In today’s ever-changing work landscape, HR is at a crossroads. Once viewed as a process-driven function, it now faces increasing pressure to champion people, build trust, and embrace the rapid advancements of technology like artificial intelligence (AI). HR professionals must navigate this delicate balance while maintaining the human touch that is critical to thriving workplaces.
In Episode 112 of Sticky From The Inside, Andy Goram sits down with Sarah Katherine Schmidt, HR strategist and author of Getting HR Unstuck, to explore these pressing issues. Together, they unpack how HR can rebuild trust, rethink performance management, and leverage AI to create lasting impact. This blog dives deeper into these themes and provides actionable insights for HR professionals and business leaders alike.
Why Trust in HR Needs a Reboot
Trust is the foundation of any successful organization, and nowhere is it more critical than in HR. Sarah introduces the concept of "trust equity," emphasizing that trust isn’t static—it can be built, depleted, and rebuilt over time.
In recent years, trust in HR has taken a hit. Missteps such as over-reliance on rigid systems, inconsistent communication during times of change, and a "one-size-fits-all" approach to employee management have eroded confidence in HR functions. To rebuild trust, HR must focus on:
Transparency and Fairness: Employees expect HR to act with integrity and ensure equitability across policies and processes.
Human-Centered Change Management: Using frameworks like ADKAR to guide communication, skill-building, and rewards during organizational changes can build trust equity.
Consistency in Communication: When employees feel informed and valued, they are more likely to trust HR initiatives.
"Meeting humans where they are" is critical, Sarah says. Trust is personal, and HR leaders must focus on building connections with individuals at every level of the organization.
Rethinking Performance Management: From Management to Enablement
Performance management is one of HR’s most misunderstood processes. Too often, it is seen as a punitive system designed to identify underperformance rather than a tool for growth. Sarah proposes a mindset shift: moving from "performance management" to "performance enablement."
Why the Current System Falls Short
Traditional performance management has its roots in the military, designed to evaluate who is meeting expectations. Today, many organizations still operate with outdated, rigid frameworks that fail to address the nuances of individual growth. Annual reviews are often biased by recency effects and lack meaningful purpose, leaving employees disengaged and managers frustrated.
Principles of Agile Performance Management
Sarah’s work at PeopleLogic emphasizes simplicity and agility. She introduces four key principles, from a bigger list of 12, that can transform performance conversations:
Simplicity: Streamline processes by focusing on regular, meaningful check-ins rather than lengthy annual reviews.
Employee Experience: Integrate performance enablement into the broader employee journey, ensuring processes are growth-oriented.
Effective Managers: Equip managers with the skills to provide constructive feedback and coaching regularly.
Data-Driven Decisions: Use both quantitative and qualitative data to inform strategies and remove biases from decision-making.
Performance enablement shifts the focus from minimizing risks to maximizing employee potential. As Sarah notes, "When you invest in your people, you're also minimizing the risk of attrition and maximizing the ROI on your talent."
Embracing AI: A Strategic Opportunity for HR
The rise of AI is reshaping how HR operates, offering tools to reduce administrative burdens and free up time for strategic initiatives. Sarah encourages HR leaders to embrace AI, viewing it not as a threat but as an enabler that can elevate their impact within organizations.
How AI Can Support HR
AI’s potential lies in automating repetitive tasks and providing actionable insights that improve decision-making. Sarah highlights several areas where AI is already making a difference:
Streamlining Processes: Automating tasks like recruitment, employee feedback analysis, and performance reviews.
Data-Driven Insights: Analyzing survey results, identifying trends, and generating development plans rooted in data.
Personalized Feedback: AI-powered tools can offer managers templates and suggestions for delivering feedback effectively.
From Back Office to Boardroom
Sarah emphasizes that AI allows HR professionals to shift from operational roles to strategic partners, earning their seat at the boardroom table. However, this requires HR teams to embrace innovation and conduct "friction audits" to identify areas where AI can alleviate pain points for employees and the organization.
Practical Takeaways for HR Leaders
At the end of the episode, Sarah shares three "sticky notes" of advice to help HR professionals navigate these challenges:
Rebuilding Trust: Use a change management framework to guide communication and ensure processes are human-centered and equitable.
Enabling Performance: Shift from managing performance to enabling growth through regular, meaningful conversations and agile processes.
Leveraging AI: Conduct a friction audit to identify inefficiencies and experiment with AI tools that empower HR to focus on strategic initiatives.
Conclusion
This episode of Sticky From The Inside offers a compelling roadmap for HR leaders ready to embrace change and rethink their approach. By rebuilding trust, enabling growth, and leveraging AI, HR can move beyond its traditional role and become a true driver of organizational success.
To hear more of Sarah Katherine Schmidt’s insights and explore her 12 principles of agile performance management, listen to the full episode below, or read the full, automated transcript that follows.
The Full Podcast Transcript
[Andy Goram] (0:10 - 3:54)
Hello and welcome to Sticky from the Inside, the employee engagement podcast that looks at how to build stickier, competition smashing, consistently successful organisations from the inside out. I'm your host Andy Goram and I'm on a mission to help more businesses turn the lights on behind the eyes of their employees, light the fires within them and create tons more success for everyone. This podcast is for all those who believe that's something worth going after and would like a little help and guidance in achieving that.
Each episode we dive into the topics that can help create what I call stickier businesses. The sort of businesses where people thrive and love to work and where more customers stay with you and recommend you to others because they love what you do and why you do it. So, if you want to take the tricky out of being sticky, listen on.
Introduction: Is HR at a Crossroads?
Okay then, now look, is it just me or do you think HR is at a bit of a crossroads right now? It's a function that's supposed to champion people but still in many organisations it has struggled to shake off a reputation of being more about processes than people. Trust in HR has been eroded in some workplaces, not just because of external pressures but sometimes due to HR's own missteps, whether that's an over-reliance on rigid systems or a failure to adapt to the ever-changing employee needs.
And while HR leaders know the importance of supporting employees and fostering engagement, many are grappling with a sort of paradox. The growing need to be more human, empathetic and people-focused whilst simultaneously embracing the rapid rise of artificial intelligence and automation. Today's employees have higher expectations of their workplaces.
I think we know that by now. They want to know that their HR leaders and leaders in general truly see them as individuals, not just numbers on a resource sheet. At the same time, HR professionals are being asked to do more with less, streamline processes and leverage technology like AI to improve efficiency and balancing these sometimes competing priorities can, I'm sure, feel a tough ask.
And that's where today's guest, Sarah Katherine Schmidt, comes in. Sarah is an HR strategist and the author of Getting HR Unstuck. She's been helping organisations rethink what HR can and should be in this new era of work.
Today, we'll touch on three key themes. Building trust in HR, doing performance management right, which I'm really looking forward to, and looking at the impact AI has on both those things. Now, I think Sarah's insights may challenge us to think differently about HR and its role in creating thriving workplaces.
And as always, Sarah is going to leave you with some practical takeaways, some fresh ideas and probably some thought-provoking questions to inspire you to take action in your own workplace. So whether you are an HR professional or a leader or just someone passionate about building better work environments, I think this episode is going to be packed with real value for you. So grab a coffee, settle in, and get ready for what I'm sure will be an enlightening and hopefully transformative conversation with Sarah.
Sarah, welcome to the show.
Meet Sarah Katherine Schmidt and Her Journey in HR
[Sarah Katherine Schmidt] (3:55 - 4:03)
Thank you so much, Andy. Appreciate you having me. I have my coffee, so I am ready to go and excited to be here.
[Andy Goram] (4:04 - 4:47)
Brilliant. I haven't even taken my own advice. There's no coffee here.
There's just a massive bucket of water. I do tend to try and be good and drink a lot of water, but my bottle causes me more anxiety than ever. It's one of those bottles that has time checks all the way down, and I find myself at 11 o'clock going, oh my goodness, it's only 7am.
I'm so far behind in my water. But that's more about my problems. Welcome to the show, Sarah.
I'm really looking forward to this conversation. Before we get stuck into building trust in HR and performance management and what AI is going to bring to that whole conversation, let's just take a breath. Why don't you share a little bit about you, who you are, your background, and what you're currently working on, Sarah, for us?
[Sarah Katherine Schmidt] (4:48 - 6:29)
Sure. So I have the same sort of meter on my coffee in terms of the measurement and how much I've had and how much that puts me in a place to formulate sentences and thought-provoking things. Luckily, I am on the road to full coffee caffeination.
I have been in HR and people operations roles for the last 15-plus years. I started in recruitment and then ultimately went on to lead teams for high-performing, growing organisations that were scaling in the technology space. I have taken all of that experience and moved to PeopleLogic.
I've been with PeopleLogic for a little over a year now. What I love most is that we have an AI-enhanced performance management platform. Day-to-day, I get to help our customers move from things like spreadsheets to managing their performance management processes in a tool that really enables them to implement agile performance management, accelerate change within their organisation in a really thoughtful way, and just be that coach and the guide for them.
Because oftentimes in HR, we don't have that person. We think we can do it all ourselves, and we honestly can't. We need somebody as a trusted partner.
And so I am filling that role, and I love it so much, in addition to talking to wonderful folks like you. So those things brighten my day, get me up in the morning, and I'm excited for the work ahead, always.
[Andy Goram] (6:29 - 6:42)
Well, that's lovely to hear. I mean, the world of AI, which we will dive into later, I mean, it's just evolving so quickly, right? I mean, you must have already, in the area that you work with particularly, huge change already.
[Sarah Katherine Schmidt] (6:43 - 7:26)
Dramatic change. I mean, if we think about the changes that have occurred within the workforce since 2020, there are so many that we've come across, and that we've encountered, and we've had to move through. And so AI is just another one of those, but it's one of the biggest that we're facing right now, and how we as HR leaders really elevate ourselves, embrace the technology, and automation, and more modern tools, but then still have that human aspect to the work that we do.
So it's exciting, it's a little frightening as well, or it's putting us in a place where we're having to change as well, while the world is changing.
[Andy Goram] (7:26 - 8:34)
Yeah, and I mentioned that my perspective on HR, and it's easy for me to say, I've never worked in HR, I've worked closely with HR, and clearly in my work now, I work very closely with HR. But it does feel like maybe for a few years now, HR's been a bit of a crossroads. And I'm interested to get your thoughts on that too, and maybe in the context of this other thing that I mentioned in trust.
Because in this podcast, my goodness me, we talk about trust, it seems like every episode. When it comes to leadership, and culture change, and creating thriving environments, the one staple in all of that seems to be trust. So when we think about trust, particularly in this context of maybe HR in a period of change, or at a crossroads, and doing things differently, what's your view on building trust in HR?
What are some of the problems? What are some of the things you're seeing people do to kind of overcome that? Let's just have a right old conversation about trust in HR for now.
Trust Equity: Rebuilding Confidence in HR
[Sarah Katherine Schmidt] (8:35 - 9:38)
Sure, absolutely. I always think about trust in HR around trust equity. And we have to build trust equity with every person in the organisation, from leadership, all the way down to that individual contributor.
And that trust equity can be depleted by so many things. And then we have to build it back up. And so there's this constant emphasis on meeting humans where they are, because they are ultimately who we are there for, at the end of the day.
And it's so important today, because we've had so many places where we've depleted trust equity over the last few years. And we need to get back to a place where individuals trust us, trust the processes and the programs that we're putting in place, and trust the technology that we are leveraging on a day-to-day basis to make sure that their lives are enhanced and that we're doing right by them, while also doing our core jobs.
[Andy Goram] (9:38 - 10:16)
I think the thing about HR particularly, which is where my, I don't know whether I'm right or wrong, most of the time I'm wrong, but it's my perspective. Okay, so we can kind of pull that apart. Is that I wonder whether some of the trust in HR comes down to fairness or perceived fairness around processes, procedures, whether some of that trust bit comes from a one-size-fits-all approach to resource management, as opposed to seeing people as individuals and maybe not quite getting the support or the, well, no, I think support is probably the right word, the support you're looking for.
Do you see it in a similar way or different?
[Sarah Katherine Schmidt] (10:16 - 12:29)
I see it in a very similar way, and I call that equitability. I think the level of trust that individuals have within HR processes and programs is highly dependent on the equitability of how those are implemented and how they are ultimately carried out. When I think about trust being perceived as lacking in HR functions today, I have several examples to share.
I myself am someone who has depleted trust, and so I know what that looks like, and I know the pain that that can cause within organisations, especially when they are in the midst of change. But one of the simplest lessons that I've learned is around employee engagement, and engagement surveys are something that a lot of organisations run, and those are very important to get a pulse on where your workforce is, how everyone is feeling, whether or not they're feeling included in the organisation, if they're finding a sense of belonging, if ultimately they believe that your processes and programs are carried about in an equitable way. And what I find is that in employee engagement surveys, HR takes those incredibly personally, and it's not to say that they shouldn't. However, when we look at an employee engagement survey that's anonymous, and then we go in, and we try to figure out who has said what, and this person in this group clearly has this response, and we need to actually, you know, target that person versus embracing that perspective.
That's where trust gets depleted, and we do it to ourselves, honestly. The other place where I think trust is lacking is in affecting change and implementing change within an organisation. When we're not communicating effectively, when we're not getting change champions, ultimately that's where change fails, because we're not being thoughtful about it.
We're not being human-focused or people-centered about those changes, and so that depletes trust equity as well.
[Andy Goram] (12:29 - 12:38)
I don't think HR, you know, are entirely alone on wanting to know who said what on the back of a survey. Of course not.
[Sarah Katherine Schmidt] (12:38 - 12:40)
We're all very curious.
[Andy Goram] (12:41 - 13:29)
I mean, honestly, the work that I've done in that area, the number of times you have to kind of start any piece of with the conversation around, listen, we're going to get verbatim comments. We're going to get all this stuff. It's not about pinpointing who said what.
You're trying to get a pulse. You're trying to get an understanding. You're trying to get a flavor of what's going on to allow you to go and have deeper conversations and connect with the organisation's people to find out what's behind some of these things, but yeah, we can't help being competitive in most departments, and we want the school to do better than our colleagues, and if there are things in there that people go, well, that can't be true.
Why does someone think that? Immediately, human nature is to go to the, well, who said that or try and work out who said what from the tone or the language that's used in some verbatim comments.
[Sarah Katherine Schmidt] (13:30 - 14:37)
Our brains go to the negative automatically. That's how we are wired, and when I think about what organisations can do about that and that specific example is take the data that you have, figure out where you have some pain points that you need to explore, some pockets where there's disengagement or some pockets where there's high engagement, and understand what is underlying in the employee experience in those, and so I talk a lot with our customers about stay interviews and interviews that ultimately prevent attrition, that allow you to get ahead of individuals leaving and give you even deeper qualitative insights to pair with your quantitative insights because not everyone's going to leave a comment.
Not everyone is going to see this as a trustworthy mechanism within a survey, so go and have some of those deeper conversations, as you mentioned, through some stay interviews and be curious versus being in that place of combative or feeling like there's resistance.
[Andy Goram] (14:38 - 15:07)
I'm really interested in the stay interviews because I have a view that those sort of conversations that you're talking about, I mean lots of organisations sort of ring fence them and different people either run them or there's a survey or whatever it might be, and then data's collected and we get a broader, I guess a broad view of how people are feeling, how connected they are, how likely they are to stay, whether they're likely to be looking, although I don't know anybody who's ever said, yes, I'm looking right now.
[Sarah Katherine Schmidt] (15:08 - 15:09)
It's unlikely to tell you.
[Andy Goram] (15:10 - 15:10)
It's unlikely.
[Sarah Katherine Schmidt] (15:11 - 15:13)
When you have that level of trust, that's amazing.
[Andy Goram] (15:14 - 16:00)
That's huge. Truly. That's huge, and I've been lucky enough to have that in some of my teams before and I can't say what a great place it put me in.
It gave me one, an opportunity to kind of turn them around, or secondly, plan early for a replacement, which has just been great, but we can ring fence those conversations and have as a separate stream of our communication strategy or HR strategy. All these conversations can be going on in an ongoing basis in regular one-to-ones with your manager, with your leader, which is, I think, where I sort of like, I guess, idealistically sit, but then there's a danger that you lose, I guess, useful tracking data and all that sort of stuff. Where do you sit on all of this, Sarah?
Do you have a preference? Do you have a belief? Which sort of side we should be sitting on here?
[Sarah Katherine Schmidt] (16:00 - 16:19)
I have a belief that we should trust our managers and we should equip them with the knowledge, skills, and abilities to have those conversations and bring those honest inputs back to us, and that's where, again, we've depleted trust because we treat our managers like they don't know what they're doing.
[Andy Goram] (16:20 - 16:20)
So true.
[Sarah Katherine Schmidt] (16:21 - 17:23)
You can get mad about managers not knowing what they're doing, but you have to look at yourself and your department and say, well, how can we equip them with the skills to do this? And if you haven't, you can't get frustrated at them. They are going off of their own gut instinct and what they know to be true about how they would have these conversations.
So you've got to equip them. And that in and of itself builds trust equity as well. And so we have to build that trust in our managers and do that by equipping them with the knowledge, skills, and abilities, again, to go out and have those conversations because people are going to say one thing to HR.
They're going to say one thing to their managers. Maybe they have an even closer relationship with their manager. Hopefully, that's true.
And then you get even deeper insights into how people are feeling. And that can inform, as you said, your communication strategy and how you ultimately implement new processes and programs.
[Andy Goram] (17:23 - 18:05)
Absolutely. I think it's always been true, but maybe it takes on more. There's a greater need for it, perhaps, today in that being able to have a decent one-to-one with someone, have a conversation that actually asks questions and is curious for a reason, not just taking a list of questions, to be able to have an effective confrontation, to be able to challenge effectively, to be able to use coaching questions, all with a means to an end of understanding what somebody needs from you to be more effective. That sounds like a decent amount of time and focus should be given to that sort of stuff.
[Sarah Katherine Schmidt] (18:06 - 18:39)
It sounds like the most valuable part of your week, honestly. We can look at one-on-ones as routine or as ritual. And routine is a check the box.
I have to have my coffee every day. That's a routine. But a ritual for me is having tea in the afternoon where I think about my day and I absorb something new where I find inspiration.
And we can find inspiration and connection through our people, through rituals such as one-on-ones versus routines that we feel like we have to do. And it's a chore.
Performance Management Missteps and How to Fix Them
[Andy Goram] (18:40 - 19:20)
I think, to your point, I think that sort of genuine purposeful conversation, that's what builds belief and trust in a process or a person ultimately. I think where you're going, oh, I've got 15 coffee chats I've got to do this month. Oh, I'll get them done.
You've missed the purpose of that conversation. And so it kind of loses its lustre, doesn't it? Yeah, 100%.
I did mention that HR, or I thought maybe that HR have made some missteps in the recent past that may have eroded trust. Do you see that too? Are there any sort of missteps that you would allude to?
Or am I barking up the wrong tree?
[Sarah Katherine Schmidt] (19:21 - 20:38)
You're not barking up the wrong tree. I think performance management is probably one of the largest missteps that companies have made over the course of the last few years. And when we think about performance management, it started back in the 1920s when the military wanted to understand who their high performers were and who was not necessarily meeting expectations.
And that's the system that a lot of organisations still use today. Military or not, they still want to know who is performing and who is not. And they look at it in a very black and white way versus seeing this as a constant fluid thread of performance management done right is ongoing.
It's consistent. It's simple. It's effective managers.
And it's thinking about the employee experience as this ongoing journey with an organisation where you're managing performance, but you're also really promoting growth. And I think that's where the misstep is, is saying that we're managing performance, but not managing performance to manage growth. You're managing performance to manage people out potentially.
[Andy Goram] (20:39 - 20:46)
Yeah, I mean, it seems that the definition of performance management has been distorted over the years.
[Sarah Katherine Schmidt] (20:46 - 21:07)
I want another word for this. I want another word for performance management. I think it's performance enablement.
I truly think it's about enabling people to be their best selves and do their best work. What is their highest calling within the organisation and how do you craft the conditions for them to meet and exceed those?
[Andy Goram] (21:07 - 21:22)
I love that. I love that because immediately it changes your mindset to what that conversation, what that support is actually there to do. Performance management is always about minimizing risk, I think.
[Sarah Katherine Schmidt] (21:23 - 21:51)
And we have to do that. Unfortunately, we have to do that. But there's so much more that performance management and performance enablement can do.
And when you invest in your people, you're also minimizing risk that they're going to leave, that you're going to spend thousands of dollars in replacing them. You're managing financial risk when you're actually growing your people as well.
[Andy Goram] (21:51 - 22:24)
I think the whole performance management misunderstanding also ends up, from my perspective, I believe anyway, hiding the job of day-to-day leadership and management. Because all you hear is, I've got to performance manage someone out now. It's like all of a sudden because performances or something's happened that's got so bad, I've now got to do something about it.
Where the whole point of management and leadership is effectively supporting somebody to deliver what the organisation needs to the best of their ability. Hey, even beyond what they think they're capable of, right?
[Sarah Katherine Schmidt] (22:25 - 23:49)
Absolutely. Managers are not just there to manage day-to-day tasks. They're there to coach and to guide.
And as you mentioned, support. And that's not something that a lot of managers inherently know how to do. They don't inherently know how to exhibit empathy and have connecting conversations and give constructive and affirmative feedback on a regular basis.
And when you're doing that, when you're building that muscle and giving feedback, it's ultimately going to pay dividends in the long term. When you're doing it in a simple way, in a way that's consistent, then you don't necessarily need this big annual review process where you're managing people in and you're managing people out and you're investing in a select few. When you are equitably having these conversations about performance throughout the year, it's not a point in time where people understand whether they're meeting or exceeding expectations or whether they're an inconsistent performer.
They know they can make corrections. You're guiding them and coaching them. And again, that's building trust.
But management is not always wired that way. And so it is a growth mindset where you have to lead on being curious and being in a growth mindset versus a fixed mindset and in a place of fear.
[Andy Goram] (23:49 - 25:12)
Yeah, I think that's so interesting. When you say those sorts of things, and maybe we'll dig into some kind of, I don't know whether there's a template approach to it or not, but it ranges from those positive and negative conversations about things that have happened in the moment. And I say positive and negative because to your point earlier, we're drawn to the bad stuff, right?
Well, if something goes wrong, we might, if we're brave enough, have a conversation about it. But if someone has, I don't know, started going through a process and actually within that process, something great has happened or some improvement has been made, it's about recognizing those things in the moment as well. All the way through to then more structured conversations around maybe one-to-ones or even annual reviews, which I guess still happen.
But those annual reviews take on a much greater guise if they've been fed throughout the year with these regular dialogue, what do you need from me to get better or do something different? It's less stark when it comes to that six-month, 12-month review where it's kind of, okay, let's just dredge up the last, see if we can remember the last six months. What happened?
What was good? What was bad? I can't really remember.
I'll make up some stuff. What do you reckon? And there's no purpose to that conversation other than ticking a box for someone to fall into some nine-box grid somewhere later on down the line.
[Sarah Katherine Schmidt] (25:13 - 25:19)
Oh my goodness, you're so right. And I do love a nine-box grid, let's be clear.
[Andy Goram] (25:20 - 25:23)
And let's be clear, I like a nine-box grid too, but as long as it's got some purpose behind it.
[Sarah Katherine Schmidt] (25:24 - 26:51)
It's for workforce planning and it's for seeing how you can grow people into those next roles and figure out where you do need to plan for risk of attrition. What I think about this continuous thread of performance management is it is making those conversations at the six-month, the 12-month mark much easier and much more focused on growth and development than it is focused on point in time. And those processes are necessary at the six-month, 12-month, whatever the cadence is mark, but they do introduce an element of bias for both the individual as well as the manager.
And that's, again, where risk comes in because you can have a recency bias over what happened over the last two weeks. It's really hard to go back 12 months in time for ourselves, much less for an individual that's reporting to us. And so we can have a halo bias.
We can go to a negative place. And that in and of itself isn't equitable. And it puts our people at a disadvantage.
It puts our managers at a disadvantage, honestly. So they do go to that place where everyone has to check that box and they have to get it done versus it's something that's been happening all the time and you know your people better and can make more informed decisions and provide greater insights that really help them move forward and enable them versus manage them.
[Andy Goram] (26:52 - 27:18)
Yeah. I mean, we're going to get into AI in a minute, but I'm just thinking about the work that you do with PeopleLogic and particularly within the areas of performance management. Do you have kind of like a an ideal framework that you work with clients on in terms of how to tackle performance management and the kind of various kind of high-level steps maybe you could share with the audience that might just keep people on track and deliver some of the things that we've just been kind of like talking about?
The 12 Principles of Agile Performance Management
[Sarah Katherine Schmidt] (27:18 - 27:22)
Absolutely. So I've developed 12 principles.
[Andy Goram] (27:22 - 27:24)
Yes, we love those sorts of things.
[Sarah Katherine Schmidt] (27:24 - 30:19)
And I will send you the resource on that and I'm not going to go through all 12 on this conversation because that would take up all of our time and it would, it's just my place of passion. But the first really starts with simplicity and making your processes as simple as possible and equipping managers to actually execute on those processes. I despise the word execute and I can't believe I just used it, but to implement those processes in their day-to-day.
And simplicity can be everything from those regular one-on-ones to giving regular feedback to making sure that your team is connecting with other individuals within the organisation. Simplicity is not 20 questions in a six or a 12-month review. Get the information that you need throughout the year and then utilize those milestones of annual reviews or biannual reviews as decision-making points for how you move the business forward.
And that simplicity, employee experience really should be woven into everything that you do. And it should be driven by your core values of frankly, a growth mindset. I love when I come across organisations that have a growth mindset as a core value, because that means theoretically that they're always being curious and that they're always leaning into learning more versus shutting things down at a point in time where they hear something that's off, where they know something is off.
All of those are gut instincts. And so it comes back to data then as a principle, looking at the data that you have, both quantitative and qualitative to inform how you continue to develop your people and how you continue to manage or enable performance. So simplicity, employee experience, there's so much that goes on in the employee experience.
And I like to look at it from a physiological level a lot of times because we don't think about brain science when we think about managing performance and enabling performance. There's so much that goes on in our brains from a biological perspective that we can tap into as HR professionals to know how we move forward and to know where we go. So employee experience, effective managers, and then ultimately being data-driven about everything that you're doing so that you're making decisions grounded in fact and data and not that gut instinct.
Because while it's really, really valuable, it can also go sideways. So that's four of the 12. So I've hit on a little bit.
[Andy Goram] (30:20 - 30:49)
I'm going to stick the rest of the 12, that resource in the show notes so people can kind of look into that because we love that sort of stuff. I will just hark on the fact that I just, I love it when anybody starts talking about a growth mindset because in the very essence of talking about a growth mindset, yes, we'd all love to think we're, we think growth the whole time. But I think if you've got a growth mindset, it's recognising when you fall into fixed and then they use that as a trigger to try and do something else.
I just, I think that whole thing is, the whole mindset approach to this stuff is so important.
[Sarah Katherine Schmidt] (30:50 - 31:40)
Right. Absolutely. And we all have a mindset about different areas of our life as well.
We can be in a growth mindset when it comes to our career. We can be in a fixed mindset when it comes to our family or our finances or our personal development. And there's no problem with being in a fixed mindset in some of these spaces.
I'm in a fixed mindset with creativity and my ability to paint right now. But it's, it's locating yourself, which I think is what you're talking about. It's locating yourself on that spectrum of growth mindset and fixed mindset.
And then knowing how as an individual through your own self-awareness, how to move yourself from a fixed mindset to a growth mindset and specific areas of your life when you know you need to be there or when you want to be there.
How AI Is Transforming HR Roles
[Andy Goram] (31:41 - 32:17)
I mean, that even could form part of your performance management conversation. Who knows? What a great place that would be.
So we've talked about the trust element related to HR. We've talked about performance management done right, not just finally getting someone out the door. AI, AI now and its effect on both those things.
So you're right slap bang in the middle of this with the work that you're doing at People Logic. So how is AI reshaping the work of HR? I mean, if that's not a lofty question for the end of the podcast, I don't know.
[Sarah Katherine Schmidt] (32:19 - 34:07)
That is such a big question. So what I, what I always think about is HR in my experience has always been behind the curve in anything transformative within an organisation or in the world of technology specifically. And so that's everything from automation to more modern technologies to, to AI specifically.
And what we, what we need to frame our growth mindset around is that AI is not going to supplant us as humans in HR. It will if we do not embrace it. It won't if we embrace it and we acknowledge that it will allow us to go to a more strategic level in our roles.
And we get excited about that, right? If you get excited about being more strategic, like that's the place that you want to be in HR. And so I had my last manager, she challenged us as an HR team to be innovative.
And that stuck with me in terms of AI specifically, because there's so many ways that you can leverage AI within the HR function, but still not take away that human element. And that's everything from recruitment to performance management, to exit interviews and, you know, sending someone on their way in the best way possible transitioning out of the organisation. There are so many places where AI and automation can take away some of those day-to-day tasks that then let you focus on what you do best, which as an HR professional should be connecting with people on a human level and being people-centric in what you're doing.
[Andy Goram] (34:07 - 34:42)
Yeah. And, and I guess I would maybe define that as taking a bit of a grunt out of the job. Ultimately, if we, if we really embrace where, what AI can bring to a situation, if I even relate my own work to it, putting me in the right area far more quickly, assimilating data, finding me some patterns, giving me different perspectives, just making me more informed more quickly is how I envisage maybe how AI particularly is helping.
But there must be loads more things within HR specifically.
[Sarah Katherine Schmidt] (34:43 - 35:55)
I like to say that it takes you from the back office to the boardroom. And that's where AI, modern technologies, data analysis, being data driven, can take you from that back office function of running payroll and managing benefits and compensation to actually strategically moving the organisation forward. In my mind, HR should have a seat at every table.
And that, that boardroom is where we should live, but we've got to earn our spot there just like everybody else does. And we do that through embracing innovation and seeing where it can live within our day-to-day work. And then focusing on the strategic, needle-moving, revenue-driving behaviours within our people process and technology.
Because HR owns the biggest, the biggest line item, which is your people. And that's where you can make some significant advancements within what you're doing day-to-day and how you actually maximize that line item and get the ROI from your people and from your processes and your technology.
[Andy Goram] (35:55 - 36:05)
And in the work that you're doing with clients right now, are there any specific areas where you're seeing AI have like the biggest impact on all of those things you've just said? Anything specific?
[Sarah Katherine Schmidt] (36:06 - 38:03)
Absolutely. So I like to say that there are Easter eggs within our platform. And so they're, they're AI Easter eggs for anyone who's a Taylor Swift fan.
She has lots of Easter eggs, but you're learning more about me. So there are Easter eggs within our platform where you can create OKRs from AI templates. You can type in very simple prompts about how to give feedback to one individual, another on their performance.
You can get, you know, these, these sort of like checks and balances almost from AI, where it doesn't take away your ownership and agency of the input, but it does give you a place to start. And that's what we're seeing from our customers really embracing is just getting started with some of those AI components because they can improve how they set objectives and key results. They can approve, improve, you know, the overall summaries of their performance reviews.
They can improve the overall insights that they get from surveys, and they can ultimately build individual development plans that are grounded in data and fact, and not from, you know, some ether out, out in the world. And our customers are really loving that, in addition to just moving their processes from spreadsheets to what I like to say is superpowers. And it doesn't even have to be where they leverage some of those AI components initially.
If we are getting them more concise in how they are delivering their performance management processes and making them more agile, that's at the end of the day, that's what drives me is getting them out of those old patterns and the stuckness and the stickiness and helping them see that there's a different way that they can do things and still be successful.
[Andy Goram] (38:04 - 38:28)
I think that's great. I think the less time you spend writing a report and the more time you spend having a conversation taking action, the better we'll be right. And I think AI from what I can understand is really starting to move mountains in the area.
I can't believe this already, right? So we've done trust performance management, impact of AI, and we're now already at sticky notes, right? We're at sticky notes.
Sticky Notes: Practical Advice for HR Leaders
[Sarah Katherine Schmidt] (38:28 - 38:33)
I can't believe it. I don't want it to end, Andy. I love sticky notes, but I don't want it to end.
[Andy Goram] (38:34 - 39:15)
I've really enjoyed this conversation so far, Sarah. But we have got to sticky notes, which means that I'm looking for you to kind of leave behind three tiny little bits of advice that we could fit on a sticky note. I mean, that shows how much my brain can cope with, right?
It's just three little sticky notes. But this is where I think simple, practical advice takes its best form, right? So if we think about the three topics that we've talked about, trying to rebuild trust or build more trust in HR, doing performance management right, as you would say, and maybe using AI effectively, I don't know whether there's a sticky note for each, but how would you summarize three bits of advice around those key topics?
[Sarah Katherine Schmidt] (39:16 - 40:27)
I will try to get a sticky note for each. Building trust in HR, you know, I talked a little bit about change management earlier, and I think there's so much value in leveraging a change management framework to plan out any sort of big change in your people, your process, your technology. And that doesn't mean you have to rigidly follow that framework.
But think about it as the way that you're going to communicate change effectively, the what's in it for me, creating awareness of the change, equipping people with the knowledge, skills and abilities on how to change, and then rewarding individuals for successfully making that change. And so I think building that trust requires a framework in those big moments where you're doing something that's transformational, because it has such a personal impact to people because change is personal, change is sticky, change is hard. So give yourself a little bit of a guide and some milestones and some places to plan more effectively.
[Andy Goram] (40:28 - 40:28)
Love that.
[Sarah Katherine Schmidt] (40:29 - 42:03)
Second, do performance management, right, goodness. You know, I'll go back to agile performance management and the principles, and I know I touched on only four of them. But thinking about performance management, not as a point in time, and making sure that you are looking at it as a continuous enablement thread versus a management thread is a mindset shift that I would love for people to embrace.
And then making the most of AI. We talk about this a lot in getting HR unstuck. You know, the first and foremost, the tip that I would have or the sticky note is conducting a friction audit.
And that can sound big and huge. But it's looking at your people and your processes and your technology and figuring out where there's friction for you as an HR team, figuring out where there's friction for your client, which is your people and your workforce, and understanding where you can leverage AI and starting to experiment and starting to really embrace the components of your job that can be enabled by AI and getting to that place where you trust AI and then going and doing the cool stuff. So those are my three sticky notes. Hopefully, if you write really small, you can put those on sticky notes.
But I think there's value in each of those things to just help organisations and people operations and HR teams move forward.
[Andy Goram] (42:03 - 42:26)
There's huge value in all those three sticky notes. And I will drain the essence out of them when I stick them on the Instagram channel when we go live with this episode. So don't you worry about that.
Now, before I let you go, we've mentioned getting HR unstuck. And if people want to find out more about you, and more about the book, where can where can they go?
[Sarah Katherine Schmidt] (42:27 - 43:31)
Sure, absolutely. So social media, I'm on LinkedIn the most, which I think is perfect for a lot of individuals. So follow me on LinkedIn.
Sarah Katherine Schmidt is my name on there. And I love talking about all things HR, people operations, change management, performance management, people logic.ai is our website, I do a lot of blogging, I do a lot of publishing of ebooks. I'm writing a book right now.
So stay tuned for that. I'm at 140 pages, which feels overwhelming, but also really accomplished right now. And I can send along some some more resources, obviously, the getting HR unstuck ebook.
And then there's one about trusting AI. And, you know, having that move your business forward in a way where you trust it, and a way that it enables you. And I can share that as well.
Fantastic, whatever you tuned for more from me.
[Andy Goram] (43:32 - 43:58)
Well, and I will, and whatever you have, will absolutely go in all of the show notes, so people can find everything they need to to get hold of the book, find out more about you engage in some of these conversations, and maybe, maybe take some of your principles, your 12 principles back to work and get them going. Sarah, I have thoroughly enjoyed meeting you and really enjoyed chatting. Thank you so much for coming on the show.
[Sarah Katherine Schmidt] (43:59 - 44:01)
Thank you, Andy. I really appreciate it. Take care all.
[Andy Goram] (44:02 - 44:43)
Brilliant. Thank you, sir. You take care too.
Okay, everyone. That was Sarah Katherine Schmidt. And if you'd like to find out a bit more about her or any of the topics we've talked about today, please check out the show.
So that concludes today's episode. I hope you've enjoyed it, found it interesting, and heard something maybe that will help you become a stickier, more successful business from the inside going forward. If you have, please like, comment and subscribe.
It really helps. I'm Andy Goram, and you've been listening to the Sticky from the Inside podcast. Until next time, thanks for listening.
Andy Goram is the owner of Bizjuicer, an employee engagement and workplace culture consultancy that's on a mission to help people have more fulfilling work lives. He's also the host of the Sticky From The Inside Podcast, which talks to experts on these topics from around the world.
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