Hiring GlossaryWhat is people operations?
What is people operations?
There’s been a shakeup in the working world in recent years. In the past, human resources (HR) teams focused on minimizing risk for their companies by ensuring compliance and decreasing liability. But ever since Google popularized the idea of replacing HR with “people operations,” forward-thinking companies have adopted this term as a signal that they see employees as critical to their success.
Traditional HR teams often take a transactional approach to their tasks – they fill open roles, have new hires fill out required paperwork and ensure they’re not breaking any laws or putting the company at risk.
In contrast, people operations aims to maximize the value of employees and drive business results by taking a more holistic view of the employee experience. Through a more cohesive approach to disciplines like talent acquisition, onboarding and people management, people operations aims to support employees during every stage of their tenure and treat them with respect and consideration.
People operations vs. human resources
It’s true that there’s a lot of overlap between people operations and human resources – both terms refer to the department or team that manages tools and programs that affect the people who work at a company.
Human resources or HR is the older term, so it’s used more widely and tends to be more common in larger companies, while people operations can be perceived as more of a startup or tech company term.
There’s more than a wording difference between these two terms – they reflect two distinct approaches to supporting people at work. Traditional HR has long been seen as an administrative function focused on policies, compliance and reducing risk.
People operations takes a more modern view. It looks at how the full employee experience, from hiring to development to engagement, can drive better performance and stronger business outcomes. Instead of reacting to issues, people ops helps shape programs and decisions that support both employees and the organization.
Let’s take a closer look at how this plays out in the everyday work of HR vs. people operations teams:
- Traditional HR is informed: The team is told about decisions and expected to execute on them.
- People operations teams are consulted: They’re brought into strategic conversations and decisions because they add value with their insight and opinions.
- Traditional HR is reactive: The team responds to issues and emergencies as they come up.
- People operations teams are deliberate: They make sure they understand high-level business goals and create proactive programs that help the organization achieve those goals.
- Traditional HR is tactical: The team focuses on executing tasks like running payroll or ensuring new hires have completed all the necessary paperwork.
- People operations teams are strategic: They create goal-based programs and initiatives.
- Traditional HR is narrow: The team works within the boundaries of “traditional HR practices.”
- People operations teams are holistic: They take a wider view of business – including its objectives, competitive landscape and financial goals – and use people tools to address them.
You can see how the label isn’t as important as the underlying philosophy and approach to work. Taking a consultative, deliberate and strategic approach to your work matters much more than whatever name for your department or job titles you choose. Read more about traditional HR vs. people operations here.
Core functions of people operations
Describing what people operations means here at Greenhouse, former Director of People Operations Jessica Pfisterer wrote, “The employee is our customer, and we work to make it easy to be a Greenhouse employee.”
Along similar lines, former Recruitment & People Relations Manager at Bonobos, Kelsey Garske Pellegrino, told us, “As a People Team, we want to continue to understand what resonates most with our employees and from that, continue delivering programs that keep our team motivated and happy and performing at a high level.”
There are a few core areas where people operations teams tend to focus their efforts: hiring, retention, employee engagement and performance management and feedback. Let’s take a closer look at each one.
Hiring
Forward-thinking companies understand that employees are their most valuable asset, which is why they view hiring as strategic rather than an administrative function. This often involves the people operations team investing time and energy into a structured hiring process that defines the qualities of successful candidates and designs the interview process to assess candidates on those qualities. Training all hiring managers and interviewers in this consistent approach also reduces bias and gives candidates from traditionally underrepresented backgrounds a more equitable experience.
Retention
After all the time and effort companies put into hiring, it’s important to retain talent and not lose them for preventable reasons (such as lack of proper onboarding, poor management or a mismatch between the job they were offered and the job they end up doing). “Prioritizing the development of people fuels our ability to retain them in a meaningful way,” said Donald Knight, former Chief People Officer at Greenhouse. People operations teams might focus on improving retention by designing comprehensive onboarding programs, creating learning and development opportunities for employees or ensuring employees’ needs are met with competitive compensation and total rewards packages.
Employee engagement
There’s a strong connection between how engaged someone is at work and how long they’re likely to stay with a specific employer. People operations teams recognize this and look for ways to proactively promote employee engagement through programs that contribute to work-life balance and diversity, equity and inclusion (DE&I). Regular check-ins and pulse surveys also provide another way for people operations teams to gather data and insights on employee engagement.
Performance management and feedback
Committing to the people who work at your company means you give them the skills that will help them succeed today and in the future. While traditional HR teams might view performance management as an opportunity to rank employees and decide who’s eligible for raises or promotions, the people operations mindset takes the view of how you can help your employees continue to learn and grow in their roles. This might involve training managers in giving effective feedback and identifying skills that will be most valuable in the near future, and providing opportunities to develop those skills.
Roles within a people operations team
Here are a few of the roles you’re likely to find within a people operations team:
- A department leader such as a Chief People Officer, VP of People or Head of People
- Recruiting or talent acquisition professionals such as recruiters and sourcers
- People operations managers or specialists who might focus on specific areas like onboarding or total rewards
- Employee experience professionals who might focus on the office environment and facilities as well as the company culture and other more intangible aspects of the employee experience
- Learning & development professionals who design training, mentoring, upskilling and reskilling opportunities so employees can continue to grow during their time at the company
The exact roles and composition of your people operations team will vary depending on the size and stage of your company. A smaller, earlier-stage company that’s doing a lot of hiring might need more recruiters, for example, while a larger or more mature company might have more people who are focused on employee experience.
Here are a few specific examples:
- When Enigma had about 60 employees, VP of People Rebecca Price described a people team with four roles: a VP of People, Lead Recruiter, Recruiter and People & Operations Manager.
- When Flatiron Health had about 250 employees, Director of Recruiting Hillary Kanarek Mager explained that the 14-person people team was broken into three main areas: recruiting, people operations and learning and development.
- When Bonobos had about 350 employees, Recruitment & People Relations Manager Kelsey Garske Pellegrino described the people operations team this way: “The team consists of: our Chief People Officer, Total Rewards, People Relations, Recruitment and Employee Experience. Essentially, the POps Team supports every phase of the employee lifecycle and employees’ day-to-day needs at Bonobos.”
Who decides to become a people operations professional? There’s not necessarily a single career path that leads to people operations – it’s a field that attracts people from a range of backgrounds and experiences.
Rather than requiring a specific degree or qualification, being successful in people operations depends on having strong interpersonal skills (liking people is an unofficial prerequisite!), problem-solving abilities and an understanding of employment laws. You can earn relevant credentials from organizations like SHRM or HRCI, though not all companies require them.
Finally, it’s worth noting that people operations teams rarely work completely on their own. They need to collaborate with other teams like finance, marketing, IT and the C-suite, which means having strong communication skills and empathy are also key.
Best practices for effective people operations
As we’ve already discussed, adopting people operations involves a fundamental shift in how your company views its employees. “People-first companies care about the employee experience and prioritize people in all of their decision-making,” wrote Greenhouse Chief Marketing Officer Carin Van Vuuren.
Here are a few of the best practices Carin suggested for adopting the people operations mindset and becoming a people-first company:
- Focus less on resource administration and more on processes that meet human needs.
- Help employees develop career paths that match their interests and capabilities with business needs.
- Evaluate the impact that company policies have on DE&I, acknowledging the link between flexibility and inclusivity.
- Create a hiring system built on engagement and a great candidate experience.
- Encourage Talent Acquisition teams to work closely with hiring managers to determine the skills a team needs and to implement equitable hiring practices that identify, source and attract the best candidates.
Take a deeper dive into these best practices for becoming a people-first company here.
Technology also plays a critical role in a successful people operations strategy. “People-first companies use technology that expands human ability, enhances workplace collaboration and improves the employee experience. They avoid compliance-only tools that are purely for administration and a low value-add for employees,” wrote Carin.
If you’re using outdated or makeshift tools to run your recruiting or onboarding processes, for example, it means your team members are wasting time coming up with workarounds and you’re losing out on the data and insights you could be collecting. Being selective about tools that are user-friendly and integrate with other platforms can boost productivity and ensure your data is up to date. Learn more about choosing the right technology for your team here.
How do you know if your people operations team is successful? Anecdotally, you’ll regularly hear from employees about how much they love your company and why they’re excited to come to work every day. Those stories are powerful, but you’ll also want to couple them with quantitative data. You can track metrics like retention and attrition rates, candidate experience and employee engagement scores to get a better sense of the impact that you’re having at different stages of the employee lifecycle.
You may also find it helpful to consider employee lifetime value (ELTV). With this lens, you can look at the impact that different people operations strategies – like better onboarding, management and training – have on ELTV.
The future of people operations
We’ve already seen some major shakeups to the world of work in recent years. Artificial intelligence (AI) in particular is transforming the candidate and employee experience as well as how companies are managing recruiting and other regular tasks. People operations teams will need to find the right balance between the speed and efficiency they can gain from these tools while still offering a personalized and human experience to their candidates and employees.
With an increasing number of distributed teams, people operations teams will need to support collaboration and productivity for employees – no matter where they’re located. This will likely involve adapting processes like new hire onboarding and training and taking a more intentional approach to company culture to create a sense of connection among distributed team members.
Because technology is always advancing and evolving, people operations teams can expect to have access to even richer data about all aspects of the employee experience. The insights people operations teams will be able to gain from this data will help them identify trends in employee behavior, predict turnover and help create learning and development programs that will prepare their people and their business for its future challenges.
This increased access to data will make it easier to make the case for investing in people operations initiatives and for connecting the experiences and needs of individual employees with the company’s overall goals.
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