The HR Infrastructure Gap No One Is Talking About with Jesse Schofer, Founder at Stacked

[Music] Welcome to the Foundation Series, your deep dive into startup compensation with industry leaders from across the startup world. Join me, Matt McFarland, a people operations leader to an compensation specialist as we uncover the strategies and practices driving success in tech startups around the world. Here insights from heads of people, founders and experts as we explore how to build robust compensation frameworks that not only fuel growth of retention, but do so in the dynamic startup environment that we all know and love. Let's get into it. Before we dive into this episode, I have some really exciting use. Startup People's Diamond is returning for 2026. This is an event where we bring together the sharpest minds from people professionals across the A-Back region. If you want to stay in the know about programming and tickets, sign up to the wait list by visiting startuppeoplesummit.com. There's a link in the show notes. Welcome to today's episode where I'm speaking to Jesse Schofur, founder of StackDent, a leading voice in HR tech. We're going to dive into strategic HR tech deployment, including how to build a scalable HR tech stack that aligns with business outcomes and prepares for AI transformation. Let's get into it. Jesse, we're kicking things out. Welcome to the poll. Thanks for having me. I'm excited for this, Matt. Me too. Me too. All right, let's dive right in. You've obviously got a really interesting background around not just HR, but the HR tech sign of things. I think to mean that always comes to mind for me when I think about HR tech is like, how few are a number of tools we get in the HR team? I think sometimes because they're re-employee, we talk about context switching and answer style and really conscious of not having too many platforms to make employees have to use. But in reality, when you stack us up against sales or all of some of these other functions, we're pretty relied on the some of the tools that we have. I guess what I'm trying to get to is we really only get to deploy a little bit of budget compared to our peers. Something I'm really keen to start off with with this conversation is like, where do we start with in terms of making sure that it's the right tool, the best tool, where do we kick off from? Great question. I think it's something that comes up. It does come up a lot in teams is working out where do you put the money, especially in HR. Like you said, we get less budget, comparatively also to other teams. I think that's the first mistake. Actually, I think we actually do need more budget. I think with the changes coming around, the technology we have accessible now, and the fact that we want to have potentially, we're going to try to optimize the people we have, they're going to need better tools. The existing tools, I don't think, are all going to be able to serve the needs of future business in the way we want to operate. I do think that that will slowly start to change and potentially the cost structures and flexibility of how SaaS products actually come to the market and how we buy them and the cost of those will also change. But if we think about, if you've only got, I don't like this concept that. Well, we don't want people to log into too many tools. I think that is BS, honestly. Look at your phone. How many apps do you have and how many things do you log into? And why do you log into all of those different apps around? But all those different passwords because they bring you value because they give you something, they give you something that you want to do. They log in. They're good to use. You like it, right? So there's a value add to that effort of logging in. And then if you think about sales, marketing, whatever, the head, all these tools and they use them for a purpose, they need them to get their job done and they're done and they're useful, right? They bring a value. So when we talk about, hey, Chate, well, people don't want to log into the performance tool. It's like, why? Why don't they want to log in? Like they look into thousands of other tools that got single sign on the third button. That to me says that the tools we have are not serving the needs of the business and they're not bringing enough value. So that for me is the issue. The tech we have had traditionally stepped us up from admin paperwork, you know, HR teams to maybe more modern people teams. It gave us more tools, but I don't think it's the end point. I think the next step is where we need to go, which is more value adding tech infrastructure. Yeah, if you go from how do you like deal with less budget and choosing less tools or how do you choose the right stack? I think first off is working out where can you actually really add value? And that doesn't mean just for the employees. It actually means for HR. How can you free up HR's time? How do you make sure all the admin is completely like almost 100% automated out of the way? Because then you can actually have the human connection and do things and that's where you will probably add more value than a tool, right? Because if you're putting all your tooling in employee facing stuff and you got all your people in admin facing stuff, which is currently how it is. Can you make a lot of sense? Yeah, so from Gary, right, it's like pushing back on this kind of notion that actually having too many tools is an issue and actually it's like, let's make sure they're the right tools and they're actually like people see the value in them and they actually want to log into them because they get something from it or it's all some kind of need for them. That makes a lot of sense, especially when you use the the the app comparison. I know my phone is a riddle with them. What's like the starting point then for companies to go, okay, well, we need a bit of tech, kind of way too from here. So you mentioned what's the actual problem at first? Where are you from there? Yeah, so I think this is probably, you kind of have to step back a little bit and think about HR as we do it now and how HR in my version, in my opinion, should be done. I think what we do now is we go, oh, well, there's a fire or we traditionally, we need a someone pushes in the business, we need to automate compensation cycles or whatever, for instance, right? So you go look at a comp tool and you're like, oh, my God. But actually, that's kind of like, there's a lot of push in HR. It's like, this is what we need. We need you to do that and then you end up like jumping on all these things and you don't really think about it strategically. That's how I've witnessed it in the past. I think what we need to move more towards, which I think is where we're trying to go in the function is actually going, okay, again, like, what do we actually need? What's going to drive the business? Setting expectations and showing that roadmap because of course, with a product, customers like, I need this, I need that, I need this. But of course, product teams go, okay, well, let's prioritize, let's say expectations, that's going to come in Q1 or QH2 or next year, or these are the roadmap and you setting expectations. So people are actually okay with a no and you're not going to get that as long as they know that you've been heard and that they know when it's coming and why. So if you're not going to do comp tech right now, why are we not doing comp tech? What is more important for the business and why and translating that so everyone understands? So I think that is the failure that we've had so far. We don't think strategically. We don't work with the sea level that we, you know, don't have a seat at the table all the time, but we also don't actively plan out and prioritize our work. We tend to stack it all on top of each other, rush it through, do it fully, set poor expectations. So I always start with prioritisation. What the hell are we actually working on? Why are we working on it? And let's communicate it because that in itself, if you don't skip that step, then you actually build respect because people go, the reason we're not doing that is because we've got all the, this is why the business needs X right now. Great. I can wait for my comp tech and I can accept that that's not going to be perfect because we're going to get all these other important things first. So that's where the prioritisation matters and then you step into being able to justify budget more for that tech, for whatever it is that you need to support because you've already got the buy-in from the leadership that that's the most important thing that the business needs it. It's on the road map, it's communicated and then you find the best solution and that usually involves some form of tech and then it's like an easier pathway. Right? So you're already setting yourself up for success, so to speak and I think that's where a lot of teams fall over. They're quite isolated. You know, your tech, your TA teams kind of doing your own thing. Of course, in big businesses, it's harder to align, but in general, setting yourself up for success in that regard and actually thinking about your infrastructure makes a lot of sense. Your infrastructure in context of that business, right? It'll always be different. This cool stuff, but there is a difference in what businesses need when. So yeah, that's kind of how I like to encourage people to think about where to start with technology is that purpose and then the other side is then your process design, which we can get into if you want to, that's a big topic then. One hour's over, that was the every go. I hear what you're saying, though about like, I think sometimes like we talk about this like this invisible work or, you know, I've heard the term, toparmer plus one, the use and I think we're definitely, I think that businesses can take advantage of that by all means. I think they can throw things out of the team, the people team that maybe don't, you know, it's unclear where else in the business that could go or something like that or whatever it might be, but I wonder, or I certainly feel and in my experience has been that sometimes we let that happen to us as well, where we do poorly define what we do, we're here for and like the service, we're here to fundamentally deliver to the business. I haven't got this one like, I guess people who are like, trying to, yeah, to do a lot of things you talked about, like get in with the business, it's got to start from a place of like stepping out from his kind of like back office function that we've been traditionally and saying, hey, here are the like the verticals or whatever the things are where responsible for and kind of, you know, being clear about it. I'm a big fan. I think I've cloud-formed it a bit here is like product, but thinking like having a roadmap, being clear about the things that are trying to accomplish as a team, I just think there's so much to be said for being able to share that sort of data with with your business. and actually give them a sense of like, what are you here for and what are you accomplishing? Um, but I really like how you're talking about that as almost a lever towards stepping into like a H.R.T.A.X.S. solution because, you know, at the best, uh, I guess, defense or, offense to become rich where you look at it against like, being thrown something or the business is being able to say, well here, look at all the things that we're doing at the moment and that's occupying 100 or 110% of our time. So like, what do you want me to stop doing? or how are we going to make that easier through HR tech and what's the priority? What needs the human touch status of the things? Yeah. How did you… No, I was just going to say, on there, I think that's really great that you said, "What do we stop doing?" That's the question we don't. If you don't do it. No, exactly. Yeah, we don't ask. What should we stop? Because a lot of people don't have that disability of their road map either. So it's very hard to justify that, what do we add, what do we drop kind of situation? If you don't have that, groundwork done. Yeah. Yeah. And so you're just like, you know, you've built a business around discoverability. So once a business is, or a HR team has decided, "Okay, yeah, we've got, you know, buy them from the business that want us to get, I don't know, a contact or whatever it is to try and help take either some load off our plate or create some kind of, um, kind of ability within the business and, you know, it allows us to do something more efficiently. What in your opinion are like the best next step towards going? How do we actually know what we need? We know, you know, generally we need something that solves for this problem. But how do we start to get specific and actually start to find a solution for our problem? I mean, it's the, it's the actual question. It is very hard to do. Have to say and get it right. To know exactly like the right tech, there's so many products and there's so many ways you can solve a problem as well. I think understanding what is your idea of success? So defining what actually, what does this successful rollout look like? What would it solve for the business? And what are the key things that this project has to do versus what would it be nice that it does? So it's like nice to have as versus, you know, um, you know, mandatory thing, right? That it has to achieve. I think a lot of people don't look at that vision and say, at the end of this, this is what success looks like. This is what our new, this is what our new day-to-day process will look like. This is how, if in an ideal world, this is what we want the outcome to be, because once you know that, you have to also really think about like, you know, oh well, the ideal process is that all of our data is moved across and whatever. Well, okay, step back from that, how do you get the data out of the current system? How do you get the data into the new system? Is there issues with the, with those exports or imports? Is there ways to like upload data? Like that becomes like a requirement? You know, so if you think through like steps and I think a lot of people rush into tech, they're like, we need this and we're going to rush it out because as pressure from the business, they fail to plan. It's like, we already know the saying like failing to plan is planning to fail. Like that whole upfront piece sets you up for so much more success. And it's, you know, a proven change strategy that you plan up front and you projects, you know, you have a whole planning phase for a reason, you know. Um, so for me, it's like really defining what does that look like and really what actually will move the needle for that business because you can be in lots of businesses and they will need a HRES, but you'll need to do different things. It'll be like, well, there's 19 countries in this come, you know, that we're serving. Whereas versus we have, we're only in Germany or only in Australia. Like it's going to be a different requirement for those two different HR systems, right? And you're going to have different products that serve those needs. So the planning and requirements mapping is extremely important and take time ask questions, start from where you want to go, step backwards and ask those questions on all the different things. If we, what is the ideal outcome? Build it backwards. That's how I build out requirements mapping. And then from there that helps you understand, okay, what are the base requirements for what I need? Not like finding a way to necessarily achieve that because there's going to be like a say different solutions will solve a problem in different ways. So you don't want to define what the solution necessarily is. You want to define what the outcome, which is very difficult. If I'm beginning with the end of mind. Exactly. And then, and then like, that's why build stacked a database to really like easily and quickly discover technology on the market. Because there isn't always in there's a lot of products. And what I saw in the past was companies, you know, I worked in companies and we'd be like, when you tech and it's like, oh, the three biggest names that come to the top of your mind. And that's like your short list. Really, that's like how people would choose the short list. I'm like, I tell you what, what stuff in the past as well. That's like you to what? If it already know, or the people in my network, that was kind of how I procure tech in the vast. And that's not necessarily a bad thing to do to ask people. I think that's fine. Just like when you're hiring for someone, you also ask for, you know, referrals and things like that. But you the bigger your net, like when you're looking at, like I kind of connect it to the same process of like recruiting someone. If you go out and get like a broad net of people that like, you know, obviously have a job description of your requirements, right? And people apply. They're coming to you because I've looked at them, they want to match. But like, you've got to kind of do that process yourself when you're looking for vendors. You go, here's my requirements and let me catch a net of relevant vendors that could suit those needs and then push them through a funnel of assessment, right? And the first one is that discovery of what is even on the market that could sort my problem and does maybe the bare minimum of the mandatory requirements. Like, then I'm going to push forward with those short list. And that doesn't happen. Usually, like I said, it's like a couple of three big names. That's it. We go in a forum and you ask people also not bad, but it's kind of like starting with a reference before you know that tool even suits your business because you're going to be like, well, X tool worked for me. But X tool works for Germany and only up to like 500 people and you're multinational with 7,000. Yeah, it's like using it's like people who go, oh, well, Google does that say you know, those of the things. You're like, please, like we love Google, but like a good little note. So let's calm down. So I think that's where the whole selection process in that short listing, the short listing of the short list. It's like the long list to the short list is what you want to get to in that first step. And that's why that's basically what stack tells with like go to the database you search to try and find, you know, what what the market even has to offer in terms of research. But you and I think that's important to just see what the market has. Then you can be like, I'm a bit more informed. Then you can go to the next step. No one wants to jump in and see like 4,000 demos. Like no one's got time for that. So you do want to make sure that the demo you the demos you do do are the products that you really feel like you've not missed anything and you've also got a match on certain mandatory criteria. And then the first call is always that, you know, working out whether the rest of the mandatory criteria as quickly as possible are met, right? Which is the whole number podcast we can go into and how to do. I do demo. How to do demos for vendors. I hear you saying I think I've definitely seen that I probably can't be against that kind of some cost fallacy where it's like you keep looking at tools and just I'm tired of looking at tools that you kind of just go to the bus and pick something because you know where we just we haven't found any of the go ones and so we just yeah, reluctantly choose like the best of the worst something like that. I'm I'm curious about your thoughts like when sorry let me stop by saying I feel like we're in this like year up for the past couple of years where we're seeing a lot of like consolidation of page R tech we're seeing that being players, by a lot of small players it seems to be like a bit of a trend to the past couple of years. I'm curious what your thoughts are around when a company should look at something like when it does like bigger comprehensive players versus something that's like more of a point solution that potentially is not like sold for that problem more effectively even though it may lack some of the de-integration of a other big company. Well it's a good question. I mean how long is a piece of string? It's it's like it's it's always depends right it depends it depends it's hard to know. It's very contextual to the business. I think I of course there's really really there's like conglomerate like enterprise like massive multinational they're probably going to need a war robust system than some of the other like more all in ones that are targeting maybe a smaller market right. I think that's that's understood but I don't know how long that will last. I think they're also buying up small players because they're realizing that they can't deliver on the needs right and that they have tech that is very difficult to adjust and it worked for a long time and now we're moving at the speed of lining so they're not able to move at that speed. I think that's what's driving I think it's pretty clear that's what's driving you know acquisition they're not able to serve the market fast enough so they're buying the tech right. I think that's okay that's fine like the tech's great that they're buying so that's obviously why they've bought it. And so your question was around whether or not rather like why a point solution sorry or why an all in one. Yeah what are the things that a company might want to weigh up? It's usually budget and this idea that idea that we shouldn't log into one tool that people choose an all in one. I don't believe that all in ones will serve all of the parts of HR well because they just can't like you can't for it's like the you can't focus on 20 things and do them all well you've got to do like a couple of things and do them great or you're going to have 20 things they're going to be great-tish. You're not sure which parts are that of the great parts right and I think that's what we see all in ones like there's stuff that they're really really excel at and then they add on things to make it easier for their clients to just adjust but then you'll probably and I think a lot of people end up doing that and the challenge is I think there's a lot of contractual things around lock-ins, procurement and I think that's going to change because the market moves so fast and you can see people are like basically vibe coding tools because they're like what my current all in one has doesn't do what I need so or even when solutions sometimes don't do what I need so I'm in a vibe code my own thing because I want to be more flexible or I want lower cost or whatever it might be which I don't think is the way to go for a lot of things but anyway the market's clearly not serving a flexible enough procurement and purchase strategy. and cycles for people and how fast we move in business and how fast we need to adjust tech at the moment because that's new, the speed of which we've is new. That being said, point solutions, I think I prefer personally to work with a really good core that maybe has some modules like some of the all-in-one modules that are less critical and then for the critical stuff and that'll be depending on the business, taking point solutions. They have to integrate. They're not integrating and they're not working together and the data is not flowing. Goodbye. Data infrastructure in the future is number one. Again, that's my opinion. It would also be the business context, but again, there's a place all-in-one. It just depends on the guardrails you've been given. I hear you. I know coming out of COVID, there's been a few triggers for cost, consciousness and things like that to really be imposed on the business, but I've said they've been in a position a couple of times where we've had to consolidate down, we've had to let go of a tool for the version that existed in our all-in-one or something like that. I think you're right. There's inevitably some degradation of capability. I think one of the things people often uses when they go for tool that is a point solution is really good at what it does and they adopt maybe the module or something from there, all-in-one or they're best for breed or whatever it is. They don't realize the work that actually comes back into the team from that and start to think about what is the impact and rather than see them gradually stretched and taken to the extreme there. I'm obviously giving you a inverse example, but where I'm trying to get to is like, how do you see teams or what's your advice to teams who are brim on this tech to really think about what the way this does change in how they work with their day-to-day inbox like? I think that's often a misstep in certainly in procuratory technologies. We go, gosh, this will really sell that problem that they don't really go down to the level of like, for what to meet for you on a day-to-day week-to-week basis. Curious who thoughts that? This is a big topic. It comes down at the end of the day, tech is infrastructure, right? It's part of your marketing model within your team, within the company context as well because you are factional in the Euro and people or TA function, but you also affect the broader company and how it rates. It is a big thing. That's why I think people tech doesn't get enough. It doesn't get enough time of day with executives and like strategy and with that thought process behind how we build people infrastructure. I mean, it's always, I guess, I'm trying to think about how I word this right. We don't have the right infrastructure. I don't feel like we have the right tools for HR right now that we need. That's why we see the market like exploding with more and more stuff because we're still not serving the needs properly. At the same time, the teams are also struggling to articulate what they need to some degree and getting out of their current day-to-day process habits, right? Like you said, they don't really think about, if I bring this tech, what does it mean for our new day-to-day working styles or processes or sharing of machinual hours that actually work? So I think coming back to you, you need to think about your design of your operating model. It sounds very scary, but it's not. It's like, how do we work? How do we want to work? I feel like people should clear the slate when they're looking at tech, like at least for that particular part that they're looking at and to be almost even parts of the process map. Like really clear the slate and be like, ideal world. This is what we'd like to do and think about how things connect and how the person gets into that, how the humans actually interact within that process, as in like, wait as information pass hands, where are the hand of points, where is it changing into other teams, where is the cross functionality? Does this change, who has approval? Does it change? Does Jesse now not do contracts? Because they're automated. So what does Jesse do with her time? It means that I, whatever. There's so many things that happen when you start to build infrastructure for four people team. So it is complex. I don't know if he's even answering the question, but I think, yeah, going back to really understanding how we work as a people team and how infrastructure affects your process and your day-to-day task is important. And I think it's part of that planning piece that you do at the very beginning, but also part of your strategic piece, the forwarding becomes a project. I think that's part of what a senior leader needs to do in a people team is thinking about like your job is actually I'm there an operating model master. How do I design an operating model within people team in the context of the broader operating model and you know, all designed? How do I design that? That we effectively deliver the business needs with the least amount of cost resistance, with the best outcome of whatever. That's your goal. And then how do you flow through into the team? And people, I think, figured that whole piece. They're just like, again, very reactive, very like short term thinking, not long term, not looking on knock on. Of course, there's lots of things people need to do, but you've got to think of it in the context of how we work and how do we serve the business. And you said earlier, something that I liked, which was how we serve the business, so we're like a service function. And maybe this comes down to operating model a little bit more, but I like to think of it as people team should have a change or transformation or a project function, like the bit that does the new stuff. Know the prioritized that we need to do all these new things, prioritized them. That's your change. And on the other side, you have your run function, which is, now it's in play. Now we've done this project. We've delivered the final project output. It goes into the run team to run it and maintain it and deliver it to the business as a service front end. So you've got a front end that is service using the people products that get built, whatever that might be, whether it's a process or a tool or a combination. And then you have your, you know, your change function, they're obviously, what do you ever want to call the product, whether they use product thinking to deliver that change or come up with that change, it doesn't matter. You need people who are creating the stuff to then use with the business, right? And I think that what people forget is that that can actually be the same person. You have different hats. So in a small business, I will be a run function as I do my day to day and I will be a hat on change and project function as it's needed. And I think that cross functionality of what the HR teams end up being or will end up being more and more is going to really change how we think about how we work, think about how we manage people, skills we need, all sorts of things. Sorry, I'm going down a rabbit hole, but no, I mean, you're speaking, you're speaking my line of jump for those that are, and they're listening to the audio I'm smiling because this, this is pretty much, what you described is pretty much the model that we had in my people, I've seen the last company that I worked in. So we literally came in and I was like, yeah, we've got so much op stuff that it's getting the way I must think able to actually build the things that are going to give value out either back to ourselves as a team and speed up our process or it's going to give value back to the business as well. And that's literally what we do. I think we had a team as six or something, so I mean, sizeable team, split it into half of them ran as a as a product team. They had sprints they had deliverables or those other things and the other half ran and they worked quite cohesively because a lot of the running of the products and the tools that we and the services that we delivered gives you feedback that can then feed into the products out of things and like, yeah, what are you building and how you're prioritizing to rethink. So I love that and I'm loving particularly talked about like small teams or you know, people who are standalone in their role don't have to be missing out on this kind of thing either like, I mean, look, does it take a little bit more of a prioritization? Yeah, sure, but I mean, it's really it could be done with either, I don't know, they're creating a bit of a siloing off part of your day or 100 a week or something like that by just creating the environment where you can actually sit down and focus on on studies built which which I like said, I agree. I think for me like that's that's a really modern like operating model. I think or companies should embrace. What we talk about like companies that are changing their operating model as as techs come in and they're like doing a great job of kind of doing what you said and thinking with the in mind those things. What does it like great examples that come to mind like are the companies seem to doing this really well or examples you've seen where you're like, yeah, this is this is the benchmark is what I wish I saw in other other companies or maybe even the opposite. What are the what are the missons? You know, when the CEO asks you about retention by manager or where your pay gaps are whining and the ancestors to cross four tools and a spreadsheet you haven't touched in weeks, me too. Let me tell you about shapes. It's not an HRIS. It's a people operating system. Not just that, but it's an AI that's hit across all of your people data and you just ask it in plain English. Whenever the user came through that you it handed you a live answer backed by your own data. That's shapes and you can check it out, the link in the show notes. Let's get back to it. I don't think I mean as I'm not in house anymore, I don't and I don't work in business at the moment. I think it's hard to know doing it right. I think we can see what's maybe more or less would have a probably more efficient setup when you have small companies that are like the new modern, they say, lovable or the big headlines where they're like really small teams and they've still got to do HR but they've got tiny teams or small teams right. but they're earning, and their business is like churning crazy amounts of money right. Like they're probably doing it be more right than the older businesses who knows, right? But you can kind of, I think think about the way the ways you wouldn't do it is probably how 90% of businesses are doing it right, 'cause it's just not working. We know it's just not working. So the bar's kind of low and that's why we have this. And you know, I can come back to like, why don't we have respect? Like we always, and I'm gonna kind of circle back, kind of come back and say, "Zoke, go back." When I say go back to what we said earlier, that noise in HR. And what I see is this like self-fulfilling like loop of, of not being able to be strategic because, to be a strategic or to like make changes in business, they're like, well, I need data. It's like, can you data? We don't have the infrastructure, usually. It's usually in that back end, we don't have a lot of data. It's poor infrastructure. We've got the data, the data's wrong. We don't have any idea how many tickets or emails or questions we're getting. We don't know about what topics they are, it's not recording it. So we actually don't have the data to be like, this is what we know we need to work on. So it's very hard to get the data input to start the process because there's so much noise, because there's so little being done in the space to actually automate all the admin properly. And everything about in a business we're like, you know, people still do contracts manually. The handover from ATS to HRS isn't always, is sometimes push data, but you're still gonna manually go through a do stuff. Sometimes the onboarding emails to get people's payroll data is literally an email to someone who are forming Google forms, and you've got a transfer somewhere to somewhere. You know, all of this, someone has to do all this work. All this painful stuff that a no one thinks about, no one cares in the business, but it has to be done. And HR are using all their energy on all this noise, right? They're too busy, but we don't still don't have the right data to actually get the support we need to change that. So we're like, in this thing where we can't deliver, we've got, we're too busy. We're doing, we've got fires everywhere. Like what fires? We're like, someone asked about payroll, we've got this, we've got like, there's million thousand things that are happening because I believe the tech infrastructure is not suitable in people ops, especially for what we actually need to do to get rid of admin. So we've added all these people in there to solve that problem instead of tech, because they're just not building for what we need. Then we don't have the data. Then we're too busy to actually roll out all the strategic programs for employees, because we're too busy doing all the other stuff. And then everyone's like, well, you're not delivering what we need. You can't even answer a ticket within a day. Like you can't even get my payroll right. You can't even do this. Blah blah blah. It's like, yeah, exactly. We can't, because there's all these problems. Because we haven't set up the operating model right. And so it's such a problem when it comes to how we think about work and how we think about the value out of HR that we don't deal with all of these kind of noisy things going on to get the data to be strategic to then, like actually change the way we operate to move into these more strategic team structures where we have the change coming through. Because even if we have that structure, let's say we transform ourselves and we're like, we've got the best set up in the world. We've got the structure of be prioritized stuff. And then it comes into our change team or our product team or whatever. And we've got the build they're doing new stuff. Then it gets into the people products. And then we've got the infrastructure team that maintain all the tech and orchestrate it. And then we've got a service function. We're delivering the services great. That's great structure. All of that means thing if you don't have the data to effectively prioritize and justify to stay called is what we're working on. Because what comes down that pathway of what we're working on and why is defines whether or not the outcomes are actually what the business need. And because we don't have any data and because we have someone admin, we cannot basically give them what they need and what we all need as a company to make the decisions. Because we literally can't capture it properly. So we have this constantly poor cycle of round and round and round and we go round the thing. No matter how much we try, we still don't get that seat at the table. We still don't get the respect. Because we're missing core infrastructure, I believe in the people of space is the most underserved space of people tech. The first thing companies who is like, we need a comp tool. We need a performance management. We need this and we don't need any of that. And you need to get your infrastructure right. We need to get the data about what people are in business asking for. Yeah, all the things that are feeding us tools actually need to be correct. Go rid of the noise, capture all the data. That's what you need first. Everything else add on later. And I think we skipped all of that somehow in the process of setting up HR. And we threw people at it, and created manual band aids. Also because the tech wasn't available. But anyway, that's just my little rant there because it bothers me because we're trying so hard to be a function, to serve people and to serve the business. And we all want that. And we're not really supported to do it, but we're also not supported with the tech options on the market. At least I feel they're coming, coming. There's a lot of stuff coming. Historically, we didn't have that core done well. It might be in. So yeah. Yeah, I hear what you're saying. I've definitely worked in larger companies that have tried to solve problems through manpower and kind of just like brute force. And it's just it's becoming this horrible thing. You're right. Like when you're data's terrible, your credibility's a function is completely sharp. Like if your manager's coming back to you're saying, you know, this person doesn't report that person anymore. And this is not a job title and the salary's changed and all these sort of stuff. And it's like, yeah, it just looks terrible. So I guess like sliding door to the moment, like when, you know, when a company's at that kind of inflection point, we like actually, this is the point to get this thing right. And what's your advice to them to, you know, actually get to buy it and you know, be able to get the brand on the board and then start to build the foundation. Okay. So how I've done it in the past because it is a hard thing to do. It's hard to articulate guys when you just slow down to speed up actually. And people don't like to hear it. Like they're like, no, I want my thing. And you're like, hang on a minute. Here's why we're going to not do it like that. And here's my suggestion. So I used to work. My background before HR was transformation. So change delivery. And there's a lot of things that I talk from that into HR around how to get buying. One of those is like doing options papers. Sounds ridiculous, but basically putting forward options to make someone make the decision. Because if you bring forward like do nothing as an option and the consequence of that and do something like what you really love to do and like the cost of the consequence and then something maybe like in between given three options, they're usually never going to choose to do nothing. But if they do at least show that they've taken on the risk, they've taken on the responsibility and accountability making that decision. Right. Whereas I think a lot of hate like I always tell HR teams you do not need to save the company. You do not. It is not your role to save the company from itself. If the leadership are saying no, they are responsible for the outcome of that. No, not you. And so if you can get that documented, that helps. Firstly, because they assume you're basically saying you choose to do nothing about this topic and we're going to proceed anyway despite what I've recommended. So I think that firstly can really help. But secondly, how to get the buy in is to actually what I did was go, look guys, you look like really candidly talk to the leadership and the executive. They're like, you guys want data right? You want this? These are all the problems you have. Yes, yes, yes. OK. The reason I can't give you that is because these processes don't work. This data is wrong. The infrastructure isn't there. So I will never be able to deliver that no matter what you ask me and no matter how much pressure you put, I cannot deliver that until I put energy and time into solving that first. So the infrastructure topic has to be solved first. Then I can give you what you need. And then we can do everything else. If you would like multiple projects happening at once, let's say you want to push out, but we need, but we need, but we need. That's OK. You do your-- you've got to do reels, Laney. You've got to be like, OK, he's the team. He's how they use with his amount of time that they're using on all these things, all the manual stuff, all the projects that we've got going on. There's only so much time in the day. We've got to break it down for them. Use the data you have around people availability and what they're actually working on. Show them how it isn't possible. Show them that. Get them to stack rank. This is the whole strategy piece we talked about earlier. You need that roadmap. You need that prioritization. You need as much data as you possibly can. So that's what I did. I literally just went in with like, I cannot give you what you want. I want to. And I just told them I can't do it. And I was like, if he would want that outcome, we work together. He's how we work together. He's my plan of how we could attack it. We can do like this or like this. He's the impact, but he's the future benefit. And if you can come in and have that conversation, that is going to get you by into be like, you know what? Let's slow down and let's actually focus on the infrastructure. Let's invest in that because we're going to save X amount of hours. Of course, you don't always know, but you can estimate. You can be like, I got four people. You use assumptions, right? Yeah, I've got four people here doing contracts manually. Yeah, it doesn't really make much sense. We're going to need to hire someone else if we grow. Like, it's just you can do basic assumptions. And I think that's where we're lacking that. Firstly, that candid saying, we actually can't do that. I'm full on on board with people teams being like, we can't deliver them. Not saying, yes, yes, we can do it because you want to like show that you can do something. It's like, no, be like, I can't do that. Not enabled me as a business to do that because you're not giving me the permission to solve the problems or the budget or the time or whatever it is. And so the strategic leader needs to have needs to be quite strong. I think in that space, when you've got a lot of challenges, and you speak, we need to be very candid and be like, here's the challenges, but here's my way forward. Will you come with that journey with me? Let's partner, let's get it done. Let me get you that data. Let me fix all your problems, but here's how I think we need to do it. So it is an fun discussion. And most people don't want to have it. But if you can do that, a lot of the time, the leaders are like, oh, thank God, we're finally going to fix all the problems. Do it. And they'll give you the budget. Now, yeah, but I feel like the alternative is like, is what? is to take on a thousand things to all of them badly. probably a work feel like your credibility is short and that the business looks at you as someone who can't really deliver because you're trying to do too much at once and yeah I mean it's it's dear which reality do you want right like is it the one where it's like a little bit of short campaign to say hey it's actually just physically impossible like which of these 10 things you want to do in what water. Once it's done at least you've got that direction and you've got that guidance around like where to focus and potentially even to bother to invest in you know being able to achieve eight of those things instead of all 10. Yeah exactly and it's like exactly what reality do you want like the reality we're in is that we're in the second reality that you said you know we're in the I can't deliver I don't have respect I can't get things done I've got 4,000 things I'm at least I'm burnt out like they try to literally burnt out and they are burnt out because there is poor infrastructure more or less like this stuff does not take away the noise we need to take away to enable us to do strategic work and everyone knows that everyone says it but that's why right we and we can't keep hiding behind there well we're too busy or we don't get enough support and I'm like we need to take it by the reins this is the perfect moment in history where we go we have the ability now with tech to absolutely change the way we deliver people functions and like design them deliver the services support employees support the business we can absolutely redesign that reinventing I think we need to and it won't it will be fun it will be messy but if you can have those discussions that's going to get you the buying right and I think every business will be like please and they will see that you can start to see the benefits of all that also the employees like when I'm when I'm like as an employee in a business like also want to go through like you have to write an email to check about your payroll slip you how can you put a ticket in this system that wasn't built for HR and like go through a three week cycle to get a book approved from learning and development and you're like I don't want to do that like it's a horrible experience for employees so at the end of the day I think everyone would be on board with actually HR transforming it's just it it is going to take a lot of different skills than we I think we actually have in the function right now it's going to need a combination of different things in the future also people don't want to talk about but we need to help and support the people in those functions to upstile and learn the skills they don't have but also if they have them enable them to use them in in people people teams maybe you're touching something earlier that I'm really keen to and whether we close that on this one or not we'll see but I wanted to tell you I started you you sort of mentioned HR haven't had tech that you know do you think is sort of meeting their needs but I know you also mentioned that it's it's moving in their own direction so tell me a bit more about that like you know why you think you know take this fully shorter than where it's going yeah maybe what it needs to do to to really head to our expectations yeah okay big topic but I'll try and condense it as much as I can sorry everyone was saying I'll do my best no um so I think what we're what we're missing is the flexibility firstly of tech right right right now the tech is very like rigid most of them are quite rigid and AI is enabling that to be a lot more fluid in the way that tools are built and you can adjust as a user but also as you build them it's much faster um so I think the flexibility of just like having any kind of you know every business is different every employee you know is different I think the personalization and the flexibility of what AI enables in tooling now is going to really really change the way we deliver services um if I think about like customer service is the basically exactly what HR does but internally right there's a first level support first level supports usually like a bot right an interface a chat interface like hi I have a problem and it should be able to like solve 90% of the problems and then it escalates to like second level support to a human what it needs to right and then that human answers your question and then that human in say in sorry in customer service is probably like recording those answers and then feeding that back into their knowledge base that don't get as many calls right that makes sense if you're getting calls on whatever it is about your product you're going to update your documentation so that can be answered and found and when someone searches the chat they get an answer right that's not that's what we're doing in customer service I hate charge doing that absolutely not is they take to support that absolutely not is they going to be tech that does that yes and it's coming so this space of like you know being able to interact with your knowledge base and all of that all of those outputs and invisible work that like it's lost in you know notion or wherever you have it in you know people things that's going to like start to be out of your surface people going to get a searcher they already can do that and then you need to a way to like capture that data of like what people are asking so all of that is now suddenly not just a ticket in the system that you have to export and integrate and it's not just an email or a slack it's like actually captured in its data you can use like this kind of futures where we're going where that whole people ops you know day to day stuff is going to become largely like a I believe like a customer service function that smart and it's that good that you basically don't need to and to be honest I don't want to wait 10 minutes to talk to someone or 10 days to talk someone about my question or get an answer I want an answer so that's going to be I think that's revolutionizing that also around like the whole onboarding process the personalization the data capturing the way that that's done is very like can be very flexible also personalized it knows who you are you can talk you can send you personalized communication it can draft the communication just the level up of like manually having to do those emails those welcome emails or having a standard email for everyone there's just going to be so much more we can do in that space where we can do faster and better because of the AI if a structure that we're going to have in our tech so I don't think we have that done well now but it's there is there are tools available that are working on that and doing that and then I think in the performance management space it's going to level that up because that's just done badly let's just be honest like no one likes performance management so I think performance management space is going to get a level up there's lots of tools out there building building in that space comp as well like comp used to be like this black ops now it's like okay the lot happening in that like you know that space really well comps going to be something people analytics revolutionized before it used to be like quick you need a team of you need a team of like 10 people and you've got to ask for a dashboard and it's going to take you 10 days now it's like all the data's there if you have the infrastructure all the data is available which is the goal like make sure there's a central place for data then you can just query it talk to it ask for staff it'll like in the leadership then don't have a middleman anymore they don't have to be like hey can you tell me what's going on it's like I just log in as a leader and I see all the data and I'm like you mind blown that's like what we want so we are getting to that point very quickly the tech is going to be available and is available actually it's how fast we can change the way we work in business that's going to be the harder part so I don't think anything about the tech transformation of HR is going to be anything to attack it's going to be about the people change that is required and the skill sets we have so I don't know if that answers the question but I'm really excited about what's coming in the space yeah I think I only I only keep seeing kind of new insurance and it's you know to a lot of yeah like you said there's so much I mean I'm sure like most people it's hard to keep up life with that it's alliness it's coming out on a like consumer kind of level so you know in 10 years time when HR tech I just I'm kidding but you know I'm really looking forward to I'm really looking forward to some of that capability being built in just an idea of and everything and yeah it's really interesting to see if that kind of you know big company consolidation exercise if that will prevail or what will happen there because I'd imagine there will be a lot of companies or yeah a lot of companies that are kind of like stuck on this kind of like old school and in price system that look outside and start to really go gosh we could have it so much better so it's going to be a trusting future that's for sure it is going to be a very interesting future very very interesting future I don't know how the transition is going to happen I just don't know because I think people are still I think that the challenge that AI tooling is going to have is the compliance and the trust issues like it we've seen the lawsuits already like I think that's where you know we also also the vibe coding stuff I'm like guys why are we vibe coding this like I don't know about that but I just feel like the standards around AI and the compliance around that is going to also slow things down a little bit and I think that's rightly so but there's a lot that AI can do that isn't going to that there can be done already right so I'm I'm I'm looking forward to it and yeah let's see let's see how the market goes and the market is so big that like it's my full-time job more or less to understand the market and I'm still discovering stuff so you know it is really like an exercise to really understand what's there so no one's no one's behind in this space everyone is behind it's constantly evolving yes we're all behind it's all out of date tomorrow it's out of date so don't worry just be curious I think that's the main thing staying curious I think that's a great take one yeah that's an excellent care but I was going to say is there any other any other things you want to leave people with from you know doing some of that it's across the entire history and they're an interesting insights you're seeing or any other teacher want to share people that are feeling like they're being left behind and it can want to I mean the main thing is that firstly like I said no one's no one's behind everyone's behind and and I feel like there's a lot of you know noise out there but the main thing is that you individually take control of like your own destiny you know like you see what's there there's enough free resources out there there isn't there is so much out there yeah that's how it's as well well it is hard to be walked with but I think you know take the time to reflect on what are you skills where do you want to go What do you think skills are that you don't have, that other people have where you're like, "Oh, I'm not, that's what it's worrying me." Like try to identify them in the time to reflect on yourself and your skillsets and really be honest and be okay with not knowing something. Being like, "I don't know how to do that. I don't know what that is. I'm worried about these things." Then try and find, you can very easily then find, like these podcasts, find podcasts, find communities, find online resources webinars, start to ping your toes in, like really take control and be curious because the end of the day, you're only like no one else is responsible for your success in life and your progression at work will learning other than yourself. Like no one cares about that, no matter how much anyone says, no one actually cares. That's a sad thing in life. No one really deeply cares as much as you will care. So care about yourself, take the time. You know, don't scroll socials, scroll chat GPT, asking for how do I keep myself relevant? You know, I don't know. But I think there's a lot of things people can do and I think that's the way to give yourself the pathway forward is to know yourself and know where you want to go. That sounds very philosophical, but I think it's important for everyone to do that in this world. Yeah, no, I think it's a great principle to end our play. They grow, I think much like I think is the same for employee development. Is there nobody's just what's before your development but yourself? And so yeah, I think it's a great parting wisdom to to leaving zero. So Jesse, where can people find you if they want to learn more or follow or any other stuff? I'm very active on LinkedIn. You can find me on LinkedIn. You can also reach out. I have a Slack community as well called Humans in the Loop and about AI and tech transformation and kind of just connecting to people who are interested in that topic. And I've also got webinars and a whole bunch of educational content that goes out. So please, if it's interesting, check it out. And otherwise, I have the stacked HR tech database. I mentioned a few times. You can open source. You can just go there and search stacked.tech. And that's it really. Hopefully it's helpful. Give me feedback. That's what I would like. And thanks for having me, Matt. I really appreciate it. It was awesome to have you on. Thank you. Thanks for joining us on another edition of the Foundation Series. Make sure to head over to our website to subscribe to the Foundation Series for monthly editions featuring future interviews on startup compensation. In each edition, we'll explore the different strategies, trends, and challenges faced by startups around the world. If you have a burning topic you'd like me to cover or a standout guest that you want to hear from, drop me an email so I can dive deeper into the compensation topics that matter most to you. Join me next time as we continue to uncover the strategies and practices driving success in global tech startups around the world. Thanks for listening. [MUSIC PLAYING] [BLANK_AUDIO]