"Human Ops" versus "People Ops"

Your company isn’t building 1 product. You’re building 3:

1. Financial Product (shares/value for investors)
2. Customer Product (what you sell to users)
3. Employee Experience Product (what your team “subscribes” to monthly)

The key insight? Your employees are customers of an experiential product - just like a gym membership.

This means People teams need to operate like Product teams:

• Define ideal customer profiles
• Reduce churn
• Gather feedback
• Ship improvements
• Measure impact

Too many People teams get stuck in pure “human operations” mode (coaching, advising, troubleshooting) while neglecting “people operations” (systems, processes, scalable solutions).

Both matter. But leading with product thinking unlocks exponentially better outcomes.

Sprint planning process for people teams

Jessica shared how her people team does their sprint planning:

1) Start with PROBLEM statements, not solutions

Example: “40% pass interviews but offer acceptance is dropping for top candidates”

2) Break down quarterly goals into 2-week sprints

• Do user research
• Create research templates
• Analyze findings
• Propose solutions
• Get approvals
• Execute

3) Run “Progress, Problems, Plans” check-ins every 2 weeks:

• Progress: What’s moving forward?
• Problems: What’s blocking us?
• Plans: How do we course correct?

Simple red/green tracking in a spreadsheet. No fancy tools needed.

The key insight: Stop maintaining a backlog of “nice to have” solutions. Start with real problems backed by data.

Nobody is getting people ops as a product 100% right (and that’s ok)

A secret about those perfect HR case studies you read online…

They’re not telling you the whole story.

Jessica gave the example of implementing frameworks like OKRs:

Every company she’s worked with has struggled with OKR implementation. Even the ones writing those perfect “how-to” blog posts.

The truth?

• Teams miss deadlines
• Goals conflict
• People forget to update their objectives
• Reminder emails pile up

And you know what? That’s totally normal.

We need to stop comparing ourselves to idealized versions of processes we read about. The companies writing those perfect case studies? They’re struggling too - they’re just not posting about it.

So, try to apply this thinking when making the transition to People Ops as a Product.

Do your best. Track what you can. Accept imperfection.

‍‍‍Can small HR teams do People Ops as a Product?

Small people teams - stop trying to do everything perfectly when you make the transition to people ops as a product.

Start with mindset shifts, not process overhauls.

Too many teams get caught up trying to implement every agile ceremony perfectly from day 1. That’s crazy talk.

Instead:

• Start with basic ceremonies (weekly standups)
• Be kind to yourself
• Test & learn quarterly
• Let your team experiment with different roles

Example she shared: Let your admin try data analysis with ChatGPT. If that doesn’t click, maybe they excel at comms instead. Meanwhile your recruiter might be a natural with analytics.

The goal isn’t perfection. It’s finding what works for YOUR team.

Agility isn’t just about processes - it’s about how you think about working together.

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See you next week!

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