Summary

On The WorkOps Podcast, Jean Parchewsky, VP of People Operations at Vendasta, makes a case most AI conversations miss: whether AI takes hold in your company is decided at the hiring table, not in the tooling budget. She traces it back to a training binder that optimized for terminations over hiring, the "hire slow, fire fast" principle she built in response, and the behavior-first "ideal employee profile" her team uses today. Then she shows how that same hiring discipline is what made AI adoption stick, through a citizen developer program, a searchable build board, and a culture where sharing your failures out loud is the norm. Essential listening for any People leader who has been asked to "roll out AI."

Chapters

00:00 Why Jean never planned a career in HR

03:50 The binder that optimized for firing, not hiring

06:00 Hire slow, fire fast

07:30 The bar raiser: never interview hungry

11:00 The ideal employee profile: hiring for behavior

13:20 Why AI adoption is a culture problem

14:10 Citizen developers and the build board

18:30 Putting AI enablement in People Ops, not IT

23:00 Pepper and the rise of AI "employees"

26:00 One piece of advice: just jump in

Takeaways

Optimizing HR for legal risk instead of the team can quietly cost you your best people.

Hire slow and fire fast: spend your effort choosing the right person, and be honest quickly when it isn't working.

Hiring for behaviors rather than skills builds the culture everything else depends on.

Stalled AI adoption is usually a culture problem, not a tool problem.

AI enablement belongs close to the work, in People Ops, where it becomes workflow change instead of better emails.

Connect with the Guest
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jean-parchewsky/
Website: https://www.vendasta.com/

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

See more at kinfolkhq.com

Summary
On this episode of The WorkOps Podcast, Jeet sits down with William West, VP People at Wrapbook, to dig into what happens when HR leaders stop trying to do everything in one place. William shares how a 20-plus-hour calibration process became six hours by separating ratings conversations from development conversations entirely. He also makes the case that HR's distinct job in an AI transformation isn't governing tools — it's owning the human argument for why the change matters. And in his closing remarks, he offers a frame on vulnerability that redefines what effective People leadership looks like right now.

Chapters
00:00 William West's path from nonprofit HR to VP People at Wrapbook
04:00 How HR changes across sectors: pace, complexity, and scale
07:30 The calibration problem: 20-plus hours and still unclear
12:30 The fix: reading instead of explaining
16:30 Separating calibration from development, permanently
21:00 AI and human connection: what the technology is actually for
25:00 Who leads AI adoption, and why HR owns the why
29:00 Vulnerability as a change management strategy

Takeaways

1. Calibration and development are two different conversations with different goals — combining them makes both worse.
2. Switching from verbal summaries to a read-and-discuss format cut Wrapbook's calibration from 20-plus hours to around six.
3. HR's distinct role in an AI transformation is owning the why, not governing the tooling; technical teams are better positioned for the what.
4. Late adopters don't move without context-specific reasons; the leader closest to people in each function is best positioned to provide them.
5. Naming openly that you feel behind on AI creates space for others to start learning instead of waiting for certainty.

Connect with the Guest
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/williamcwest/
Website: https://www.wrapbook.com/

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

See more at kinfolkhq.com

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