In my Lab, I talk a lot about project plans, stakeholders, systems mindsets, etc. But what does that actually look like in practice?
Here’s an example of how an HR person could approach updating their company’s leave & sick time policies. For the sake of this example, you can assume that this is a U.S. based tech company with somewhere between 100-500 employees.
Reviewing policies on a regular basis is an essential activity, especially for high-growth companies. However, being mindful of the extent of organizational change (ie. incremental change versus a full rewrite) along with ensuring policies remain comprehensive but easy to administer is also essential.
Employee leaves, whether for the birth of a child or to care for a family member, or sick time off, are all intensely personal experiences. How companies support employees through these times has a tremendous impact on building a positive employee experience.
People teams in growing startups often have disparate and competing priorities. Through proper planning, we can reduce ambiguity and provide meaningful agency to keep projects on track.
Building a project planning mindset into a People Operations team is an essential step in scaling and operating in ways similar to the rest of the business.
The intent isn’t to become bogged down with project management. Rather, it’s to give just enough structure that you create self-documenting systems that provide for accountability and transparency.
Clearly Stated Goal(s)
Overarching Timeline
Identified Project Lead and Stakeholders
Breakout of Key Deliverables and Milestones
Communications (Comms) Plan
<aside> 💭 Growth and Delegation: shaping key policies and driving organizational change provide meaningful growth and development experiences. That, along with team delegation, is why my plan is geared towards empowering a current member of the People Operations team as a project lead. (Their scope of experience would impact whether I am more mentoring versus directing).
If for some reason that isn’t feasible, I would take on the role of Project Lead.
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Starting out, we want to establish our goals (initially):
From here, we want to gather some fundamental background:
Finally, ensuring we keep a focus on employee experience:
Ideally, these questions will surface opportunities for improvement and to address root cause issues. Doing so will help us craft policies that are more likely to be followed and that reduce administrative headaches.
At the outset, it’s important to ensure we identify who should be involved and in what capacity. Initially, here’s who that would entail:
| Stakeholders | Relationship to Plan |
|---|---|
| Project Lead | To drive the overall review of the plan and representative of the People Operations function. |
| People Business Partner(s) | To ensure that the policy changes are clearly understood and actionable by the People Business Partner(s) |
| Legal | To ensure that the policies are constructed in a legally-compliant way and that language, as written, reduces ambiguity. (Mix of Internal Legal and External Employment Counsel). |
| People Managers | To have opinions effectively heard in shaping updates. And to be made properly aware and empowered as People Managers to act on the policy. |
| Director of People | To partner with Project Lead to ensure access to necessary resources, providing guidance and review and managing upward review. |
| Employees | To have opinions effectively heard in the shaping of updates. And to be made properly aware and empowered with information. |
| CHRO | To champion any potential change and gain alignment across the leadership team along with strategic guidance. |
| Finance | Provided that there are any financial implications of the plan (ex. extending the amount of paid leave; adjusting sick time accruals). |