Meet The Team Monday: Philippa (Pip) Penfold, Vice President, People and Strategy
Welcome to the eighth instalment of Meet The Peoplewave Team Monday #MTPTM! Many of you are curious about what it’s like to work at Peoplewave and want to meet the team behind the scenes. Here’s your chance!
This week, we’re pleased to introduce one of the newest additions to the Singapore office, Pip! She shares her wealth of knowledge in the HR sphere, her story prior to coming onboard and her vision for the road ahead.
1) Could you share with us your experience before coming to work with Peoplewave?
I’ve spent 20 years in Human Resources primarily in MNC’s. My career started in Sydney Australia and I’ve ventured across most of Asia during the past 10 years while holding regional roles. Most of the companies I’ve worked with are in Financial Services, Professional Services and Technology.
Over the years I’ve focussed on most areas in HR, from recruitment and international mobility to remuneration and talent management. I’ve also managed many HR technology implementations, from Peoplesoft in the ‘old days’ to targeted solutions including Tableau Dashboards today.
My experience and training in Change Management was put to good use in all those projects!
2) What made you decide to venture into joining an awesome company like Peoplewave?
For about the last 2 years I’ve been working with Damien (Peoplewave’s Founder and CEO) as an Advisor for Peoplewave. I was impressed that he sought the input of multiple HR professionals during the creation of the Peoplewave products; so many HR Tech solutions are designed without sufficient understanding of the problems HR experience on a day-to-day basis.
Since starting operations in January 2017 it’s been great to see Peoplewave going from strength to strength. I wanted to be a part of something new and exciting, so joining Peoplewave in a permanent capacity seemed a natural next step in my career. Lucky for me, Damien thought so too!
3) How does your typical day go by?
Thankfully, there is no typical day, which is one of the reasons I’m really happy to be with Peoplewave! While my activities may change from day to day, I focus constantly on my key areas. First, I’m focussed on building Peoplewave’s HR function. I have set an ambitious goal of leveraging technology to build an HR function with no HR people.
As a HR Technology company we already use what we sell, but I believe we should use other HR Tech tools as well. This approach will give every Peoplewave employee the chance to build empathy for our clients and their employees, as we will be experiencing what they go through every day.
Secondly, I’m building a customer service function that ensures HR is supported during the implementation of Peoplewave solutions and given sufficient ongoing support, for the HR function and their managers and employees too.
Having been a customer of HR Tech vendors many times in the past I have experienced the good and the bad (and yes, sometimes the ugly!). My goal is to ensure the right processes and support are in place so that all Peoplewave customers have a good experience.
4) Could you share with us some of the struggles and pain points you observed in the HR Industry and how you wished they were better handled?
There are some momentous shifts happening around HR which we are generally struggling to respond too quickly enough. It doesn’t help that there’s a lot of scary numbers and statements floating about too, such as ‘robots are going to replace jobs’.
Such media-worthy click-bait type statements are generally nonsense and rarely help HR at all. But we do need to understand the changes and how we can help our companies and employees respond.
For example, how do we prepare our workforces for a further augmented future of human + machine, how should we be designing our organisations in a world with a superabundance of information and how should we best embrace new technologies (such as blockchain) to solve our organisations’ challenges?
One aspect in which I think HR needs more support is with understanding the newer technologies and how they may influence our employees and our function. I also think it’s through a better understanding of technology that we will be able to bring the human back into Human Resources.
5) What are your thoughts about the future of HR?
I’m lucky, after 20 years in HR I still love it! Like most people in HR I have spent my career considering the human condition, living in a world with no absolutes, understanding that every situation is dynamic because we deal with people and they are never static.
Add to that a good dose of ambiguity, because nothing ever works out exactly as you plan it because people are, well, people, and I think HR is one of the best-placed functions in business today to deal with the future of any business.
That said, we have an awkward relationship with technology. We are easily impressed by a bright shiny interface and find it too easy to forget the problem we need to solve, assess the science that should be behind the tool and the soundness of the technology supporting it.
I believe improving this relationship is one of the greatest challenges facing HR in the near future, so that we are in a position to shape our tools and not leave it to the technologists and lean process engineers to tell us how our processes should operate as we have in the past. We are managing a legacy of automating what we could, not what we should and we need to put the human back where we need it and let the machines to do the rest.
The question we need to answer is where should the human get involved? When is it that only a human will do for a manager or employee? Then we need to work with HR Tech creators to make sure that’s how solutions are built, with the human in it, not fully replaced by it just because it can be. With our deep understanding of people, we are best placed to do this, but first we need to improve our understanding and relationship with technology so that we can participate in those conversations.
About Pip
Penfold is the former Senior HR Manager for Infosys Consulting and former HR & Talent Director APAC for GroupM. Penfold has provided specialist support and expertise to several emerging HR technology companies as an Advisor and is an active participant in the HR Tech scene in Asia. Since 2013 she has been a regular speaker at HR, Technology & Digital conferences across APAC.
Penfold holds an Executive MBA from the #1 ranked Kellogg-HKUST program and was invited to join the Beta Gamma Sigma honour society following her academic success completing a Master of Science in Human Resource Management. She also holds a Postgraduate Diploma in Strategy and Innovation from Oxford University’s Säid Business School and a Postgraduate Certificate in Change Management from the Australian Graduate School of Management. Penfold is a certified Global Human Resources Professional (GPHR) through the Human Capital Institute and Prosci Change Management Practitioner. She holds professional credentials with the Australian HR Institute (CAHRI), UK CIPD (MCIPD) and Society for HR Management in the US as a Senior Certified Professional (SHRM-SCP).
About Peoplewave
Peoplewave is Asia’s leading blockchain-ready HR software company. It is revolutionising people management with data-driven, transparent feedback and verified performance data. Peoplewave offers 3 key products — the “First 100 Days”: a new hire onboarding tool; “Performance Wave”: continuous 360-degree performance appraisals; And the “HR Command Centre” analytics suite, which unlocks employee data and insights.
Peoplewave’s software suite is blockchain-ready — its blockchain platform is called “Wavebase”. Wavebase is a revolutionary platform that provides ongoing verified employee performance information that will change the face of hiring and managing workplace talent.
