Summary
A top performer walks out the door at Qualtrics holding an outside offer for double their salary. Michael MacArthur, then Head of People, has a choice: pretend the market is wrong, or admit the comp process was. His read, years later from the COO seat at Recharge: the 2x counter-offer isn't a market signal. It's an audit finding.

This is one of the cleanest diagnostics we've heard for whether a comp process is really working. And it's the same logic Michael applies to AI, engagement, and the build-versus-buy questions every HR leader is wrestling with right now. The unifying argument: context, not better tools, is the layer that separates the HR teams winning with AI from the ones spinning cycles.

Timestamps
01:00 Michael's path from sales comp to head of people at Qualtrics to COO at Recharge
03:00 The Qualtrics dysfunction: forced curves and 18-month time-in-seat gates
04:00 The "double their salary" diagnostic signal for a broken comp process
06:30 Recharge's fix: 6-month cash cycle, no forced curve, multi-level calibration
10:00 Process transparency versus salary transparency
13:00 Nectar's anonymous follow-up and the context thesis for AI in HR
14:30 Why Anthropic's engagement score doesn't matter to Recharge
16:00 Build versus buy on the people side: when trust outweighs context
21:30 The CEO move that put Recharge's exec team on terminals
23:00 Audit the workflow before you prompt the model

Takeaways
- The fastest test that your comp process is broken: a leaving employee getting offered double their current salary at the next job.
- Forced curves and time-in-seat promotion gates work at 250 employees. They quietly stop working at 2,500.
- AI value in HR shows up in context-gathering, not dashboards. Anonymous follow-up conversations beat static survey scores.
- Internal-historical engagement trends beat external benchmarks. Anthropic's engagement score doesn't tell you what's happening on your team.
- Audit the workflow before you prompt the model. Most failed AI projects in HR are unmapped-workflow problems, not tooling problems.

Connect with the Guest
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mimcarthur/
Recharge: https://getrecharge.com/about/

Sponsor
This episode is brought to you by Kinfolk, the AI service desk built for HR.

See more at kinfolkhq.com

Summary

In this episode of The WorkOps Podcast, Jeet sits down with Weston Fillman, Director of People Operations and Employee Relations at 1Password, to unpack what it actually takes to get an HR transformation funded, and what changes when AI enters the room. Wes describes the months of pre-work that won him more executive budget than he asked for at a 10,000-person enterprise tech company, the reframe he'd apply to the same project today (people systems as infrastructure, not engagement), and the role-redesign conversations he's having on his team at 1Password as AI starts to automate the operational layer of HR ops. A field guide for any People leader heading into their next budget cycle.

Timestamps

00:00 Welcome and Wes's career path (TFA kindergarten to 1Password)

02:45 Inheriting a broken hiring process at a 10,000-person company

07:00 "You can build a new house, but the floor plan's wrong"

08:00 The structured plan, executive buy-in, and a budget bigger than expected

11:00 Sideways socialization: leading without authority across HR peers

13:30 1Password rolls out org-wide agent-building, and modeling AI as a leader

17:30 Build vs. buy in 2026 (and why it's really build AND buy)

22:30 The role redesign conversation: AI rewrites the JD, doesn't cut the role

26:00 The reframe Wes would apply today: people systems as infrastructure

30:00 Where People leaders should start their own AI journey

Takeaways

- HR transformation budgets are won in the months of pre-work before the e-staff ask, not in the room itself.

- The reframe from "employee experience" to "business infrastructure" is the single change that turns the same HR project from nice-to-have into board-level fundable.

- AI lands well when leaders treat it as a role-redesign conversation, not a layoff conversation. Most operational work was never on the JD anyway.

- Cross-functional buy-in (sideways across peer HR leaders) matters as much as executive sponsorship for any large People transformation.

- The best AI on-ramp for an individual contributor is to start with the work they're not great at, not the work they already excel at.

Connect with the Guest
Weston Fillman on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/westonfillman/
1Password: https://1password.com/

Sponsor
This episode is brought to you by Kinfolk, the AI service desk built for HR.

See more at kinfolkhq.com

Summary

What looks like a warm, boutique onboarding experience on the outside is often powered by something much less glamorous on the inside: a person copy-pasting LinkedIn headshots into slides at midnight.

In this episode of the WorkOps Podcast, host Jeet sits down with Amie Taylor, Senior Director of People Operations, Rewards and Technology, for a refreshingly honest conversation about the hidden cost of "human API" processes.

Amie walks through a three-year saga at a previous hyper-growth tech consulting company where the entire day-zero-to-day-one new hire experience ran on Google Forms, manual IT tickets, and one very overworked TA coordinator hunting down headshots for the CMO's town hall slides. She shares how she eventually built the business case, the internal politics she had to navigate, why it took a team member filing overtime to finally break through, and the bittersweet twist at the end when she left right after getting the project approved.

She and Jeet also get into how she's applying those lessons today—consolidating HR systems at her current company, using critical thought as the test for what to automate, and why some processes (like leave for someone facing a serious diagnosis) should stay stubbornly human. If you've ever inherited a process held together by goodwill and overtime, this one will hit close to home.

Timestamps

• 00:23 Amie's path from psychology to global payroll
• 04:46 Inheriting a high-touch onboarding process powered by "human APIs"
• 06:12 Google Forms, missed steps, and a candidate experience built on anxiety
• 08:23 Hours spent hunting down headshots for town hall slides
• 11:00 The three-year fight to get buy-in to automate
• 13:00 Getting the project approved, then resigning right after
• 15:13 Rebuilding similar processes today with full stakeholder buy-in
• 19:47 The "critical thought vs. machine work" test for what to automate

Takeaways

• Audit the hidden labor inside "high-touch" processes before you call them culture
• Quantify manual work in overtime and bottom-line impact, not just employee experience
• Build stakeholder buy-in by making the decision feel like theirs, not yours
• Use "critical thought vs. machine work" as your test for what AI and automation should touch
• Protect the human moments—leave processes, serious diagnoses, tough conversations—no matter how advanced your tooling gets
• Remember: if the process doesn't scale, it's not your culture, it's tech debt

Guest LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/amie-taylor-5b99b810/

Sponsor
This episode is brought to you by Kinfolk, the AI service desk built for HR.

See more at kinfolkhq.com