<aside> 💡 When I originally wrote this, AI was only starting to become a thing.
I need to revise this document to reflect the realities of the People function in an increasingly AI-driven context. At some point, I’ll revise this with an AI perspective.
I take an additive (not replacement) view of AI. With AI tools, what our role as People people looks like will change, as will domain expertise competencies.
HR teams will likely be smaller in the future, but so will the size of companies overall. Proportionally, I expect the People function to remain the same. Though if the People function is able to develop a strong AI enablement mandate, there’s room for HR teams to grow as they embrace new responsibilities.
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If you’re reading this, chances are you are already part of a People team. Maybe as the single person at your company. Or perhaps you’re in a specialist role. Either way, you’ve gotten some exposure to what a function might look like.
Here’s a broad brush view: the People function is everything that goes towards attracting, enabling and retaining great employees.
The People function supports across the business (ie. It doesn’t exist in a single department, like Sales or Engineering). Rather, it’s part of what’s commonly called G&A (General and Administrative), similar to IT, Finance, Accounting, etc. That means that People programs are (almost always) programs that apply to all employees (or straddle multiple departments). In some cases, the People team is ‘embedded’ within a department to help deliver on people objectives within that team (ex. An HR Business Partner working with the Sales team on a staffing plan).
No two People teams are identical. They form in line with the needs of the business and the unique personalities on the team.
However, there are some canonical structures that you will see from one company to the next. Below, my goal is to introduce those common functions and do justice to describing them.
My model of a People org consists of five areas. This is based off of the 0-500 employee headcount framework (most similar to Stage 3). This may look different from your organization, and that’s OK.
With each function, I’ll provide an overview of what the function does, common roles, example projects and more
(If you click the toggle, there’s a brief description along with example roles and projects).
At a glance: the function responsible for filling requisitions and managing all associated stakeholders (hiring manager, candidates) throughout the process.