Why "People Team?"
Thoughts behind the name
I first wrote this document early on in my tenure at Nextdoor. It is basically a way that I could articulate the two most important principles to me as the leader of the function, as well as how I think about our domain. Internally, I thought that it would give enough space so the managers on the People Team can be clear about their team’s identity, while also allowing space to connect through to the company’s values.
These words are built on a lot of layers of my own professional history. Like many people in my field, I’ve always a hard time with “HR” or “Human Resources”. I’m a proud Google “People Operations” alum. In his book, Work Rules!, Laszlo Bock lays out the story and his rationale behind renaming Google’s HR organization to People Operations (p.349-350). Laszlo’s People Ops function, spanning over a decade from the late 2000s to the late 2010s may never be matched for much of “traditional HR” that it dislocated. Something like 150+ Chief People Officers have graduated from that iconic team. It was career chaging for me to be a part of. I remember distinctly when that name came out, thinking to myself “thank god we are not going to be called HR.”
When I left Google to join Square, in 2012, I went to work for my Google People Ops teammate, Jude Komuves, and the name of her team was “the People Team”. I had never heard it called that before Square, but I liked it even better. When I went to Yahoo! from Square, I renamed the HR function — the People Team. I did the same thing when I joined Nextdoor.
While I loved the People Team moniker immediately, it wasnt until I got to Nextdoor that I took the time to put my thoughts down as to why I liked it as much as I did — or why I think it goes much deeper than just the name of the team….
The People Team
The traditional names of our function are “Human Resources” or, preceding that, “Personnel”. There was a trendy period in the 1990’s and 2000s where there was an attempt to call it “Human Capital”, which you still see from time to time. I’ve never been fully comfortable associating with those labels because they create a mental model that employees are objects that are owned and controlled by the company.
How do we deploy our human capital? We have financial resources, we have human resources, etc.
Personnel is a French term, from the military in the 18th century, that originally meant “materials”, though that evolved to ‘bodies of persons engaged in a service”.
The history of our domain then, stems from an idea of controlling and directing employees behavior – typically telling them what to do or telling them what they can’t do.
Even worse, HR, as a shorthand for Human Resources, almost always calls to mind the worst versions of the function. It calls to mind a team that polices employees – “Watch out – HR is in the room”. When you are personally called “HR” – e.g. “what does HR think” – it is dehumanizing to you (and to us). In the modern era, it is rare (in my experience) to hear “HR” in any phrase that is positive. When people are frustrated with our function, they tend to devolve to calling us “HR”, knowing that it carries a negative connotation for many.
If you believe that language matters, it is important to help shift this mental model by actively rejecting these labels. My ask is when someone says HR or uses it in a document, to correct it to the People Team.
The People Team is meant to draw in two intentional ideas that are in contrast to the ones above. We should start with these two ideas as our first principles, before getting into the specifics of what we need to do.
People. Companies will often say “People First”, which is why with our team, People actually IS first. “People” is the first word we conjure when we invoke our collective identity, an important reminder that we must always help center on People. This shows up in so many ways – ranging from our programs that elevate the employee experience or accelerate our leaders’ capability to excellence in recruiting to saying goodbye with grace and respect.
We choose People because it is the plural of an individual. We think about everyone – the individual, groups of individuals and all People. There is humanity in the word People. It leans towards togetherness and community. When you stand up and yell, “Let’s go, People” it is inclusive and global – you are invoking everyone who is there, equally. When a leader says “our people”, she means “us”, not “our resources”.
Some ways to apply People to our work
Start with People in any decision that needs to be made. Keep the People First principle in the room. There are so many ways to think about this, but the bare minimum is that employees (or candidates) are not things. It’s so obvious. It seems like that doesn’t need to be stated, but it does: because work quickly turns into tasks, which is about getting things done – so people turn into things that need to get done. Push against that, always. This is often the area our partners need us most in, as they slip to solving the tasks that need to be done by people and skip past the People they are considering to focus on the tasks. This slip is most damaging when it happens in People Team programs and processes, which is when the primary focus moves to the employee (or candidate) experience: interviews, feedback, compensation, terminations, workplace environment, so many more and we lose sight of the people for the tasks at hand.
Bring in the humanity – the personality, the authenticity, the spirit, the diversity, the fun. Work has a way of removing all of that to focus on productivity and efficiency. This is where my simple UI of the People Team being positive, approachable and available comes from. Positive, approachable, available is what someone who is full of life comes across as when you engage with them. That Simple UI – being positive, approachable and available – is just the entry point, the beginning. We meet employees where they are and if we are positive, approachable and available, we can elevate the exchange to connect as People on higher order ideals like empathy, humor, concern, encouragement – instead of solely as co-workers, getting tasks done. One of our primary challenges is elevating the conversation that People are different – different styles, different backgrounds, different perspectives – and that leading with that will drive to superior outcomes.
Team. At our size, the correct term for our group is function or organization. Team is a super charged, positive mental model. People hear the word team and they think of help from others, helping others, a role in a group working together and winning. Team simplifies the identity association down to an idea where everyone knows each other, where people combine contrasting strengths and weaknesses into a group effort where the team is more successful together than they would be as individuals. It is an idea that lives outside and inside of the professional environment
Some ways to apply Team to our work
Success is collective – it is a “we” experience, not an “I” experience. This is both in how we operate as a group, but also in how we help to shape how the company experiences success. As we grow, and as the company grows and as our team grows, the risk becomes that one group feels success at the expense of other teams. Team means we work to reconcile the tension of competing priorities (or personalities) to win together.
Teamwork is nirvana. Everyone has had the experience of working with others, towards a common goal, when everything just starts to flow and good things start to happen for the team. This is the state we should seek to occupy or enable for others, as much as possible. There are so many obstacles to getting into this state: don’t have the right team, the team is not working together, the team is not incentivized or motivated, the team is not communicating or is not aligned. For all of these challenges, our team is largely in a position to influence or impact.
Or, the simple version…
We are People. We are a Team.
Getting the People to work and win as a Team is what we need to do.
That’s it!