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Built for People: Transform Your Employee Experience Using Product Management Principles
Taking the best elements of a product-management approach and applying them to HR activity can transform the people function. This book shows you how.
Written for all HR professionals and business leaders, Built for People explains how to improve workforce and business performance by developing people-centred ways of working, evidence-based decision making and a culture of continuous feedback and iteration.
It explains everything from what this approach means for business professionals, what the benefits of it are and how to do it effectively. It covers how to proactively develop an employee experience which attracts, engages and retains the talent the business needs and supports them to operate at their full potential. There is also practical guidance on the importance of user research, sprint planning, vision development and how to encourage a continuous feedback loop in your team.
This book includes the importance of testing and iteration and how to define metrics for success, as well as showing you how to handle organizational change, company culture clashes and how to build and improve overall business performance and employee experience at scale. Full of tools, case studies, exercises and advice from those who are already seeing the benefits of a product-management approach, this is essential reading for all business leaders needing to develop an agile, innovative and evidence-based approach to their people operations.
Written for all HR professionals and business leaders, Built for People explains how to improve workforce and business performance by developing people-centred ways of working, evidence-based decision making and a culture of continuous feedback and iteration.
It explains everything from what this approach means for business professionals, what the benefits of it are and how to do it effectively. It covers how to proactively develop an employee experience which attracts, engages and retains the talent the business needs and supports them to operate at their full potential. There is also practical guidance on the importance of user research, sprint planning, vision development and how to encourage a continuous feedback loop in your team.
This book includes the importance of testing and iteration and how to define metrics for success, as well as showing you how to handle organizational change, company culture clashes and how to build and improve overall business performance and employee experience at scale. Full of tools, case studies, exercises and advice from those who are already seeing the benefits of a product-management approach, this is essential reading for all business leaders needing to develop an agile, innovative and evidence-based approach to their people operations.
253 pages, Kindle Edition
Published May 3, 2023
42 people are currently reading
266 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
June 18, 2023
The concept is exceptional and one of the best People approaches I have come across in the last years. Very inspirational, have already applied some of the principles (and beyond!) in my organisation.
It seems like the book is targeted at more junior folks though with quite a few basic chapters on either People or Product/Data areas. Guess helpful for people who are far from either of those areas, I would assume the target audience should be CPOs who can drive those changes and (hopefully) do not need that many details on basic concepts. I would love to see a sequel :) with more real life squad deliveries (eg various teams sharing their journeys, what is the actual difference of launching a compensation framework this way rather than the standard approach, i.e real business and people value and respective success metrics), further discussion on organisational design and challenges (eg how the PMs act as real PMs defining the roadmap for their squad rather than project owners/managers when you have senior People leaders in a matrix organisation managing the team members, i.e overlap of responsibilities for let‘s say Director of TA and PM Acquisition if not the same person), potential limitations in the frameworks (eg when a company builds a product, there are teams outside of the squad (CS for instance)- will you have in a bigger organisation an enablement team/operations to take away the ops burden (payroll, employee questions, even recruitment)?; hyper growth challenges in decentralised recruitment when the manager profile is hands-on lead and technical- challenges for many startups, etc) or even how this concept changes the role of the CPO within squads, Executives and the overall company (eg shall ideally the CPO has product background?). I read the book and had even more unanswered questions in my mind than when starting it- totally achieved its goal if it was to simply steer the discussion. :)
All and all: definitely sparked my mind and interest of all opportunities ahead. It will be so interesting over time to follow People leaders‘ experience using People as Product approach. Thank you, Jessica, for the inspiration and for contributing to our community!
It seems like the book is targeted at more junior folks though with quite a few basic chapters on either People or Product/Data areas. Guess helpful for people who are far from either of those areas, I would assume the target audience should be CPOs who can drive those changes and (hopefully) do not need that many details on basic concepts. I would love to see a sequel :) with more real life squad deliveries (eg various teams sharing their journeys, what is the actual difference of launching a compensation framework this way rather than the standard approach, i.e real business and people value and respective success metrics), further discussion on organisational design and challenges (eg how the PMs act as real PMs defining the roadmap for their squad rather than project owners/managers when you have senior People leaders in a matrix organisation managing the team members, i.e overlap of responsibilities for let‘s say Director of TA and PM Acquisition if not the same person), potential limitations in the frameworks (eg when a company builds a product, there are teams outside of the squad (CS for instance)- will you have in a bigger organisation an enablement team/operations to take away the ops burden (payroll, employee questions, even recruitment)?; hyper growth challenges in decentralised recruitment when the manager profile is hands-on lead and technical- challenges for many startups, etc) or even how this concept changes the role of the CPO within squads, Executives and the overall company (eg shall ideally the CPO has product background?). I read the book and had even more unanswered questions in my mind than when starting it- totally achieved its goal if it was to simply steer the discussion. :)
All and all: definitely sparked my mind and interest of all opportunities ahead. It will be so interesting over time to follow People leaders‘ experience using People as Product approach. Thank you, Jessica, for the inspiration and for contributing to our community!
April 17, 2024
The field of HR is often bound by traditional practices, where things are done a certain way simply because they have always been done that way. However, 'Built for people' advocates for a necessary and timely shift in HR's focus on policing, bureaucracy, and administration to one that prioritizes value, engagement, and commerciality (product approach).
The book explores topics such as Employee experience as a product, small teams with a clear vision, and user research techniques that could lead HR leaders to rethink their operating model so that solutions are created from a problem and customer perspectives.
The reading explores tech companies' use cases. However, I would have appreciated more examples of how to initiate change in a department that is resistant to change, such as HR departments that rely heavily on David Ulrich's model.
The book explores topics such as Employee experience as a product, small teams with a clear vision, and user research techniques that could lead HR leaders to rethink their operating model so that solutions are created from a problem and customer perspectives.
The reading explores tech companies' use cases. However, I would have appreciated more examples of how to initiate change in a department that is resistant to change, such as HR departments that rely heavily on David Ulrich's model.
August 21, 2024
I'd say it was a great starter book on Product Management Principles in People Operations with some easily understandable and relatable examples from People Operations & HR work. I read it in small increments over 4 months, so probably had forgotten the beginning by the time of the review, but I feel like it mostly offered good definitions and advice, and structured thinking for the very beginners. For me, it validated the approach I have already started to use with my team, but I definitely got some more ideas on how to see things from this perspective, how to create feedback loops and it created more excitement to get back in and test it all out! I would have expected more real life case studies on how this kind of an approach has transformed People Operations work. Overall, a good 4+ for that book!
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews