HR Excellence

Process Design & Excecution

Share Your Voice

This is where we get practical about the day-to-day operations that keep HR running. Share your templates, swap best practices, and surface pain points so others can learn (or avoid the same pitfalls).
Matt McFarlane
Matt McFarlane
Featured Contributor
·Posted in HR Operations

What even is a manager anymore?

I keep reading about the destruction of the middle manager and the introduction of the 'player coach', and it's got me thinking. In a world where we're seeing leaders increasingly expected to own and run a significant individual contributor load, what even is a manager anymore? Case in point from Block and Coinbase recently. So what are these roles giving up (either completely, or to AI) that allows them to, in some cases: Increase their span of control massively (sometimes 15+ direct reports) Be strong on delivery, while leading a team Curious for this communities thoughts on how the role is evolving and the possible knock on effects we'll see as a result of it. Arguably there's never been a more important time for leaders in businesses, and yet we seem to be seeing them increasingly under threat. I'd love to hear from you!
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Matt McFarlane
Matt McFarlane
Featured Contributor
·Posted in HR Operations

This one has hurt me before - thinking I was data led (but I was led up the wrong path)

Something that will hold back your credibility as a Head of People: using bad compensation data. Let me show you how to get it right. When your data is fragile, every offer turns into a debate: Is your sample size big enough? Are you comparing apples to apples on location and company stage? Can you show your work when someone asks for the source? Getting the right benchmark dataset isn’t glamorous. It’s about defining your non-negotiables — roles, regions, company size — and mapping vendors against them. It’s scoring coverage, integration features, and price. And yes, it means creating an audit trail you can defend. I’ve boiled that process down into a step-by-step cheat sheet. Follow it to shortlist vendors, validate their data overlap with your needs, and walk into every negotiation with confidence. Have you ever been caught off guard by bad comp data? Tell me what happened. And here's a (free) playbook I made with my friends at Pave to help you work through the right way to buy: https://explore.pave.com/Comp-Data-Upgrade.html?utm_source=FNDN&utm_medium=referral&utm_campaign=data-guide&utm_term=partner
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Matt McFarlane
Matt McFarlane
Featured Contributor
·Posted in HR Operations

I'd kill your pay-for-performance system. Here's what I'd build in its place.

I don't love traditional pay-for-performance. It's the dominant playbook in most companies. Managers grade individuals against a rubric, ratings get calibrated across the org, and merit increases land on top of base salary. It looks fair, it feels objective, and it lets HR point at a process whenever someone's unhappy with their number. In a startup, it often works against you. Here are the three reasons I've stopped reaching for it. 1. Individual awards miss the invisible work, and they inadvertently reward competition. The best teams I've worked with are deeply collaborative. They unblock the person next to them, they share context, they pick each other up when something falls over. None of that shows up cleanly on an individual scorecard. The moment you tie pay to individually-attributed outcomes, you start incentivising the wrong behaviours. You over-reward the loudest person in the standup and the one who knows how to optimise for visibility over impact. You often underpay the glue people. And the glue people are the ones holding your culture together. 2. Once it's compounded into base salary, you can't unwind it. This is the part the playbook can fall apart on. Someone has a stellar year, you give them a 12% merit increase. The next year they're solid but not exceptional (because there's natural mean-reversion in performance, like everything else), so you give them 5%. A year on, the role has changed, the bar has moved, or maybe they've checked out. Now you're paying top-of-band compensation for middle-of-band output. There's no graceful way back. Base salary compounds, performance doesn't, and the system you built to reward performance has now locked in a cost you can't trim. 3. The overhead is mismatched to startup life. Building criteria, training managers on calibration, running review cycles, defending ratings, documenting outcomes. It's a serious operational investment. It only pays off if the goals you're measuring against stay roughly stable. Startups aren't stable. We're clamouring for product-market fit, the strategy shifts on the data, teams reshape every quarter, and the goal posts are forever on the move. By the time you've calibrated H1, the strategy has already moved on. You're auditing performance against a target that no longer exists. That's a lot of overhead for outcomes that age out before the cycle closes. So what do I do instead. Three alternatives I love, and use. 1. Pay performance as bonuses, not merit increases. If you want to reward great performance, do it with a bonus. Cash in hand. Tied to the period it's recognising, and gone after that. It still rewards the work, and it still motivates the right behaviour. What it doesn't do is compound. You don't have to live with last year's decision forever, and when the performance bar moves, your cost base doesn't have to move with it. That alone is worth a rethink. 2. Decide your entire workforce is high-performing, and pay them like it. This one takes nerve. Set your base salary bands at a higher percentile across the board (say 75th rather than 50th), and only hire people you believe deserve to be paid at that level. You replace the entire "who deserves more this year" conversation with a much sharper one: "do we still want this person on the team?" It simplifies comp. It raises the bar at the door. It removes most of the political theatre around comp reviews, and it sends a strong signal about the kind of place you're building. The trade-off is real. If someone stops performing, you have to have the hard conversation rather than letting them drift quietly into a lower band on the org chart. I'd argue that's exactly the kind of trade-off a startup needs. 3. Share the upside through profit or revenue share. If you want everyone to feel ownership of the outcome, build a mechanism where they actually share in the outcome. A pool that grows with the business and gets distributed when the business wins. Everyone rowing in the same direction, no one carving out individual recognition from a finite pie. One thing I'd push hard on here. Don't distribute it as a percentage of salary. That re-creates the compounding problem from earlier, and it means your highest earners get the biggest absolute share, which often isn't reflective of where the value was actually created. Normalise the payout against role level. The scope of the seat is what's earning the share, and the reward should match the scope of the seat. Paycheck size is a separate story. A senior IC and a senior manager at the same level have both moved the business. Pay them accordingly. Pay-for-performance isn't a bad idea. It's just usually implemented in a way that's expensive, divisive, and impossible to unwind. In a startup, you can do better with fewer moving parts. Pay people well at the door, reward great periods with money you can take back, share the upside when the business wins, and stop pretending a calibration spreadsheet can hold the line on performance. None of it compounds, and none of it locks you in. That's the whole system.
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Matt McFarlane
Matt McFarlane
Featured Contributor
·Posted in HR Operations

This opinion would be too unpopular for LinkedIn, so you're getting it here first.

It's ok to pay at the 25th percentile. Target percentile is just the point in the market where you decide to anchor offers for a role. But it should be chosen because it's a strategy decision, not a vibe. Most comp issues I see come from mismatched expectations. Someone sets a 25th percentile budget and then gets frustrated when the 75th percentile candidate takes another offer. The number wasn't wrong. The expectations were. Here's a simple way to think about it. 75th percentile and above Use this when the role is business-critical, great talent is scarce, or speed matters more than saving cash. Think founding engineers, your first VP, a comp-critical senior hire you can't afford to miss. You'll fill faster, but you'll burn more cash and create internal equity pressure if peers sit lower. 25th to 75th percentile This is where most roles should live once you're past about 50 people. You're still paying fairly, but you're competing on learning, scope, flexibility, and team. You'll lose some candidates on pure cash. That's fine, as long as you can actually deliver on the growth story you're selling candidates. Below 25th percentile Be brutally honest with yourself here. This works if the role is clearly a junior or stepping-stone position and the upside (learning, brand, network, equity) is real. If the upside is wishful thinking, you're just underpaying and hoping nobody notices (they will). Your job is to reset hiring managers who assume 75th percentile talent on a 25th percentile budget. Choose the band together and be specific about what it buys. What to do with this Bucket your current roles into these three bands. For each one, check whether the pay matches the story you tell candidates and the reality of the role. If it doesn't, fix the mismatch before you blame "the market". You don't need to pay top of market for every role. You do need to be honest about where you sit and what that buys you.
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Matt McFarlane
Matt McFarlane
Featured Contributor
·Posted in HR Operations

What are your equity horror stories?

I'm writing a piece (dropping next week) that walks through three companies that actually got equity right for their people. Different approaches, different stages, but each one fixed something that's genuinely broken about how most startups do equity. While researching it, one stat floored me: 76% of all stock options go unexercised. Not because people don't want ownership. Because the system is stacked against them in various ways: People don't understand what they hold, Can't afford to exercise, or Just flat out don't believe it'll ever be worth anything. There's been some brutal stories over the years. Even I have bought options, with my own hard earned money, and am never sure if I'll ever see it again or how the company is even doing as a signal of it's likelihood. But I want to hear yours. Whether you were on the receiving end of an equity program that let you down, or you were the one trying to administer a program you knew wasn't working, I want to know: Where did it go wrong? What would you change if you could redesign it? Did you ever have to explain to someone that their equity was worth less than they thought? How did that go? Just the reality of what happened and what it felt like. The piece coming out next week covers some genuinely different approaches. But I think the failure stories are just as important for understanding why this stuff matters. Drop your experience below. Even a one-liner helps.
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Matt McFarlane
Matt McFarlane
Featured Contributor
·Posted in HR Operations

I want to hear what you’re using AI for! (But first, here’s what I’m doing)

I get it. It’s tiring constantly hearing about AI. But if we’re not shaping it, it’s shaping us and our profession. I'd prefer to be on the former. And I know it’s hard to go first on these things. So let me share a little about how I’ve used AI recently, and then I’d love to hear what you’re using it for. What’s My Equity Worth? https://whats-my-equity-worth.lovable.app This was one of my first vibe coded products and was essentially a simple POC to help answer the question of "how can companies better articulate the worth of someone's equity?". Whether to a prospect/candidate, or an employee, companies generally suck at making their equity valuable. So this was to help with that. Medium: Lovable Time: Maybe 2-3 hours of prompting/watching it build. Salary Level Builder https://compcurve-salary-band-designer-994103479301.us-west1.run.app This one I really enjoyed making because I think the concept is novel. AI salaries continue to skyrocket and I talk to companies all the time that basically break their ranges with each hire. The challenge this then poses is the flow on effect to the rest of the people in those roles in the same/lower/higher levels. So with this tool you can enter the salary you paid your latest hire, and it will plot the midpoints for salaries at every other level. Helpful for preventing band compression or salary inversion etc. Medium: Google AI Studio (tried something new here, Lovable is probably better though tbh) Time: Maybe 2-3 hours of prompting/watching it build. Board Report Builder This one I can't link to, but as a solopreneur I run a monthly board meeting (less formal than it sounds) so that I take the time to see how i went last month against my goals and re-align on anything that might need it. What this looks like in practice is this. I write my board reports in Notion using a template. Claude co-work connects to Notion, ClickUp (where I store my projects/CRM) — these are through MCP — and can access my browser for Xero (accounting) and Beehiiv (newsletter) or other sites. It generates a new monthly board report and compiles all business development, marketing (like subscribers or followers etc.) data into the relevant template. I then go through and can review the data (double checking it) and input my thoughts/sentiment on top of that. It's taken a ~1-2 hour process down to about 30-45 minutes now, which is modest but super helpful. Plus Claude Cowork now lets you schedule this stuff which is super helpful, so I turned the directions into a skill and it now does this each month. Very specific to my work as a consultant, but obvious parallels to HR reporting here. Ok, that's three from me - what have you got? And it doesn't need to be super advanced! Even a recent prompt that helped you learn something new, or do something different. The more we talk about this stuff the more we learn from one another!
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IGC
IGC
Bobber
·Posted in HR Operations

People Proud Podcast: Lost In Translation

HR and Finance are often working toward the same goals, but speaking very different languages. 🎤 In this episode of the People Proud podcast from HiBob, we explore what it really takes to move from misalignment to true partnership. From shared data and workforce planning to clearer communication at the leadership table, this conversation unpacks how aligning people strategy with financial strategy drives smarter, more sustainable growth. 🔗 Listen to “Lost in Translation” featuring Joe Garafalo + Limor Raz and rethink how your organization connects talent and business outcomes: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oVmlkyjFY60
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Jessica Zwaan
Jessica Zwaan
Featured Contributor
·Posted in HR Operations

Simple, low-friction Performance Assessment

Hi Team! I am seeing a big shift towards simple, low-lift, and frictionless (data lead, AI-supported) performance assessments... the dream we've all been dreaming! I'm wondering if any of you have any tips, watch outs, or processes you would be open to sharing with the community around how you build, adapted, or changed your Performance Assessment process to be quicker, lower friction, and more data-lead? We've been doing some interesting things at Talentful, and are leaning more and more on data-connections, automated scoring, and then leaning on calibration as the mean management "time sink" but I'd love to hear more ideas to get the ol' noggin' goin'!
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Matt McFarlane
Matt McFarlane
Featured Contributor
·Posted in HR Operations

Building a hiring machine that doesn't depend on the People team

Last week I interviewed a CTO for my podcast, and it was one of the most impressive hiring machines I’ve seen in years. Not because of how the HR team scaled hiring, but because of how they de-levered the people team entirely. In this interview we discussed how hiring exceptional talent wasn’t about reach, but about about trust and advocacy. This team didn’t win the market by posting harder or moving faster. They won by turning their existing team into proof, and leveraging that to hire peers that raised the bar. The team achieved a stellar eNPS score of +100 in their engineering team (when the average sits at around 0!). Every engineer would actively recommend this company to people they respected. And that mattered, because talent increasingly doesn’t respond to employer branding. They respond to peer validation. When great engineers say “you should work here”, other great engineers listen. That advocacy only worked because their experience lived up to it, and here's the way it showed up in their hiring process: Job ads as invitations, not filters. This company flipped it's job ads. What the team loved and how they they actually worked came first. No spin. The ad answered the real question early: why should I care? A deliberately human interview process. No take-home work. No one-way AI interviews. Every hour a candidate invested was matched with real attention from the team. Respect was both a signal and a screen. Trust started before day one. Every little detail mattered, and even the contract reinforced autonomy. Fear-based clauses were stripped out. Expectations were clear. Control theatre was removed to make way for human language that spoke the way the relationship worked. The result was a self-reinforcing loop: great experience → strong advocacy → high-quality referrals → selective hiring → even stronger advocacy. The lesson that stood out to me: In tight markets, the bottleneck isn’t sourcing, but credibility. If your people wouldn’t risk their reputation by recommending you, no amount of hiring “optimisation” will save you. What ways can you enable your team to actively engage in the hiring process and advocate for your team (thus saving People team time)? If you're keen to get the episode when it lands, subscribe here: https://fndnseries.fndn.com.au/
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Jessica Zwaan
Jessica Zwaan
Featured Contributor
·Posted in HR Operations

Is the “right to disconnect” impossible to implement remotely?

The right to disconnect is important, but it can’t work properly for remote/flexible workers without rethinking how we structure work itself. If you’re building a team that is working remotely or flexibly, rigid “no contact after 6pm” rules don’t really fit. Your team might want to work 7-9pm so you can do school pickup at 3pm. How do you compensate or mitigate for “overtime” when it’s out of hours, but not over time? Thinking about the right to disconnect from it’s purpose: The issue isn’t the timing here, it’s the lack of boundaries on total workload. For right to disconnect to actually protect remote workers, HR needs different frameworks: Clear definitions of “a day’s work” based on output/hours, not rigid availability windows Asynchronous communication as the default (not expecting instant responses) Proper workload monitoring so flexibility doesn’t become “work whenever AND respond instantly” Compensation structures that reflect actual hours worked, not just when you’re “on the clock” IMHO Right to disconnect laws are a good start, but without these changes, they either become unenforceable for remote workers or accidentally kill the flexibility that makes remote work valuable in the first place. What’s your workplace doing to balance flexibility with genuine disconnection? What do you think Matt McFarlane ?
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HR Infrastructure

Share Your Voice

Talk about building, selecting, and optimizing the bones of your HR operations—HRIS choices, policies, and foundational processes. Share advice and lessons learned from scaling (or revamping) HR systems.
Matt McFarlane
Matt McFarlane
Featured Contributor
·Posted in HR Operations

The pendulum is swinging back on the war for talent - but the job will be different for People professionals

I recently watched this short video with the Co-founder of Hubspot ($20bn company) Brian Halligan and it gave me so much food for thought about the kinds of things we should be seeing and preparing for in the People profession. Video here for reference (great watch, ~15 mins): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q8Qx3MX43Y8&t=764s Are there a few sensational claims about changes to orgs in the coming years, yes. But the thing that stood out to me wasn't that, so much as the signals he's seeing IRL today as an Advisor at Sequoia Capital (VC), which indicates whether companies are pushing the envelope on AI adoption, namely (I quote): Has your CFO lost their sh*t at you for how much you’re spending on tokens? Has your IT person lost their sh*t at you because you’re making him make all their internal systems open and headless and shrinking their budget at the same time? Has your HR person lost their sh*t at you because you’re messing up their lovely compensation bands As a comp person, of course #3 grabbed my attention, but I think it goes deeper than just comp bands breaking. Because sure, companies are rapidly redirecting saved salaries (from all those layoffs) into bigger and bigger comp bands (ClickUp just announced 22% layoffs and million-dollar comp bands in the same breath). It's about what that change represents for us as HR people, too. Because although the our team might be smaller, and the org, too, the expectation that we're growing and evolving and deepening the employee experience for these super workers is only going to compound. Because soon, these million dollar salary bands will be commonplace for companies like this. Make no mistake that what we're seeing now are just the first movers. And all of us in this community know that salary isn't everything. So while it might be cool and novel now, I think the pendulum will swing back the other way once the tech layoffs dry up and they stabilise in their newer, smaller, agile sizes - where the war for talent will just look different to how it's been in the past. We all need to be thinking about what we're doing to evolve our functions to become AI super workers ourselves, not only because it's becoming the new norm, but because it's the only way we'll be able to adapt to this new norm with our reduced team size and ensure we're attracting and retaining the super workers our company needs going forward.
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Matt McFarlane
Matt McFarlane
Featured Contributor
·Posted in HR Operations

Stop answer pay questions straight away.

“My rent just jumped 15%.” In todays economy, your managers are hearing some version of this every week. And they feel like they need a magic answer on the spot. In that moment, it's easy for managers to panic. They either: over-promise a raise, or shut the conversation down. Neither helps. Your managers don't need a perfect answer in that moment. They need a path. Here's how I coach them through it — in three moves: Slow it down and normalise the conversation first. Start by acknowledging how stressful this feels, thank them for raising it, and buy time without stonewalling: “I don't have an immediate answer, but I do want to understand what 'better' would look like for you.” Put a path — not a platitude — on the table. Where you have clear, transparent bands and some headroom, map out: where their current comp sits in the band the next band up what additional scope, skills or impact would justify that move over the next 12–18 months Make it concrete. For example: today, an IC engineer at mid-band. Next band up: senior IC owning X system, mentoring Y, and driving Z outcomes. Be honest if there isn't room in the band right now — sometimes the path is about scope change or a future role, not an immediate bump. Turn it into a shared project. Use existing 1:1s and performance check-ins to keep coming back to that path — what's progressed, what's blocked, what you're seeing. The company owns the constraints and the process; the employee owns their growth. You still might not be able to solve cost-of-living pressure overnight. But you can give people a believable, grown-up plan for increasing their earning capacity here — or be honest when that isn't realistic. How are you equipping your managers for these conversations when you can't just say "yes" to a raise?
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Matt McFarlane
Matt McFarlane
Featured Contributor
·Posted in HR Operations

The five minute comp cycle

Two weeks ago I dropped what has since become my most read newsletter ever, and it's easy to see why. In it, I covered a discussion I had with Rowan Savage, former CTO at Runn (now COO at Scannable). In it, he explained how their comp structure was built in such a way that comp cycles (the one's that typically take 6 weeks just preparing for, let alone running), took five minutes. You read that right — Five. Minutes. The more Rowan spoke, the more things just clicked into place. Their comp structure was simple: They paid one rate that differed by level, not by role (so a marketer and an engineer at the same seniority would be paid the same). They put their salaries on their website and at the top of all job ads. Someone's pay would change for two reasons: Market adjustment. They increased base salaries based on market conditions to make sure they were always in roughly the top 15% of employers. This applied to everyone. Tenure-based increase. They gave an automatic pay rise based on how long someone had been with the company. His reasoning was that the longer you've been there, the more valuable you are to retain, so pay should reflect that. This pay design had incredible outcomes for them: Role based gender pay gaps were eliminated. Just because you chose a career didn't mean you were paid less (or differently) than someone performing at a similar level elsewhere in the business. They were able to lure talent from the likes of Atlassian, Canva and other tech giants. Because they showed they paid competitively on their job ad (and site) no one opted out assuming Runn couldn't afford them. They removed it from being an objection. Because their increases were systematic, people knew what they would get year on year. This mean competitors trying to approach their people had to explain what their pay trajectory over time would be, not just the offer salary. This became a barrier most companies couldn't address, preventing reducing turnover. Most of all - they saved hours of time across the business normally spent on the merit and calibration process. Instead of asking people to prove who high performers were, they set expectations and assumed that if people were there, it was because they were a high performer. This was one of the most novel pay designs I'd come across, but it was clear that it worked for this company. The full read (and interview) is here if you're keen to check it out. Rowan covers this and much more in the people practices he built and ran, that led to an eNPS of +100 and zero turnover in the six years he was there (stats most of us can only dream of!).
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Matt McFarlane
Matt McFarlane
Featured Contributor
·Posted in HR Operations

From AI-giddiness to token conservation in 8 hours + where is the People function going?

My general sentiment when it comes to AI, is that I am behind and everyone else has already made life changing improvements with it. I scroll LinkedIn, Reddit and Twitter (only for the AI posts, I promise) content regularly. And on the one hand, the inspiration for AI related capabilities is incredible, on the other, it fuels a constant sense that I am an AI laggard. So with that being my persistent mindset for the past few months, I spent a few hours this weekend in Claude Code. Prior to this I'd never used it. I'd gone only as far as to click the Code switch at the top of the desktop client. No further. This weekend however, I ended up spending 8+ hours playing around with building an idea I had for an app that could ingest a basic level of employee data, and help architect a job level framework. Here is the lifecycle I went through, and the rollercoaster of emotions/focuses I had in that 8-hour period. Getting it setup. I spent a few minutes setting up a Github account (a space where the outputs from Code are stored), connecting it to Claude, setting up a project and installing various bits of coding stuff necessary to get started. I say stuff because I don't know what most of it is (Node.js? NPM? Claude terminal?). Initial frustrations Some of this experience still felt a bit inaccessible to those who don't know anything about coding (me), or don't have the persistence to push through obstacles (not me, I am stubborn about an outcome, especially when I feel stupid like with this). For example, I started coding into Github, but then there was no way to 'preview' the web app in Code (like all the guides suggested there would be). So I ended up having to download all the code, and start coding locally (into a folder), and actually run it locally, too. This took me probably an hour to sort out and even chatting with Claude chat about it didn't seem to resolve the issue for me. Annoying. Then I ended up working in Claude Terminal instead of Claude Code, and I started to feel like this guy below. AI Giddiness Once I was past that and was actually interacting with Code in a way that I could see in my browser, the giddiness set in. Don't get me wrong, I've played around plenty with Lovable, Replit and Google AI Studio, but there was a whole other level of intuition that seemed to come from my work with Claude code. As someone who has always fantasised about being a tech entrepreneur (but was never technical), this kind of tool genuinely tears down the biggest barrier between normal humans and tech founders. It still blows my mind. I'm in over my head The thing that comes from building with AI though is that you quickly realise the limitation isn't the tool, but you as the prompter. Once I came to this realisation, the shine of the basic prototype I'd built started to wear off. I realised it didn't have the maturity of something that would actually work at the level I needed it to. So I went back to the drawing board. I sat down with Cowork and the Project Management Skill and started to more properly map out what I actually wanted this tool to be. I got it to ask me questions and after about half an hour we had built a whole product roadmap that would take the tool from the basic concept I had made so far, into something that more closely resembled a workable tool that would displace a substantial (and manual) piece of work. I am a big fan of MCP's and I use ClickUp as my project management software. So I setup a project for this tool build and got Claude to actually build the roadmap into this project for me (its honestly been one of the most game changing things for me this year). Claude wrote way better product requirements than I ever could, and I just needed to review and adjust them before putting them into code to create the feature. AI had now replaced the need for a product manager AND a developer. Token optimisation I pay $200 a month for the Max plan because I've been a power user of Claude Cowork for the past couple of months. So I knew I would have plenty of firepower available (i.e. tokens) to have a crack at building with Code. But then a few hours in, I got the dreaded 'you're at 90% of your usage' flag. To put it in perspective I haven't switched away from Opus 4.6 (the latest and greatest Claude model) ever in the time I've had it. I am always using the best model no matter what I'm working on. At this point I was working on my two screens with four windows open. ClickUp with the features I was building Claude chat in the desktop app, to chat through issues I was facing or ask questions about something. A browser with the app I was building. Terminal window where I was prompting and engaging with Claude Code for the build. It became clear to me at this stage that I would need to come up with a more optimised way of working that would reduce my token burn, especially if I was going to be building in a way that I had now admittedly become addicted to. The utter coincidence at which, while this issue was occurring for me in realtime, a newsletter I follow closely in this space published a piece on this very matter. Well worth a sub if you don't already. Where are we going as a function All of this got me thinking about where we are as a function and where we're going. If someone like me can pick up claude code and fumble their way through building an app to an (admittedly) decent level, pretty much anyone could now be building whatever they want for their teams and employees. We're no longer constrained by budgets, or procurement cycles, we're constrained by effective scoping and prompting. While thinking about this, I came across a post that summed up the direction I think we're going really well. So yeah, I had a pretty crazy weekend of fun that helped ease some of my AI shame. Although I'm sure there'll be another feature released shortly that will spike it again. I think the only antidote to that is just carving out a bit of time to play with these tools as they come to market. I'd love to hear from you though - what are the imposter syndrome voices in your head telling you you're behind on AI and how could you ease them?
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Matt McFarlane
Matt McFarlane
Featured Contributor
·Posted in HR Operations

From in the front door to moving through the corridors

Most startup comp plans are great at getting people in the door. They're terrible at helping people move through the building. You feel this most at 300+ person companies. In the early years, everything is about hiring. You stretch bands, make one-off exceptions, and do what it takes to close the candidate. It works for a while. Then headcount growth flattens. Hiring slows. And suddenly the real growth problem isn't external, it's internal. You need people to move up a level, across to a new function, or into a stretch role that doesn't quite exist yet. This is where the comp model you built for offers starts working against careers. I've seen this play out dozens of times in VC-backed startups that spent years in hiring sprint mode. When you optimise for offers and ignore internal consistency, you end up with things like: Two people in the same role on very different pay. Long-serving employees paid less than the new hire they onboarded. Managers subtly blocking moves because "we can't afford to lose this person on this rate". If you want internal mobility to be real (not a slide in a values deck), your comp model needs to do four things. Clear, transparent ranges. A Head of People needs to be able to explain what a move into Role X or Level Y looks like, how it will be paid compared to market, and what needs to be true for someone to get there. If your ranges can't support that conversation, they're not ranges. They're guidelines you'll ignore. Principles for internal moves vs external hires. Where do you land someone who moves internally into a role they've never held before? Internal movers might typically land around 40-60% of the band. External hires with deeper experience might land at 60-75%. You don't need one "right" answer. You need a documented (and defensible) one. Guardrails against loyalty penalties. If the only way to get a meaningful pay rise is to leave and come back, something in your system is broken. Build in moments where you deliberately close gaps, especially when someone has grown materially in scope without changing titles. Triggers might be after a major scope increase, or after 2-3 years in role. A review rhythm that catches drift. None of the above matters if you only look at it during annual review. Build a check (even quarterly) where you compare internal pay positioning against your stated principles. Gaps compound quietly. By the time someone raises it, they've already started looking. What's something you see break when the growth plateaus or companies mature?
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Matt McFarlane
Matt McFarlane
Featured Contributor
·Posted in HR Operations

Global pay - what's your take?

I recently published what is now my most read edition ever for the FNDN Series, exploring how global pay can work for companies employing people broadly. And it's been responded to broadly by my audience, and it stoked me on to gauge answers from this community. BUT I WANT TO HEAR FROM YOU! Location agnostic pay (same salary, regardless of where you live) gets held up as the gold standard of pay equity. Buffer does it. It's a good story. People applaud it. But I've started to wonder if pushing it as the model — the thing all companies should aspire to — is actually doing more harm than good. Here's my honest position: paying someone less because of where they live isn't inherently wrong. Doing it without a floor, without a principle, without being able to explain it to your people — that's what's wrong. A few things I've been chewing on that I'd love your take on: 1. Is location agnostic pay a genuine equity position — or a privilege of well-funded companies? If your model depends on geography to afford talent, are you the villain? Or is a $60k salary in a market where $20k is the norm actually a net positive — even if it's not "equal"? 2. The developing economy test. I once worked somewhere that paid someone nearly double what they asked for in an emerging market. Not for charity — because we believed paying a thriving wage (not just a surviving wage) was good business. And it was. Do you have a floor? Or are you paying local market rates because you can? 3. The printer test, but for global pay. If your team in Manila found out what your team in Melbourne earns, could you explain it? Not defend it — explain it. Is "that's just the benchmark" a good enough answer when you're profitable and well-capitalised? I don't think there's one right answer here. I think there's a right framework — and most companies don't have one. They have a spreadsheet. Curious where people land on this. Especially: Have you ever pushed back on local market rates internally? (and what happened?) Is anyone here doing something genuinely interesting on global pay — rather than just following the benchmark? Let me know!
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Matt McFarlane
Matt McFarlane
Featured Contributor
·Posted in HR Operations

There's one question every Head of People should be able to answer. Most can't.

"Can you tell me whether your last three pay decisions were fair?" And if you can't, you're not alone. New data from HiBob shows that an astounding 65% of People professionals say they can't ensure fair pay without a unified view of people and budget data — and in startups, where the data infrastructure is even thinner, that number is probably worse. The fix doesn't always need tools. It's creating one source of truth that connects who your people are, what they're paid, what the market says, and what you can afford. Most startup People leaders have access to both data sets. The problem is they live in different tools with different owners. People owns the HRIS. Finance owns the budget. And the gap between them is where unfair pay decisions get made. Think about what happens when a manager comes to you and says "I need to give this person a raise or we'll lose them." Without a unified view, you're evaluating that request in a vacuum. You don't know if it's fair relative to their peers. You don't know if the budget can absorb it. You don't know if you approved something completely different for an identical role last quarter. You're not making a decision. You're making a guess. When people data and finance data sit in the same place, everything changes. You can see what you pay, what you should pay, and what you can afford to pay — at the same time. That means every comp decision runs through three filters before it's made: Market justification — is this in line with the benchmark for the role? Internal equity — is this fair relative to peers doing comparable work? Budget impact — can we afford this without creating a problem somewhere else? Most startups have one of these. Few have all three in one view. And that's the gap that turns good intentions into inconsistent outcomes. But enough about the challenges I've seen. I want to hear from you. Is this an issue you've faced and how would you want. PS. if you want to see the full report, check this out Interactive survey | Report summary & full report download
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Matt McFarlane
Matt McFarlane
Featured Contributor
·Posted in HR Operations

If I was Head of People today, here's how I'd supercharge my team with AI.

I talk to People teams every week. And honestly? Most aren't making real progress with AI. That's a problem. Because they're missing the biggest productivity unlock we've seen in our careers. So here's exactly what I'd do if I was Head of People, to supercharge my team with AI. 1. Create protected time for AI Your team won't learn AI in the gaps between meetings. Give them 2 hours daily or a full day weekly. Make it non-negotiable. Block the calendars. And crucially — work out what needs to be paused or dropped in order to make this happen. Don't just slap it on top! 2. Run a 6-week AI adoption sprint Break it down: Weeks 1-2: Research (what's possible, what others are doing) Weeks 3-4: Play (experiment, break things, learn) Weeks 5-6: Build (implement one real workflow) 3. Immerse in the best free content The education is out there. Point your team to people like Greg Isenberg, Ruben Hassid, and Johannes Sundlo . Have them consume it actively, not passively. 4. Give everyone $500 to spend on AI tools I know, I know. Budget, waaah. If your CEO wants AI adoption then tell them this is the price. Skip procurement. Set one rule: no employee data in the tools. Then get out of their way. Let them experiment and find what works. 5. Focus on ONE process Don't try to transform everything. Pick the smallest workflow you can replace with AI. Master that first. Then scale. The teams that figure this out now will be operating at a completely different level in 12 months. The ones that don't? They'll be wondering where the gap came from. How have you seen teams adopt AI in your workplace?
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Jessica Zwaan
Jessica Zwaan
Featured Contributor
·Posted in HR Operations

Your company operating principals shouldn't be set in stone

I've been speaking to founders recently about how culture and ways of working scale... When you're 10, 50, or even 100 people, your values often emerge naturally. You hire people who "get it," and culture feels obvious. But at 200 people? 500? The room isn't a room anymore. The people who built the early culture are now managing managers. New team members are joining from different industries, geographies, life stages. And it's impossible to ignore... the world keeps changing around us. Companies treat their operating principles like artifacts even through significant change. Something they defined once, printed on posters, maybe even embedded in performance reviews. But I find that it is overlooked (or even painful!) to stop and ask: Do these still mean what we need them to mean? The best People teams (and management teams) I work with revisit operating principles every ~24 months, especially during growth phases. Not to completely overhaul them, but to ask: Are these still true to how we actually work? Do they help us make hard decisions, or have they become wallpaper? Do they reflect who we're becoming, not just who we were? Your operating principles should be working documents. Living, breathing guides that help people navigate the messy, real decisions that come with scaling. I'm interested, though, in what makes this process painful, and how you can roll out these changes without disrupting those who joined in the early days. Whereby has recently refreshed their much-loved values (https://whereby.com/blog/our-new-company-values-a-shared-compass-for-the-future/) ... I'm interested in who else out there has done this recently, what was your process? How did it land?
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Matt McFarlane
Matt McFarlane
Featured Contributor
·Posted in HR Operations

The power of documenting "here's how to work with me"

One of the best leaders I ever worked with introduced themselves with a “How to Work With Me” guide. Not in a meeting. Not in a slide deck. Not with a big leadership spiel. Just a simple document that landed in my inbox before we’d even spoken. Context matters. I was new. They were new. They didn’t hire me. Which meant all the usual unspoken questions were sitting in my head: Will we get along? What do they actually value? How do they give feedback? Are they going to be hard work to deal with? Instead of leaving those questions to chance, they addressed them head-on. The guide was short, but thoughtful. Honest, not performative. It covered: What they expect from their team — and what they don’t How they prefer to communicate (and when) What “great work” looks like in practice Where they’re strong, and where they struggle How we could best support them as a leader A request for my reply with similar traits on my own style/preferences. They didn’t know us yet. But they gave us clarity anyway. That’s the point. A “How to Work With Me” guide isn’t about having all the answers. It’s about removing unnecessary ambiguity early. What made it work: There was no pressure to respond immediately We had time to read and reflect asynchronously An explicit invitation to respond in kind And we did. One by one, we shared our own guides. Then as leaders, we encouraged our teams to do the same. It scaled trust without adding meetings. It accelerated alignment without forcing vulnerability. It set a tone of openness that carried into how we worked together. If you want to write one yourself, start simple. Answer these questions honestly: How do I like to communicate? (Async vs meetings, written vs verbal, response expectations) What does good work look like to me? (Quality, pace, autonomy, follow-through) How do I give and receive feedback? (Direct, private, real-time, reflective) What are my known blind spots? (Be specific. This is where trust is built.) How can others help me be effective? (This flips power into partnership.) No polish required. No corporate language. Just clarity. We spend a lot of time talking about onboarding, leadership capability, and culture. This is one of the simplest places to start, and one of the most human. Have you ever written, or received, a “How to Work With Me” guide? Let me know below.
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Benefits & Total Rewards

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Kelly Williams
Kelly Williams
·Posted in HR Operations

What's actually cutting down your benefits-question volume this year?

If you're an HR leader, you're probably already bracing for the Q4 open enrollment storm: carrier negotiations, decoding broker jargon, and the inevitable Slack flood of "wait, what's a deductible again?" Traditional brokers love keeping it complicated. Complexity makes them indispensable. But it just piles stress onto HR and leaves employees guessing about their own coverage. The good news: you don't have to accept that trade anymore. You’ve got more leverage than you think, here are two ways to get it: A new generation of brokers is building the plain-language, self-service layer in-house — decision support, searchable plan explainers, claims help — instead of leaving you to fill the gap with a glossary doc and your own Slack replies. HR teams are also building their own stopgaps: a GPT trained on your SPD, an internal FAQ bot to kill the repetitive "what is a deductible" questions even before enrollment opens. Either way, the shift is the same: routing translation and hand-holding to something other than you. Not because you don't care, but because playing benefits middleman was never actually the job. The job is knowing when someone on your team is struggling before they tell you, and building a culture people want to stay in. What's actually cutting down your benefits-question volume this year — a broker doing more of the heavy lifting, something you built yourselves, or still mostly you? Curious what's working for other HR leaders right now. Let me know in the comments!
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Matt McFarlane
Matt McFarlane
Featured Contributor
·Posted in HR Operations

There's one conversation no Head of People wants to have.

You hired someone as a "Director" early on, when they're really performing as a Manager. And the reason it happens seems understandable in the moment. I see it all the time. You're a small business, and cash is constrained. So people ask for something else that is valuable to them which you can provide. -> Equity, more leave, or.... a more senior title. It's a way of getting and keeping the talent you need at a stage where you can't afford to just 'pay more'. But it causes a structural issue the likes of which you always end up having to deal with later. Especially when you go from having one of that 'Director' role, to two of them, and suddenly they're not up to par. Now you're stuck with two options: - Keep the inflated title despite misaligned expectations (and watch your structure crumble) - Reset the title to match reality (and have a brutal conversation about lowering the level and changing job title) (if you're blessed with time, maybe you can give them a grace period to 'become' their title) This can happen with promotions too. When companies scale, there's immense pressure to promote based on tenure rather than capability. "I've been here since day one, where's my VP title?" But title inflation leads to: - Compensation chaos when benchmarking against market rates - Confusion about decision-making authority - Frustrated employees who can't see clear progression paths The solution? Build structure early. Your job architecture should clearly distinguish what a Manager, Director, or VP is responsible for based on things like: - Span of control, - Decision-making authority, - Strategic vs operational impact. Otherwise, titles quickly lose meaning. The result: pay equity issues, confused employees, and overall brand damage. Have you ever had to reset someone's job title — and how did you handle it?
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Kelly Williams
Kelly Williams
·Posted in HR Operations

Myth vs. Reality: AI in HR is coming for your job

Reality: It’s just coming for your mind-numbing paperwork. Let’s be real: between untangling Open Enrollment crises, decoding premium hikes, and serving as the unofficial therapist for your team, adding “Master Artificial Intelligence” to your plate probably feels like a heavy lift. But here is the optimistic truth about the future of work: AI isn't here to replace the HR department. It’s here to rescue us from the administrative weeds so we can get back to what actually matters, which is building incredible cultures. How can HR leaders bring AI into the mix in a way that makes sense and allow us to focus on the culture and the actual humans? Glad you asked. It’s for the 47th "what's my deductible" email. The three hours untangling an open enrollment error. The comp benchmarking spreadsheet nobody wants to touch. Let it take that stuff. Not because we're replaceable, but because none of that is actually the job. The job is knowing when someone on your team is struggling before they tell you. It's the hard conversation you have with a manager about a bad hire. It's building a culture people actually want to be part of. AI can flag the attrition risk. It can't sit across from someone and mean it. So use it to clear the noise. Just be honest with your team about where it's showing up; that's the difference between a tool that builds trust and one that quietly erodes it. We didn't get into HR for the paperwork. Let's give it back. How are you using AI in your HR job right now? Are you using it to automate the noise, or are you still figuring out exactly where it fits into your workflow?
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Matt McFarlane
Matt McFarlane
Featured Contributor
·Posted in HR Operations

There's one conversation no Head of People wants to have.

You hired someone as a Director early on, when they're really performing as a Manager. Now you're stuck with two options: - Keep the inflated title despite misaligned expectations (and watch your structure crumble) - Reset the title to match reality (and have a brutal conversation about lowering the level and changing job title) (if you're blessed with time, maybe you can give them a grace period to 'become' their title) This can happen with promotions too. When companies scale, there's immense pressure to promote based on tenure rather than capability. I've felt this a lot and it's a hard tension to unscramble. The feeling of: ""I've been here since day one, where's my VP title?" But title inflation leads to all sorts of issues, such as: - Compensation chaos when benchmarking against market rates - Confusion about decision-making authority - Frustrated employees who can't see clear progression paths But what's the solution? It's to build structure early. Before it feels like you need it. Your job architecture should clearly distinguish what a Manager, Director, or VP is responsible for based on things like: - Span of control, - Decision-making authority, - Strategic vs operational impact. Otherwise, titles quickly lose meaning. The result: pay equity issues, confused employees, and overall brand damage. And it doesn't have to be rocket science. Even a simple; Jnr -> Mid -> Senior is one method of differentiation. Ask your team what they think defines those three levels and you've got the beginning ingredients of a level structure that helps ensure you're clear and consistent in your title practices. Have you ever had to reset someone's job title‚ and how did you handle it?
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Matt McFarlane
Matt McFarlane
Featured Contributor
·Posted in HR Operations

Budgeting for the comp cycle doesn't have to be this way

Ever walked into a comp cycle knowing the budget was a lie? Most startups under budget their comp cycle and then act surprised when the math doesn’t work. I;m sure you've lived this. You’re given a tiny pool to “cover increases”, and by the time the cycle kicks off it’s paying for things you never planned for: Overdue out-of-cycle increases that got pushed into this review. Promotions that have been delayed for months. Pay equity fixes that never quite made it to the top of the list. No wonder the budget blows up . You tried to do everything with nothing. Instead of one nice round percentage, budget against four specific buckets: Market adjustments – roles that have drifted below market and need a catch-up just to stay competitive. Merit increases – performance-based moves for people you want to keep and stretch. Promotions – step changes for people already operating at the next level. (Not the same as merit.) Pay equity – structural gaps you already know about and keep promising to fix “next cycle”. When you cost each of these upfront, a few things happen: Finance sees a clear model they can defend to the board, not a nice round number. You can say “no” or “not this cycle” with a reason, not just vibes. You decide up front which buckets you’re willing to underfund instead of pretending a 3% pool will magically solve eight different problems. If you want a reality check, take last year’s comp cycle file and tag every change to one of these five buckets. You’ll see fast where you were underfunded. Finance is trying to protect the company; you’re trying to protect your people. This framework helps you meet in the middle. How are you budgeting across these buckets today? Anything you’d add or cut?
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Kelly Williams
Kelly Williams
·Posted in HR Operations

If you made the leap off a PEO, what was the "breaking point" that made you do it?

We’ve all been there. When your company is sitting at 15 or 20 employees, a PEO (Professional Employer Organization) feels like a warm blanket. They handle payroll, compliance, and give you access to decent master-policy benefits. It just works. But then you hit 50, 75, or 100+ employees, and suddenly that warm blanket starts feeling a bit like a straitjacket. The Hidden Cost of Staying Too Long As HR leaders, we have to look past the convenience and look at the actual employee experience (and the bottom line). When you stay on a PEO too long, two things usually happen: The Tech Silo: You are trapped using the PEO’s legacy, clunky tech instead of building a modern HR tech stack (like HiBob) that actually drives company culture. The Benefits Black Box: You lose the ability to customize your benefits strategy. You’re paying a premium per-employee fee, but your team doesn't get the specialized advocacy or mental health support they actually need. The Reality: Leaving a PEO doesn't mean you have to drown in administrative headaches. It means you finally get to combine great modern HR tech with a benefits consultant who actually acts as an extension of your team. You can get better, customized benefits and save money to reinvest in your people.
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Matt McFarlane
Matt McFarlane
Featured Contributor
·Posted in HR Operations

Don't confuse these two things.

Another startup asked me "how do our bands reflect the change in cost of living?" Here's why this approach is hurting your business. I get this question pretty regularly. And I understand why. When the cost of living is up, people's salary doesn't go as far as it used to, and that's what they talk about around the dinner table. So it feels like the natural thing to build your pay bands around. But here's what I've learned after doing this with a lot of companies: - Your bands don't exist to track the cost of living. - They exist to track the cost of talent. Those are two completely different markets. Cost of living tracks your bread, your milk, your petrol. It moves on the supply and demand of stuff. Your bands should move on the supply and demand of people who do that job. When I see a company anchor their bands to cost of living, one of two things always happens: - The market for a role runs hot (think AI skills right now, 10-15% in some places). - While cost of living is sitting at 2.1%. So the company nudges their bands up 2.1% and then wonders why they can't hire and why their best people are taking calls from recruiters. Or the opposite. Cost of living jumps, the market for that role is flat, and the company pushes bands up 5% to "keep up." Now they're burning cash they never needed to spend, which for a startup with finite runway is a genuine problem. Either way, the band is now disconnected from the actual market. It's telling you a story about groceries when you needed a story about hiring. So when a client asks me how their bands reflect cost of living, here's what I say: "Your bands should reflect the market for the role. Cost of living is real, and your people are feeling it, so address it deliberately, but address it somewhere else." (btw I'm a fan of one-off allowances over a blanket % on pay. Cost of living pressure doesn't scale with what someone earns, so why should the relief?) So don't ignore cost of living. Just stop asking your bands to do a job the aren't built for.
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Kelly Williams
Kelly Williams
·Posted in HR Operations

If your company gave you back 5 hours a week thanks to AI, how would you actually want your team to use it?

Shoutout to Brandon Linn for sparking a great debate on my feed the other day. He asked a crucial question: With AI increasing efficiency, what do we actually do with that "found time"? The knee-jerk reaction for many companies will be to simply pile on more automated tasks. But if we use AI just to make humans work like machines, we’ve failed the culture test. Think about what happens right now when a tool saves us an hour. We don't take a breath; we just let an automated scheduler fill that empty slot with another "quick sync." We are facing massive meeting inflation and digital noise, trading actual focused work for the illusion of being busy. As an HR leader, I see this as a classic skills gap puzzle. We need to clearly divide the labor so we can protect our humanity: AI-Led Tasks: The routine stuff. Data crunching, initial drafting, sorting through spreadsheets, and scheduling. (Basically, clearing our plates). Human-Led Tasks: The irreplaceable stuff. Reading the room during a tense meeting, navigating client chaos, motivating a discouraged team, and leading with deep empathy. Our old training playbooks are built for a pre-AI world. We can’t teach emotional intelligence (EQ) via a checklist or a boring compliance video. We have to actively coach our leaders on how to manage with empathy, especially when tech is moving at lightning speed. We are not robots. Let’s use AI to take care of the mechanical, so we can get back to being human. 👇 What’s your take? If your company gave you back 5 hours a week thanks to AI, would you want to use it for deep creative projects, mentorship, or maybe testing out a 4-day workweek? Personally, I’m taking more walks and getting some fresh air - no screens allowed.
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Kelly Williams
Kelly Williams
·Posted in HR Operations

Are your mental health benefits actually visible?

🧠 May is Mental Health Awareness Month, and it is a great time to check in on how we actually support our teams. Let’s be real. If your mental health support is just a link buried on page 40 of a benefit guide, it is probably not helping anyone. True support should be a visible part of the daily culture, not something employees have to hunt for when they are already feeling overwhelmed. As HR leaders, we also have to model the behavior we want to see. We cannot build a high-performing, healthy workforce if we are personally running on empty. 🔋 A few ways to flip the script this month: Normalize the "Mental Health Minute": Encourage people to actually step away from their screens to reset. Focus on Proactive Care: Share resources for daily wellness, not just tools for when someone is in a crisis. Be the Example: Set clear boundaries for your own "off" hours and let your team see you doing it. What is one small way you are prioritizing your own peace of mind this month? I would also love for us to use the comments to swap ideas. If you have a favorite resource, a great "no-meeting" policy, or a creative way you are supporting your team’s well-being, please share it below!
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Kelly Williams
Kelly Williams
·Posted in HR Operations

What is top of mind for your people strategy?

Hi everyone! As we look ahead to the next few months, I want to make sure this space is as helpful as possible for all of you. Which of these areas is currently your biggest focus as you rethink your people strategy? 📣 Solving the Engagement Gap: How to make benefits feel like a tool employees actually understand and value year-round. 🧘 The "Whole Person" Strategy: Moving beyond basic medical to prioritize mental health, balance, and financial wellness. 🤖 Modernizing the Tech Stack: Transitioning from "handbooks and emails" to mobile-first, accessible benefit hubs. 📈 Managing Sustainability: Finding the balance between rising healthcare costs and maintaining a competitive, high-care culture. Don't see your specific struggle on the list? Drop a comment below! I’d love to hear what "in the trenches" moment you’re currently navigating.
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