We’ve been thinking a lot about treating our work with the same rigor as a Product team—focused on building scalable solutions, staying agile, and iterating over time. It’s a mindset shift that emphasizes creating lasting value. This approach came from advice I got when I first started Sproutwise in a conversation with Alex Nozdrin, a seasoned founder and builder. He’s great at breaking down the essentials into manageable, high-impact steps, and I’ve come back to his advice repeatedly over the past year.
It’s also something my former CEO at HookLogic, Jon Opdyke (or JO, as we called him), echoed. His advice? “If you use something more than once, templatize it. Don’t waste time rebuilding the same thing over and over—focus on providing value in more strategic ways.”
I’m also excited to be joined by our newest team member, Cay Umansky. Like Alex, she has a knack for cutting through the noise (and trust me, she hears a lot of it from me!). She’s been instrumental in pushing Sproutwise down this path of “Productizing.” In any good partnership, there’s always the dreamer and the realist—but I digress.
Let’s dive into what we mean by building your People initiatives like a Product team.
Step 1: Identifying and Defining “User” Needs:
For Product teams, external customers are their users. In our case, as People teams our users are employees and people managers. As I’ve often said in my work, your user feedback will reveal your roadmap, and the same applies for both here. I also had a Spanish teacher in high school who often said that if you, instead, ASSume something, you make an as…..ok, you get the point.
So, how does this work in practice?
To gather employee feedback, use surveys, 1:1s, and pulse checks to uncover what’s working and where improvements can be made—just like a product team may use in soliciting user and market feedback. Periodic "listening tours" are a great way to connect with your team, providing a direct channel for feedback. Then, bundle up those insights into a clear executive summary for leadership (and repeat with a cadence that makes sense for your org). Be sure to keep it anonymous when possible—this helps employees feel comfortable sharing openly without worry of repercussions. These are simple, effective steps that can make a big difference in creating a feedback-rich culture.
Step 2: Prioritization of People Initiatives:
To keep it simple, think of tackling HR projects like the approach to software feature development. Product teams prioritize based on customer needs, impact, and business goals. Similarly, People teams should prioritize initiatives based on employee satisfaction, business objectives, and overall impact. It’s key in building a product to balance customer demands with the company’s strategy, and for people initiatives, HR teams need to align their projects with both employee needs and the organization’s goals to maximize value.
Here are some things that may help to make this easier:
Identify Key Business Goals: Start with determining the company’s top priorities by understanding what the team is sharing (see step 1) and feedback from your leaders at the org —whether it’s scaling, improving retention, or developing leadership. This gives you a baseline for where to start with creating a list of potential HR stuff to build or refine.
Prioritize Using an Impact Framework: List potential initiatives and rank them using a simple 2x2 matrix—impact (high/low) vs. effort (high/low). Focus on quick wins that have high impact and low effort, like enhancing onboarding or starting a leadership training program.
Start with Must-Haves: Focus on must-have initiatives that directly affect employee experience (again, this is the feedback you heard directly from your team) and business performance (or what you heard was important from your leaders). For v1, this could include onboarding improvements, leadership development, or even setting up clear communication channels.
Step 3: Iterative Development of People Programs:
As Cay knows, I often say, we don’t need to boil the ocean. 1. It’s impossible (I’ve tried!), and 2. In any organization, big or small, priorities shift quickly. That’s why, just like in product development, it’s better to build small, minimum viable products (MVPs), or “the simplest version of a product that you need to build to sell it to a market” for HR initiatives. Remember also that these don’t have to be rolled out widely; testing your MVP with a small, engaged group first can be incredibly effective. Gather feedback through a retrospective, refine your approach, and then expand from there.
This iterative process aligns with the Agile methodology, where working in smaller chunks (or sprints) allows for continuous improvement and ensures you’re building something that truly meets your org’s needs. It’s like running—it’s not about the speed, but time on your feet. The goal isn’t to push for perfection but to focus on the progress of your initiatives, ensuring your approach is sustainable and sets you up for long-term success.
Step 4: Cross-functional Collaboration:
Oo this one’s a biggie. I firmly believe that without partnership, any HR initiative is DOA. As my mother always said to me, “Abigail, you like to learn things the hard way,” and boy have I done exactly this here. You’ve got to have partners and champions for HR to work, so seek out your allies and be relentless in ensuring mutual benefits.
Some advice here:
Understand Their Needs and Goals: Once you’ve found your allies, get to know what they need, their goals, and what’s challenging for them. Tailor your initiative to meet these needs and craft a shared vision that shows how it benefits them directly and fits with what’s important for the company.
Again, Remember MVP x Quick Wins: Demonstrate the value of the initiative through quick wins or early successes. This can build momentum and reinforce the benefits of the initiative.
Step 5: Metrics and KPIs:
If it’s important, measure it. It’s just that simple. Start by defining clear, actionable success metrics for your HR initiatives, such as retention rates, employee engagement scores, or time to hire. Even if you don’t have sophisticated systems, you can use basic tools like Google Sheets or Excel (< links to KPI dashboard templates for each) to track these metrics. Regularly review the data and adjust your strategies based on what you learn, just like you would with product performance. As your infrastructure improves, you can refine and expand your measurement approach.
Step 6: Creating Reusable “Program Kits”:
We’re going to kick this one over to Cay, our resident expert!
First things first: it’s important to meet companies where they are in their People journey - this is a crucial step in the implementation and “customer success” of HR initiatives. For instance, some organizations might be ready to embrace only basic People initiatives or “products” - like a v1 of an official employee handbook, whereas others might be ready for a formal compensation, leveling, and location philosophy. Neither is better than the other, they just may be at a different starting point in their journey. No matter where your company falls on this spectrum, certain principles will always apply for the successful adoption and embedding of a product–early and transparent communication, clear sightlines into a project plan for the People team and Leadership, user friendliness, and the ability to measure and report-out on progress with actionable next steps.
What should a kit include?
Program Kits help to operationalize an initiative and answer “where do we even start?” Kits consist of:
1. A quick summary aka product document to explain the what, why, and how of a program and can be added to your company knowledge base for reference. For example:
What is a performance review and how does it work?
When does it happen and in what platform?
How does it play into my career journey and salary?
How much of my time will this take?”
Transparency (as much as possible) helps lend legitimacy and purpose to your initiatives.
2. A detailed project plan and timeline, taking into consideration stakeholders, pre- work, and the right cadence of communication. Communications templates for applicable audiences help ease the growing pains of what might be a change for your organization, and can be customized as you see fit.
3. Last but not least – reporting and next steps! As Abby said, “if it’s important, measure it”. I would also add, “what gets measured, gets done”. If you’re trying to reduce time- to - fill in Talent Acquisition, start by measuring it. If you’re trying to retain and foster women leaders on your engineering team, measure engagement, turnover, and performance review data. Program Kits can supply deck and spreadsheet templates with suggested items to collect and measure throughout the course of your initiative or year over year, as well as how to report it out to stakeholders and take actionable next steps toward version 2.0 of your product.
Kits can help in rolling out a new program or to ensure cyclical programs like performance reviews become reliable and respected within your company. When your people feel informed and prepared, your People team “products” have a greater chance of successful implementation.
Step 7: Roadmapping and Long-term Vision:
Here’s where it becomes about trusting the process, because you really start to revisit what you’ve already read here, except your initiatives become larger and over a longer period of time.
TL;DR as you get comfortable with prioritization and building in this way, you repeat the process with frequency, and make sure it's in the voice of your team and aligned with what’s important for your org to succeed.
Step 8: Documentation and Knowledge Sharing:
You’ll probably notice that I have a bit of a soft spot for knowledge bases. Actually, let’s be honest—I really love them! I find they’re an invaluable tool for both remote and in-office teams. They help with effective asynchronous work and ensure everyone has access to consistent and up-to-date information. By documenting processes, learnings, and successful initiatives in a centralized place (i.e. Notion or Confluence) you’ll maintain continuity and clarity across the team, just like good product documentation does in tech.
Ready to rev your Product engines? Find Cay and I at Sproutwise to get started!
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