???Asking the right questions as a People team | Kim Rohrer, Co-Founder at PeakHR

Part of our biweekly L&D Hero Interview Series. We chat with some of the top voices in People Ops and talent development to understand what learning looks like today.

This is a summary version of this week's article in Yen's Newsletter. You can read the full article (with video snippets!) here .

Kim Rohrer is one of our go-to People experts, and for good reason. She has deep experience running people-first cultures and distributed organizations that prioritize value-based decision making and scaling the best parts of a company’s core. She created and led the People function at Disqus with a focus on holistic employee experience, leading the team through growth, reductions, and an eventual acquisition. She ran all things People at Stride and scaled employee experience at Oyster during a period of massive, globally distributed hyper growth.

In addition to people strategy, Kim is also a founder. She co-founded the Organization Organizers, a resource group for People Operations practitioners (Office Managers, Assistants, HR professionals, and other such folks) at startups. She joined TendLab as a cofounder in 2020, to further the movement to create a better future for working parents. Most recently, she became Co-founder and Chief Creative Officer of PeakHR , a cohort-based training program for the next generation of progressive HR practitioners, elevating the role by empowering the leaders and educating the broader industry.

In our conversation, we talked about how Kim thinks about the latest People Ops trends in AI and return to office, the best approach to People tech stacks, and how to drive high performance and become a trusted partner with the executive team. Read on to learn about:

• How Kim adapts work to her working style
• How People Ops teams can think about the new AI trend
• How return-to-office policies reflect company values
• The problem with slapping AI on any product
• How to approach your HR tech stack
• How to drive results as a People Team
• The importance of having an executive that trusts you

Thanks so much for chatting with us, Kim! Tell us about your journey into People Ops.

I've been in the field now for about 15 years and I've done a bunch of different jobs, all within the People space. Most recently I was working on People in general at Oyster, which is a Kona partner, and I started out as the interim Head of People. Then, I went in-house and focused on running employee experience. And then I transitioned into a role that was more strategic direction and leadership coaching.?

I was unfortunately a part of the most recent round of cuts at Oyster, which totally makes sense given the role that I was doing and the phase of Oyster's development. But now I'm taking that strategic People work and seeing how I can apply that to helping lots of different companies.?

I'm doing consulting, I'm doing writing, I'm doing a lot of different projects. I describe it as a patchwork approach to utilizing my skills in a lot of different ways. I've been very public about this on LinkedIn; I have ADHD and something that I've learned about my work focus is that I really prefer to have a lot of different things going on at once. If I'm focusing on just one thing for a long period of time, I get bored and distracted.?

So I'm really trying to lean into that in this new phase of my career growth and look at the styles of work that work best for me. What are the ways that I work best and how can I show up for the community and for the industry in a way that takes advantage of my unique strengths and skills? And also allows me to be in a work environment where I can thrive? That's a very unique opportunity. I've tried not to waste it.

What People Ops trends are you seeing right now? Are there any that you’re excited, or not so excited, about?

One of them, as I'm sure everyone can guess, is AI and its applications. There's a lot of potential, I think, for HR teams to utilize AI in a variety of different ways. And I have some friends who were doing some really interesting work in developing GPT models for specific parts of the HR practice. I think if we can, as an industry and as a field, see the potential and also see where the boundaries are, I think that's the [trick].?

Everyone always gets worried about whether we're going to be replaced by robots. That's just not true, right? We hope not, but I think we can look at the boundaries of what this technology is capable of [and] how we can utilize this technology to make [us] better at [our] jobs or to free up time so that [we’re] doing more high-level work that does require human attention. I'm seeing applications in HR administrative tasks and compliance tasks and some really exciting stuff that's more generative, like the stuff that Kona's working on with manager coaching...?

I think there's a lot of things that we think in HR that, “Only I can do this, only a human can do this.” But if you give the tool the right data, AI is only as smart as the data it's using. So if you're feeding it the data that you want it to use, if you're feeding it information about your company's culture and policies and practices and sample scripts and things like that, then the AI is going to be able to create conversations and engage in these conversations in a way that feels authentic to your company and is in fact aligned with the types of answers that you in HR would give. Of course, there will always be times when you have to escalate beyond what the chatbot can do, but I think any HR person can agree that we spend a lot of time answering the same questions over and over, even in manager coaching scenarios. What if you could scale yourself by outsourcing some of that to the robot, and then save yourself for the really tough stuff that hasn't been data-fied yet. So that's one very big exciting one.?

The other is, I've been seeing a lot of conversations about working styles and culture and the conversation about return-to-office and hybrid. There's been a lot of conversation that I like that's around having the work environment that's right for your company and your culture. Based on how companies are approaching return to office, you're able to really get a sense of what the culture of that company is, right? There's a flare up right now about Amazon, they just said something about how you can't get promoted if you don't return to the office. Like you won't be eligible for promotion unless you come into the office, which is absurd, right? But, I will say, it is in line with their culture. Amazon very clearly has said this is the type of culture we have, and if it doesn't work for you, get out. I've read so many things about their culture, I'm like, this is aggressive and toxic masculinity, and it's blah, blah, blah, buzzword. This culture seems like it really sucks. At least in terms of how they portray it, right? The culture that they put out there in the market. “We're tough, we're competitive, we're ruthless and aggressive” and to me personally, those are not positive attributes because that's not my personal belief system that I ascribe to. But for some people that might be perfectly aligned with the type of culture that they would thrive in. And that's what they want and need. And it'd be great for them.?

So, do I agree that not returning to the office hinders your career development? No, I think it's a load of shit, but I do think it's in line with how Amazon has portrayed their culture. I think I'm not surprised by it. It feels in line with who they say they are as a company. I like that this conversation about remote, work from home, hybrid, in office culture––all these conversations are being connected to company values and desired cultural experience in a way that I haven't seen. These big business decisions are tied to culture and values.?

For my entire career, I have held a very strong belief that your values should inform your business decisions, your product decisions, your decisions on how you do everything in your company. And so it's interesting to see companies starting to use their values and their culture as the decision making framework for where they want people to be when they work.

You talked about AI and HR. It seems like there's a lot of hype going on right now, where do you see this all shaking out?

I think we're gonna see a rise in companies that are touting their brilliant AI integration, right? Everyone's like, “We've got AI too. We've got AI-enabled this, AI enabled that.” And I think everyone is going to try to integrate it because they want to be trendy and they don't want to be left behind. I think a lot of those options either won't be relevant to the product, and so it won't really make sense, or they may not be any more useful than if you were to use ChatGPT on your own. I think the companies that will succeed in integrating AI are the ones where it actually makes sense to be integrated into the product in an organic and meaningful way, not just [those that] slapped AI on there.

I see companies being like, “How can we add AI? What can we use AI for?” If you don't need to use it, don't use it. But if it actually can enable your product to scale better, or it can engage your audience in a more impactful way, then that's why when you should be using it, that's why you should be integrating.

How should People Teams approach their tech stack? How do you evaluate it, beyond incorporating AI?

First I’ll give a shout out to my friend, Hebba, who talked about HR tech stacks in a recent newsletter. Her newsletter is called, "I Hate It Here ". It was fantastic.

We've been talking about the HR tech stack for as long as I can remember, when we were building our own janky tech stacks out of (no offense) SurveyMonkey, Google Forms, and ADP Total Rewards. That the tech stack. We've been talking about it forever, and now there's just so many options. There are so many ways that you can build a tech stack that's right for you and your company.

There are a few players out there that are trying to be the one-stop-shop and combine all their features into one tool. The risk there is that they might do a lot of things not very well and maybe there's one or two core legacy products that are their main focus, but then they add on a bunch of other stuff because they want to compete with all the other people who are trying to be a one-stop-shop, and you just don't end up with best in class experience.

I think when you're evaluating your tech stack, you really have to look at what you're trying to achieve. What are the goals that you have for introducing that technology? How is it going to save you time, save you money, make for a better, more seamless experience, or increase engagement. And I mean like, literally, engagement with the tool. Cause sometimes you bring on a new piece of HR technology and nobody uses it because they're not engaged with it. When you're evaluating the technology, understand what the purpose is and why you’re exploring this new piece of technology. Is it additive? Is it replacing something you already have? Is it gonna tie all of your technologies together in a new way? And really being clear on what your top priorities are.

Because then if it is a tool that's an all-in-one everything tool, and the two things that they're best at are not two features that you prioritize, then you're just gonna end up with a bunch of crappy features that you're trying to use, but aren't actually what they're investing product development dollars into. Understanding the product’s priorities and the direction, the roadmap of the product that you're investing in, will help you evaluate whether it's the right tool for you and your team. See the part of the market they’re trying to fill. Are they duplicative? Is there a lot of competition? Who are their competitors? Could you get more for your money with a different tool?

All of these questions are good questions, but I think ultimately there's no one answer for what should your tech stack be. It's rather, “What size and stage is your company? How big is your people team? How much is the technology needing to pull the weight where you might not have humans to do the work? What kind of problems is your organization facing? What are your priorities as a people team?” And then you start to see like, “Where are the gaps? Where do I need to fill in with tech?” And then you can start evaluating. “What tech do we have? What tech do we need?” You can fill the gaps that way.

I think a lot of times you get this like checklist that's like, “We need an ATS, HRIS, we need a benefits platform, we need an experience platform” and you start thinking about all the different things you need and that's how you end up with your like toolkit of 9 to 20 pieces of technology that you may be utilizing, maybe not. Every year, if not every six months, depending on how fast you're changing, you should do a full audit of all of your tech and make sure it's all still working for you.

And finally, what are the most important things for People teams to think about for driving business results and high performance?

Right now has to be about prioritization and like, ruthless prioritization at that. You're not going to be able to make an impact in all of the ways that you want to. Especially now, I think focus on where can you make them the most visible impact on the organization and prioritize accordingly. I think there has to be a balance between short-term problem solving and firefighting, and long-term strategy. Depending on what kind of fires you're putting out, [ask yourself,] “What's going to have the most impact on the business? Where can you afford to hit pause and build a longer term strategy versus where do you need to get this fire under control?”

So much of this question depends on the type of leadership team you're working with. Something I noticed with my coaching clients is that if you have a CEO who trusts you and empowers you and shares what the priorities are, then great. Most people don't have that. Most people have a CEO that says, “Prove the value of your team, prove the value of your work” in a way that frankly, other departments are not expected to demonstrate their value. I'm assuming most people watching this are going to be facing that uphill battle, of feeling like every day you're trying to prove your worth, prove your value, prove your business acumen, prove the actual ROI of all the things you do. That's exhausting. And so you have to figure out how you're going to build trust with your executive team so that you can work your way back from this “always proving yourself all day, every day” mentality and into something where you're seen as more of the trusted partner and thought leader for your function.

If you're doing your work well, if you're doing your job well, people don't notice. They shouldn't notice. But if something breaks, then they see all the pieces. It's very challenging, especially if you're an externally motivated person. If you're a person who thrives on external validation and you want the rewards and recognition, like someone saying, “That was good” or “Great job”––it's hard. It's really hard to do this job if you are waiting for someone to tell you're doing a good job. But you have to find the places where you can increase visibility, especially if you're on the exec team. The other execs on your team should know what you're doing and how it has value, even if no one else in the organization sees it.

Thanks for reading Yen's Newsletter.

I’m Yen, co-founder at Kona . My goal is to help every manager be a great leader. You might be managing a team yourself, or supporting better managers at your organization. Hopefully, this newsletter helps you look at the ever-changing landscape of leadership in a new way.

Since late 2019, I’ve interviewed 1500+ remote managers, People Ops leaders, and tech executives to learn how they lead teams and design incredible distributed company cultures. While every company’s different, everyone’s trying to answer the same big question: “How do you enable amazing people to do amazing work, while remote?”

That’s the great thing about big questions, they bring people together. Learning is sharing, and I’ve always looked to share everything we know as soon as we learn it. That's the goal for this newsletter: capture and synthesize all of our remote management learnings in a neat and shareable archive.

Every week, I’ll alternate between self-written articles and interviews with industry leaders.

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