6 Ways to Level Up Your People Operations for the Rest of 2021

Wait, wait, wait. What’s People Operations? Otherwise known as People Ops, or POPS, it is a section of a company that focuses entirely on all things people and productivity.

In general, those responsible for People Ops are in charge of creating a great employee experience that makes work rewarding and engaging for your employees. POPS teams make employees happier and thus more likely to hang around. This is usually something that a company can have more time to invest in after automating other more tedious HR processes.

But how exactly do you go about making People Ops work? Perhaps you’re new to the idea, or have been on board for a while and are looking for ways to take your POPs work to the next level. Whatever your situation is, here are 6 ways that you can boost People Ops at your business for the rest of the year.

Understand why People Ops matters

People Ops will be responsible for not only bringing the right talent in, but keeping them there by ensuring that their experience as an employee is as excellent as it can be.

When most people first hear of people ops, they think “Oh, that’s just HR,” but that isn’t the case. Much like other operations managers, those running People Ops have the same focus on every aspect of the supply and disbursement chains.

A People Ops manager does the same, but for all things people-related at a company. They’re responsible for seeing the whole picture, not just executing on the paperwork and other compliance efforts that typically characterize HR efforts.

From the recruitment process to retirees, People Ops is responsible for the experience of it all. Done right, People Ops will be responsible for not only bringing the right talent in, but keeping them there by ensuring that their experience as an employee is as excellent as it can be.

Shift from manual to automated

Because many companies are resource limited, one central way to free up time for People Ops work is to automate the more tedious HR-related work that a computer program can easily do instead of a human.

That way, the really important and much more delicate and intricate work of dealing with people can be done by the humans best suited to carry it out. By having computers carry out monotonous work and putting your talented team to work doing work that only humans can do, you’re making the most of everyone’s capacity.

Use data rather than anecdotes or observations

Being responsible for the employee experience from beginning to end is no small task; that’s why data has to be at the center of it. It’s tempting — especially if you’ve been at a company forever or if you started it — to feel like you know everything about it. But that’s never the case, especially when growth enters the picture.

In order to make the best decisions, you’ll want to rely on data. Track anything and everything you can. Send out employee surveys. Do exit interviews. Look for bottlenecks and places where processes fall apart so you can get them back on track. The only way to know if what you’re doing is working or not is to track it and make adjustments accordingly based on thorough evaluations.

Make employee satisfaction and productivity the goal

You can gather data ‘til the cows come home, but if there isn’t a clear goal behind why you’re collecting it, it can quickly become all for nothing.

When it comes to People Ops, the goals are high employee satisfaction and productivity. Often, employee satisfaction and productivity go hand in hand. Happy, satisfied, and empowered employees are employees that not only stick around, but who operate at their most productive as well. If you’ve been diving into People Ops but aren’t quite sure what the ultimate goal is, these two elements are great outcomes to shoot for.

Happy, satisfied, and empowered employees are employees that not only stick around, but who operate at their most productive as well.

Focus on the employee experience just like you do on the customer experience

Does this all sound strange and kind of overwhelming? It’s actually a process that’s pretty familiar to most companies, they just apply it to the customer experience and nothing else.

Much the same way that you try to uncover every motivation of your customers and just like the dedication you bring to their happiness, in a People Ops world the same level of attention is brought to the employee experience — and not just while they’re working. You might help to ensure that things like your employees’ commuting experience is a feasible and non-awful one, for example.

Leverage tools and resources

When it comes to People Ops, you’ll always want to be on the lookout for what’s new (or what can be used in a new way) to make sure they’re doing their best work possible. That means figuring out the tools and resources you need to do work as efficiently as possible. It could even mean hiring a contractor for menial tasks so that your bandwidth can be freed up for more important work.

Whatever it is, a core tenet of POPs is to stay up to date on what’s new and exciting in your world of work and traditional HR in general.