The "Human API" problem hiding in your onboarding process

What this episode covers

SummaryWhat 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.Timestamps00:23 Amie's path from psychology to global payroll04:46 Inheriting a high-touch onboarding process powered by "human APIs"06:12 Google Forms, missed steps, and a candidate experience built on anxiety08:23 Hours spent hunting down headshots for town hall slides11:00 The three-year fight to get buy-in to automate13:00 Getting the project approved, then resigning right after15:13 Rebuilding similar processes today with full stakeholder buy-in19:47 The "critical thought vs. machine work" test for what to automateTakeawaysAudit the hidden labor inside "high-touch" processes before you call them cultureQuantify manual work in overtime and bottom-line impact, not just employee experienceBuild stakeholder buy-in by making the decision feel like theirs, not yoursUse "critical thought vs. machine work" as your test for what AI and automation should touchProtect the human moments—leave processes, serious diagnoses, tough conversations—no matter how advanced your tooling getsRemember: if the process doesn't scale, it's not your culture, it's tech debtGuest LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/amie-taylor-5b99b810/SponsorThis episode is brought to you by Kinfolk, the AI service desk built for HR.See more at kinfolkhq.com

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