In this episode of the Digital HR Leaders podcast, David is joined by Ian White, CEO of Charthop – a platform dedicated to helping data-driven people operations teams.

As an HR technology leader, Ian brings valuable insights into the evolving world of HR management and the role of technology in shaping the future of HR. Together, David and Ian explore the concept of people operations and its transformative impact on businesses' HR operations.

They delve into:

• The characteristics and differences between modern people operations teams and traditional HR roles

• The importance of transitioning to people operations in today's workforce and its alignment with employee needs and expectations

• The role of technology in supporting the transition to people operations and the challenges companies face in adopting a digital approach to HR

• The potential of generative AI in supporting people operations and people analytics, along with ethical considerations

• The skills HR professionals need to prevent biases and manage ethical implications when using generative AI

• Ian's insights on the future evolution of HR technology and the new capabilities in the Charthop platform to support modern people operations teams.

This conversation is for every HR leader and professional seeking to understand the evolving world of HR management and the role of technology in shaping the future of HR.

Support from this podcast comes from Charthop. You can learn more by visiting:
charthop.com/digitalhr

David Green: Today, I have the pleasure to be joined by Ian White, Founder, CEO, and CTO at ChartHop, a company dedicated to optimising employee experience through data-driven people operations.  ChartHop has been a generous sponsor of this series in recent years, and if you've been listening to the Digital HR Leaders podcast for a while, you may recall my previous conversation with Ian back in 2021, where we explored the art of managing and visualising people data to generate actionable insights. 

In today's episode, we're going to delve deeper into the fascinating world of people operations and its transformative impact on how businesses manage their employees.  We'll uncover why this transition is absolutely vital in today's workforce, how it aligns with the evolving needs and expectations of employees, and what distinguishes modern people teams from traditional HR roles.  We'll also discuss how technology, including generative AI, is revolutionising the field of HR; some of the biggest challenges that companies face when transitioning to a more digital approach; and the importance of transparency, trust, and accessibility when it comes to people data.  So without further ado, let's dive right in with Ian White. 

Ian, welcome back to the show.  As always, it's a pleasure to have you here.  You were on the show two years ago now, and I know Chart Hop has grown significantly since then.  It'd be great if you could just give an introduction to yourself and to Chart Hop, and also give us an idea of how much growth you've experienced over the last two years. 

Ian White: Yeah, it's been a great couple of years since I was last on the show.  With ChartHop, today's people leaders, the way we think about it, need a single platform to serve as the main point of action for the programmes and processes and initiatives that drive their efforts, and that's ChartHop; we're the people operations platform.  I think a lot's changing.  People leaders are not the only ones that have had to change and adapt in many ways in the last few years, as many different functions and roles across the organisation are changing in lots of different ways.  And that's why ChartHop is built for finance leaders, for executives, managers, and every employee.  And so we've had a great couple of years. 

I think that when we last talked, we were probably under 50 people, we were still in the middle of a global pandemic, and we were on our foundation as people analytics was really our focus, and we've broadened well beyond the people analytics space into becoming that people operations platform.  So, a lot's happened the last couple of years.  Just in the last year, we acquired Gather, which is a people operations workflow builder, to really help deepen and invest in the employee experience.  We recently raised our $20 million Series C fundraise, which was a dynamic fundraising market; we were able to close a great round of funding with a great partner, and we were named the best, or a best remote company to work for by Quartz. 

Building remote, I think it was the case when you and I chatted a couple of years ago, we've really built and invested on building as a remote company, investing as a remote company.  And, what we're focused on right now is just continuing to develop the ChartHop platform and to really meet the needs and demands and desires of the modern people operations leaders and teams that we serve. 

David Green: And I guess as a company, you effectively more or less formed and grew throughout a period of where we had to be working remotely, and now obviously we're into the hybrid era as well.  So you, almost as a company, you've grown in this era, so how's that helped you when it's come to designing some of the technology for the companies you work with?

Ian White: Well, it's funny because a lot of the remote accelerated or accentuated some things in trends that were already happening.  But I remember way back to early days, we built a map feature in ChartHop to help visualise all of your offices and where all your remote workers were spread out.  We launched that feature maybe in January 2020, I think, was when we launched that feature, so the timing was interesting for us. 

I think a lot of the capabilities of building a modern people operations platform, the experiences that people want in terms of more access to data, more transparency, more clarity, more ability to manage people across regions, all of those things, they were always important.  Remote challenged us to up our game and level up the collaboration capabilities of the platform.  But now, even as many companies return to office or switch to hybrid, or whatever the future holds, I think the fundamental challenges of building a people-first, data-driven, people operations function, those are the same, whether you're remote or not.  But we've certainly grown up on a lot of the changes that have happened in this space over the last few years.

David Green: That's great.  And how many people are you up to in the company now?

Ian White: We're about 150 people today.  That's up certainly 3X where we were a couple years ago, and that's across the US.  We have really embraced being remote.  I'm chatting here from Long Island, my home in Long Island; we have a strong contingent of folks in New York, but we're really all over the country and even all over the world across ChartHop.

David Green: That's great.  So, you already mentioned during the introduction really, we've seen how HR has evolved over the years from back from when it was a traditional service centre, to now being a much more strategic business partner, and obviously analytics and some of the technologies such as ChartHop really help HR to do that.  Thinking about the companies that you work with at ChartHop, what does a modern people and operations team look like now; and how does it differ from maybe the more traditional HR role that people will be more familiar with?

Ian White: Yeah, we think of people operations as really an evolution of the traditional HR function.  It's a people-first and a data-driven business function that is primarily responsible for establishing how an organisation manages and supports its people.  And so, people ops is just the frontier of what modern HR looks like.  You need the traditional HR responsibilities, like compliance and policy, combined with incorporating forward-thinking people-first initiatives that support a data-backed approach to employee experience. 

So a modern people operations team might include representatives from people or people ops, talent, DEIB, finance, they all really come together to build the people strategy for the organisation, which goes far beyond compliance to really thinking in a forward-thinking manner, what is the best way the org can manage and support its people.

David Green: Yeah, and you hit on a magic word there, "employee experience".  Obviously, it's something that companies were focused on anyway, and increasingly so prior to the pandemic, and obviously using data to understand things like the different moments that matter, whether it's recruiting or onboarding, or a big change, change of role maybe within the organisation and promotion, etc.  That's one reason that I suspect that this is important, but again, this transition from a more service centre approach to people operations, why is it so important; and more importantly, how does the concept of people operations better align with the needs and expectations of today's workforce?  I think we definitely saw a change during the pandemic around employee expectations, around what they get at work.

Ian White: Yeah, we certainly did.  We had a whole journey of employee expectations with the pandemic causing people to rethink their relationship to work, in many ways with organisations, now in many cases being challenged to be more operationally efficient and effective, with behind all that a changing generation and a different set of expectations for the generation coming up in the workforce.  And so, I think there's a lot of different elements.  One is transparency, and this is where we started. 

We started with the foundation of making people data accessible, something that was as easy to collaborate on as any other type of data in an organisation, to be able to self-serve managers with the access that they need to better manage and support their people, rather than to keep that data locked away and make it the HR person's job to find or fetch all that data, but actually put it in the hands of managers and put, subject to the right access, data in the hands of people and employees.  Employees require or ask for more transparency, particularly on topics like pay, but across the organisation in terms of the organisation's values, its context, how it thinks about the policies that it acts on.  People are looking for that clarity and context from the organisations they work for. 

There was a study that 87% of workers cherish transparency in a new work setting.  And what transparency really goes back to, appropriate, healthy transparency drives and creates trust, right?  And whether it's a remote environment or an environment that's having a lot of change, trust is really critical.  High-trust teams perform better, they retain better, it's just a healthier, happier place to work when you're working in a high-trust environment.  But there was actually an HBR study I saw that 58% of people trust strangers more than they trust their own boss, if you can believe it, which is terrible!  But it doesn't surprise me because if people are in an environment where they're not getting the context, they're not getting the transparency, that can create an adversarial relationship rather than one that's built on a foundation of collaboration and trust. 

So it starts with more transparency or healthy transparency.  And I think some other key pieces, DEIB, over 90% of US workers want companies to commit to DEIB efforts, and a people operations platform can really help people leaders draw data-backed insights that can help drive successful DEIB programmes and help better measure and manage the support.  I think feedback is a really important piece.  About over 55%, over half of employees, believe that annual reviews have less impact on their performance than regular, constructive, ongoing criticism and feedback.  I think it's something in people ops we talk about a lot, the importance of ongoing feedback.  The good people operations function should be a real advocate in support of managers' ability to have those regular performance conversations and feedback and coaching conversations.

What goes with that is training.  Nearly 95% of people say they'd stay in their role longer if their company invested in learning and development opportunities.  It's what everybody at every stage in their career wants, is to learn and grow and get better, especially in a changing, rapidly changing economy where skills are constantly changing, environment is changing.  And so a good people operations function should really be thinking about how can we train and upskill and uplevel our people?  So, those are some of the key components, I think, of a forward-looking people operations strategy and function. 

David Green: So how can HR leaders looking to transition to a people analytics function that does all those things that you mentioned, how can they do so; and then what role does technology play in supporting them achieve this?  I presume it can potentially provide the glue that links all these things together.

Ian White: Yeah, I think going back to transparency, but really going back to all the things I mentioned, it starts with the foundation of data.  I think that every organisation is at different stages in their data maturity.  But I think historically, around the organisation, people data and workforce data has been one of the -- it's usually one of the last places in the organisation to become really data-driven and well organised, and accessible.  Because a lot of this data, it's very private and personal and sensitive data, it can be challenging to have a platform or a way of sharing information safely in a way that respects confidentiality and privacy, and shares data with managers subject to what they need to be able to see or know. 

So I think a tech platform can really help first and foremost with some of the data challenges, collecting data, making it easy to surface and visualise data, get insights out of data, take action out of data, and collaborate and share on that data.  So that's how we think about technology.  I think tech is never the silver bullet or the only answer, right.  A modern people operations practice starts with adopting the culture, starts with adopting the practices that lead to building healthy organisations, but I think a good tech platform can help support some of those efforts and make it easier to self-serve data and easier to collect and gather data.

David Green: Yeah, that is a key point.  Some of the research that we did last year at Insight222, we had over 180 companies participate in that, and one of the things we were trying to do is identify what leading companies were doing with regards to people analytics, and were there common characteristics?  And one of those was that democratisation, getting the data out to people, making it accessible, helping people managers give insights so they can make decisions around hiring, promotion, development, etc; but also give them insights about themselves, about how their behaviours either drive, or positive or negative upticks in engagement and performance of their team, it's all about that, it's so important. 

As you said, you need to have the vision, and the kind of leadership to do that, but then you do need the technology to make that accessible, particularly in large organisations, and help people draw down on the data that's relevant for them.  And of course, as you say, you need to make sure that it's only the data that's relevant to them and their team, if you're going out to the people manager or an employee, the data that's relevant to them.  But yeah, very interesting and obviously technology platforms such as ChartHop are one of the ways that you can do that. 

We're going to stay with technology, Ian.  Now, you may have noticed, you're a technologist yourself, I think it's clear, you don't just have the CEO title, you have the CTO title there, so you clearly have a background in technology; there's been quite a lot of noise about generative AI and ChatGPT -- 

Ian White: Never heard of it!

David Green: It seems to literally be taking the world by storm at the moment.  I'd love to hear, as you're a technologist and as a CEO of a technology company, I'd love to hear your views on generative AI and how it supports people operations and people analytics functions alike, and also maybe what it means for the world of work as well.

Ian White: Yeah, well, I think it's really exciting.  I think obviously, like any big technology change, there's a lot of challenges and a lot of upsides and downsides, but I think it's really exciting.  These technologies are going to really help organisations be able to get much better insights out of all of the data that they're, in some cases, newly starting to bring together, and in some cases, how free -- it's just going to be much better access to data, to insights, to information interfaces for managers and non-technical people and people operations leaders to get access to answer questions is already becoming much, much more powerful and sophisticated and easier for people than ever before.

I think ultimately, very, very quickly, LLMs and generative AI are going to help people leaders make informed decisions and help every single person in organisations have better access to insights and data.  I think that healthy transparency still needs to be at the core of how we think about surfacing these things.  I think that the way a lot of these models work is, it can be challenging to shield sensitive data in the ways it needs to be shielded, and so that is a specific challenge to people operations data that needs to be very carefully thought through as these technologies are deployed. 

Even more so, I think we as an industry on the precipice of all this change need to be really, really thoughtful about deploying AI or any technology that helps make important decisions that are going to impact people's livelihoods.  I think it's just something, as much as I love in tech, trying out new technologies and playing and experimenting with new technologies, I think when we apply this tech to the people in the HR and people operations space, we need to be really, really mindful of some of the ethical implications of doing so, and be thoughtful about the bias that can come into some of these models, if we're not very thoughtful and careful about both the inputs and outputs and how these models are constructed. 

So, I think there's a whole set of issues for people operations and I guess HR tech or people tech vendors to wrestle with, but overall I'm really excited about the potential.  I mentioned bias, for example, I mentioned the dangers of bias; there's also the opportunity to sometimes get a more objective lens or a different lens that can surface data that can remove some human bias as well.  So I think it's just anybody who's played with ChatGPT or any of the alternatives, I think these tools often work best when they are almost like an advisor, a revealer of insights that one can interpret, and you still need I think a level of really strong human judgment in terms of how you apply those insights.  But rapid, fast access to all kinds of insights that we didn't have before I think is going to be transformational for many organisations.

David Green: Yeah, I think you're right, and I think it's so important, as you've done, to highlight some of the ethical considerations, I think, around not just generative AI, but any type of AI or machine learning or any data, frankly, that we're collecting on employees in the organisation.  And I guess we're seeing more legislation coming in, whether it's in New York or whether it's in Jersey, I think there's different legislation coming in there in California and then the EU as well.  There's going to be more regulation coming in around this, so I guess a legal perspective as well, we need to make sure that we're doing the right thing. 

But more from an opportunity perspective and maybe broadening it out wider to wider AI and machine learning, what use cases do you see it really helping to support from a people operations perspective?

Ian White: I think that there's lots of connections in terms of how an organisation actually does its work, that are something that can be drawn out of a large data set and provide just insights.  I think there's a lot of scanning large corpuses of text, is something that LLMs and other AI models are good at, and making sense of them and surfacing insights to people is one of the big things.  I think also, making the ability to access data much easier than writing a SQL query, I think, is going to open and unlock people analytics to a whole set of managers and people that have not historically needed to rely on technologists.  And so, I think it's just going to really open up insights, it's going to create a lot more accessibility, and when we think about the democratisation of data around the organisation, I think AI tools are going to be something that's going to help us do that. 

You mentioned the laws, which I think are, in many cases, a really healthy reminder.  The laws are playing catch up in many ways with industry, and so I think it's really incumbent on people who are building technology like me, but also people operations leaders everywhere, to really be thoughtful about not just the ethical implications, but be transparent with your organisation about where you are or are not adopting new technologies.  I think that you can create a lot of just fear or uncertainty if you're not being clear with people or being transparent with people about, it's being able to just clearly explain where, why and how you are using AI, particularly if it's going to be in any way that even indirectly is going to impact someone's compensation or their employment or their promotion or performance evaluations.  That's something you should be very upfront with people about so that there's no mystery about what is or what is not being used at your organisation.

David Green: Yeah, I suppose when it comes to using algorithms, it's actually checking them, validating them, making sure that there isn't bias and understanding what it means for different groups, I guess, looking at it from a different groups level and then understanding it and testing it and potentially getting third parties in to come and test what you're doing as well, whether that's a company building it themselves or whether they're partnering with HR technology companies to deliver some of this work. 

Ian White: Yeah, no, that's absolutely right.  Like any new tool, platform technology, you always have to back-test it, like the output; you have to use other data sources.  I would never advise people to turn over every critical people decision to a model, but a model could be a really important insight or a really important set of inputs into your decision-making that can ultimately just help you make better, healthier choices for your organisation.

David Green: And if we think about HR professionals or people ops professionals as well, what skills do they need to identify and then prevent any biases and risks in using generative AI, but also any AI and algorithm-based tools? 

Ian White: Well, this is where really I think a strong grounding in traditional HR is very, very helpful in both interpreting the results or conclusions, or thinking through what type of data should or should not be used, or how much weight to put on it.  I think a traditional HR background is actually really, really helpful and strong in thinking about these things.  Obviously being well aware of the law, compliance, regulatory frameworks that could apply.  And then I think this is important for any leader, but certainly for people operations leaders, is the ability to communicate well to your people.  I think it's just always really, really important; but certainly, in using any kind of any kind of tool, you want to be able to explain and communicate in a clear transparent way how you got the information or the conclusions that you do. 

David Green: Good point. Ian, obviously as a technologist, we've seen a lot of advance in HR technology, so I'm going to ask you to look into your crystal ball now and fast forward let's say five years, and how do you see the field of HR tech evolving over that time, say let's even stretch it to 2030, why not; let's stretch it to 2030 and see what you think is going to happen?

Ian White: 2030 is a long way out.  They always say, "The world changes more than you think in ten, and less than you think in two", but I guess that's seven.  I think there's a few things that are maybe extensions of some existing things that are happening and where I think things are going. 

Modernising the traditional HR people function, that's already happening, but that's going to really continue I think as more organisations move to employee-first model, embracing flexible work structures, focusing on internal talent mobility, up-levelling mental health and belonging efforts.  With the rising generation in the workforce, these modernisations are going to continue, and they're going to require a modern and forward-thinking and thoughtful type of HR, which is people operations, because employee expectations are changing.  So, I think when we think about the use of technology and how that's going to change all of that, we've already seen the last few years getting much, much more data-driven, and that with all things we just spoke about, that's only going to vastly multiply. 

I think we are going to really think of data and providing and sharing and creating insights out of data to be really core to the function of people operations.  We'll look at people operations, as certainly a clear strategic stakeholder for the business, and I think that's already happening, but also a real partner to every business leader in helping them think through and make sense of all of this data, because we're going to have so much more data than we've ever had before, and so much more ability to interpret it, that making sense of it and making the human decisions that come out of it are going to be really core to the responsibilities of the people ops function. 

So, I think we're going to we're going to see a lot of things change, things are going to get more flexible, things are going to get more accessible, we're going to really see that rising generation come up and we're going to see all of our expectations shift a little bit about how we relate to work and how we make sense of all the data around us.  But seven years out is a ways; a lot a lot can happen between now and then. 

David Green: Seven years does seem a long time; it will fly past though, I suspect.  We'll be sitting here maybe in 2030 and be like, "Wow, where did the time go?" 

Ian White: That's probably right!

David Green: So, Ian, if we focus on ChartHop now, and I won't ask you to look forward seven years with ChartHop, but what new capabilities can customers expect to see in the platform in coming years, and how will these changes support the evolving needs of modern people operations teams; and you might want to talk as well to the typical type of organisation that you work with at ChartHop in your answer as well?

Ian White: Yeah, well at ChartHop, we've come a long way in a very short time.  Four years ago, ChartHop was one person, it was me.  So, we've really evolved our platform, really just listening to our people leaders and finance leaders, and in a sense, building software is, you listen to what customers want and you build those things.  And so for us today, we work with people and finance leaders at organisations ranging from growth-save startups to large public companies of thousands and thousands of people and everywhere in between.

But what we really try to do is understand the needs of people, operations and finance leaders and try to drive insights, alignment and action around the organisation.  And so, we're a platform that helps everybody in the organisation, we want to make the right data accessible to every single person.  So when we roll out new capabilities, we're always thinking about how can we help leaders consolidate their tech stack and get on the same page with each other, leaving, taking a lot of processes that maybe used to happen in spreadsheets, or used to happen in ways that were not conducive to collaboration, and bring those into a single platform where we can bring a lot of different processes together.  So we definitely are thinking about consolidating a lot of different workflows and work streams, and I think we'll see more and more of that in our product as we launch more.

We're thinking a lot also about what are the real ways that work actually happens in organisations, because it's not just the traditional manager structure.  That's obviously a big part of it, and we started with an org planning visualisation that showed a manager structure, but we're thinking a lot about different ways that we can represent all the different team structures and all the different ways that work actually happens in an organisation.  And I think we'll have a lot more to share and announce on that later this year even.  But, really thinking about our core users and thinking about building employee-first experiences for the whole organisation that support alignment and support action and support insight for everybody.

So we've got a lot to build.  Our road map is a mile long, but it's really just listening to customers and that drives a lot of it.

David Green: Okay, and so, Ian, I can't believe we've already come to the end of our conversation, and you would have talked a little bit to this already.  This is a question we're asking everyone in this series and we've got HR leaders, people analytics leaders on there as well.  So actually you're coming from a perspective here of a firm that's supporting people, operations leaders as well, finance leaders as well, which is interesting.  So what do you think HR leaders need to be thinking about most in the next 12 to 24 months?  Not going to 7 years this time, just 12 to 24 months!  And, what do you see is the biggest opportunity and maybe what do you see as the biggest concern or biggest challenge? 

Ian White: Well, the next 12 to 18 months could continue to be a bumpy time for the global macroeconomic conditions.  It certainly has been in tech and could be in many parts of our economy.  I think in more challenging times, I think that's where people leadership is even more important.  It's where prioritising transparency with your organisation I think is really important, because that builds the trust and brings together the trust that can bring people together.  Giving people feedback on a consistent basis, I think; every company's thinking about making sure that they're operating in a really strong and efficient manner, and part of that is making sure we're empowering our people and making sure we're giving them the tools that they need to succeed. 

I think feedback is a two-way street, I think it's healthy, part of an organisation, for employees to be able to ask questions of leadership and provide feedback.  And I think, again we talked of different expectations, I think there's a more of a rising set of expectations that people want to be able to have context and have that transparency shared with them.  And even if there could be bumpy economic conditions that people are navigating, people want to know that they are navigating it with leaders who represent integrity in an organisation that represents their values, and an organisation that is going to continue to up-level and train and support. 

So I guess, the last point on that would be making sure that your middle managers really have the tools and resources and training, because a lot of what happens in organisations, people ops and finance and executives can set the strategy at the top, but a lot of what actually happens in an organisation happens on the ground with those middle managers; so, making sure that you really support those managers with the tools and context that they need to succeed.  I think those are just a handful of the things that people ops leaders need to be thinking about right now.

David Green: And they've got a lot of think about, let's be honest about it!

Ian White: They certainly do, we all do.  But I think everybody in this space is working together to support healthier and better organisations together.

David Green: Ian, thanks so much for being a guest on the Digital HR Leaders podcast again.  It's fascinating to see the progress that you've made at ChartHop in such a short space of time.  Can you let listeners know how they can connect with you, find you on social media, and also find out more about ChartHop?

Ian White: Yeah, so obviously charthop.com is a good place to find out about us.  Definitely join our people ops community and newsletter if you're in the people operations space.  You can find me on LinkedIn, @IanWhite.  There are a lot of Ian Whites out there, but just look for the ChartHop one.  You can find me on Twitter @eonwhite, or just shoot me a note at ian@charthop.com, I love to hear from folks.  So, I really appreciated chatting with you today, David, this was great. 

David Green: That's fantastic.  Well, from Ian White to David Green, thank you very much, Ian, for being on the show.

Ian White: Thank you.