking about where does AI come into the fold. And quite frankly, like even something I said to you was like I didn't know where to start with updating the competency frame. I knew what I had always done. Yeah. I know what I had done multiple times over, but that was not-- that playbook of yesterday is not the playbook of today.
It's not gonna work. No. I know I can't go to every functional leader and ask them. ~I, ~I know I can't do that. And so what can I do with the context I have, and then how do I use AI? So I just asked Claude Okay, I know I have all this context. Here's a bunch of information. How do, where do I start? Like, where do, where, how do I simplify?
Yeah. Ask the tool to [00:40:00] help you get there. You don't always have to have the answer, and you may not always know what context you need, so ask it what context it needs to get you... I know what I want it to look like, or I know where I need it to go. Yeah. So give them that context, and then to ask it to give you the re- to guide you the rest of the way.
It's pretty smart enough at this point to be able to give you even that context or that direction. It's amazing, isn't it? ~And I, ~and I have- Yeah ... a feeling that ~when we, ~when we end this, ~uh,~ and when someone's listened to this, they're gonna have way more questions for you. So Sarika gets a lot of things- Sure
on, ~uh,~ on LinkedIn. But is that the best place to reach you? Yeah, I think that's the easiest way. I do check my DMs and my comments pretty regularly. It is important to me. ~Um, ~people ask me all the time, ~like,~ "Oh my God, why do you spend so much time doing that?" ~Well, ~the whole reason why I got, I fell in love with this work to begin with is that it's making an impact.
Yeah. And now, ~like,~ being a parent of teenagers, thinking about what the world of work is gonna look like, ~you know, ~for my children, I think the biggest impact I can make is designing and impacting the world of work today for tomorrow, and you can't do that without [00:41:00] bringing other HR folks along. And, ~um,~ I wanna make sure that I, ~like,~ share as much as what I'm learning out in the open so I can help other people do the same thing inside of their own organizations, 'cause ultimately that's how we're gonna change the world- Exactly
of work and how we work and how we share information at the end of the day, right? It doesn't- Yeah ... you can't just do it in your silo. And ~so, ~yes, DM me on LinkedIn. I will do my best. I do share a lot. ~I, ~I post a lot. I try to share a lot, but please find me there, and happy to chat. Amazing. Sarika, thank you so much for joining us on the WorkOps Podcast.
We might have to bring you on again. ~Uh, ~there was so much- Yes ... rich insight that you shared there. And, ~uh,~
to everyone else listening, we'll catch you on the next one. Thanks everybody. Thank you.