EP3: Employee Engagement: People Ops Perspective with Julia Psitos

In this episode, host David Murray speaks with Julia Psitos from Alfred, a technology platform for residential managed housing. Julia discusses various HR topics, such as the importance of removing barriers in job roles, the challenges of remote work, and the benefits of a four-day work week.

They also touch on the need for clarity around job roles and expectations, employee development, company culture, and the significance of learning and development.

Julia highlights the concept of people ops, focusing on compensation, trust-building, community connection, skill mastery, and job fulfillment. And she calls the Employee Hierarchy of Needs.

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“A lot of times we jump to the shiny new thing or the thing that everybody's talking about. And maybe that's career pathing right now, if you're so far down the path on career pathing, but then you're not communicating, you're not responsive, you've messed up, people's pay. It really doesn't matter." - Julia Psitos

Timestamps:

00:00 Gen Z workers optimistic, all face workplace challenges.

06:26 Remote work, hybrid, and four-day work week.

08:00 Workers embrace the four day work week.

10:25 Avoiding office policy by creative scheduling.

14:01 Choosing the unseen option in negotiations.

17:43 HR leaders cautious but eager to adopt AI.

23:03 Gen Zers cannot afford, kudos to you.

24:14 Julia highlights "Employee hierarchy of needs vs. People Ops Approach"

29:39 David's embarrassing work story from early days at Google.

34:12 Company performance issues lead to layoffs surprise.

40:31 Potential increase in learning and development budgets.