How to Balance Empathy and Strategy in HR
In this episode of the HR Leaders Podcast, we speak with Anisha Thomas, Head of People at Inscribe AI, about balancing empathy and strategic leadership in fast-growing startups.
Anisha shares the emotional challenge of executing a reduction in force (RIF), leveraging AI agents for workforce efficiency and innovation, and discusses how transparent communication builds stronger trust within leadership teams. She also explores the evolving landscape of HR amid rapid technological advancements.
🎓 In this episode, Anisha discusses:
Building trust and rapport in leadership teams
Leveraging AI agents for enhanced organizational efficiency
Balancing empathy and strategic decisions in HR leadership
Lessons learned from conducting a Reduction in Force (RIF)
The evolving role of HR amidst rapid technological advancement
Deel is the all-in-one payroll and HR platform for global teams.
Deel helps companies simplify every aspect of managing a workforce, from onboarding, compliance and performance management, to global payroll, HRIS and immigration support.
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And getting set up takes just a few minutes.
Anisha Thomas 0:00
A really hard challenge. Going through our first and ever reduction in force process last year, we've never executed on a rift before. During pandemic, times like tech was booming, high valuations, funding and just how businesses worked was okay, invest before you grow. Right? Hire quickly, hire a lot, and then the growth will come. That actually wasn't the right way for us to go about it, because we ended up losing a lot of our team members at that time. You're kind of just trying to put that personal feelings to the side and just keep inscribed and like why we're doing this, top of mind, but also people who are being impacted top of mind, and trying to balance both of those. And it wasn't until that day when it happened, when I kind of just had this like release of emotions and feelings. You have to be business leader first, because you have to keep your company at the forefront of why we're doing these things. You and
Chris Rainey 1:15
Isha, welcome to the show. How are
Anisha Thomas 1:16
you? I'm doing well. How are you?
Chris Rainey 1:19
I'm good. Nice to see you. It's been a inch. Can you believe is that we're already in March?
Anisha Thomas 1:24
I know it's end of March too. I end of March to see maybe,
Chris Rainey 1:31
where is the year gone? What's happened?
Anisha Thomas 1:33
Line by. It really did feel like January was a bit slow. But once it hit February, it's just been Go, go, go. Yeah. And actually, our fiscal year starts in February too. So I feel like with that energy of just like wrapping up the end of the year and getting into the new year, there's just a ton of buzz and excitement.
Chris Rainey 1:53
So that's really an interesting one. Can like, can you enjoy the Christmas holiday period? Because you're like, back into Jan. You're like, we're straight back into year end. That's quite like, a big thing to come back from holiday straight into year end. Is that, like, have you just got used to it at this point? Yeah,
Anisha Thomas 2:09
and I'd like to think that the reset or the break actually makes us more productive when we in of just like, Okay, we're mentally in a good place, emotionally, in a good place, we're ready to kind of get back and close out a strong gear.
Chris Rainey 2:26
I see that's a really good, really positive way of looking at it, because I think is that, like, pretty daunting, and you're like, No, it gives me energy and the passion I need to go and do that, which is pretty cool before you jump in. Tell everyone a little bit more about you personally and your journey to where we are now, yeah, I'm happy to
Anisha Thomas 2:47
I'm gonna actually take it all the way back to my childhood, but I promise it will come full circle and make sense. But my parents were in technical roles and worked at Intel and Sun Microsystems, which is now Oracle, and I, of course, was the kid who would always pretend to be sick, so I didn't have to go to school. And my parents, of course, instead of being at home, had to take me to their office, and so I'd just be sitting in their cubicle all day and just drawing on the whiteboard. And maybe the funnest part of my day was getting a hot chocolate from their hot chocolate machine. And I was like, I never want to work in a place like this. I never want to be an engineer, because it was just so boring. And now fast forward to college. I've always had an interest in in people in psychology, and so I did my master's, or sorry, I did. I majored in psychology in college, and I took an IO psychology class, and it was the most fascinating class I've taken because of just my passion for people and my experience, you know, with my parents in the workplace and these motivational theories, team dynamics, and we were living in the Silicon Valley, the bubble of it, tech is booming. And I was like, wow, I can apply these learnings and change the way we think about people and the workplace, and how we can retain team members, how we can motivate team members for increasing productivity at the end of the day. And so then I pursued a master's in IO psychology, and I thought I was going to go down the academic route and get a PhD and be more on the research side, but my friends were getting jobs at Twitter, Uber, Facebook, and I was like, You know what? Maybe I can have more impact by actually being in the workplace and applying everything that I have learned. And so. I actually first started my job at a small medical device company, and I did everything people, from recruiting to onboarding, talent development, everything that you can think about. But at that time, I just felt very young in my career, like just coming out of a master's program. I'm just getting my foot into the door. I really had to work from like a first principle standpoint and mindset and figure things out on my own. No one was telling me how to do things or best practices, and so it was great experience, but I really wanted to learn from some of the best in industry leaders. And so I actually ended up getting an opportunity at intercom. And so I started on the recruiting side. I hired for almost every kind of role within the business, but then started to specialize in technical recruiting. And as much as I loved working with candidates, I never found it to be successful when they left within six months or a year. And so I know how much effort goes into recruiting, how much time is spent. And so I really wanted to focus my efforts on how can we actually retain the talent that we're bringing in? And so I internally transferred to the people development, talent development team, and I focused on the onboarding program and learning and development. Great experience. Loved it, until I got a message from Ronan, CEO of inscribe, asking if I want to be head of people there. And at first I was like, Am I ready to kind of jump back into being that team of one and building things from the ground up, trying to be resourceful, figuring things out on my own. And I felt like I was ready, because I had learned so much from intercom and and some of the best practices that I could take and hopefully apply there, and also maybe what, what not to do as well. And so I took the opportunity. I also love working with Irish founders, so that was another plus for me to join this company. And yeah, I've been at inscribed for the past three and a half years. Whenever I say that, I feel like I've been there much longer, since I started during the pandemic. And these years are just
Chris Rainey 7:27
yeah, the pandemic years are like, different type of years, yeah, different
Anisha Thomas 7:32
type of years. And so when I say three and a half out loud, I'm like, we have been through so
Chris Rainey 7:37
much. Five Yeah.
Anisha Thomas 7:41
And so I started as a team of one, and I built everything, actually, I should say, from scratch. I was really impressed, like this is why I also joined inscribe. They already had an ATS at 18 people. Yeah. They had deal in place for remote team members. Early, yeah, very early. And I mean, they did performance reviews, but in spreadsheets, I was like, okay, cool, at least you, yeah, at least they were doing. And so I was like, Okay, you actually, genuinely care about people and setting the right foundations. And so I joined within, like, the first 20 employees. And of course, it's a lot easier to implement, you know, the foundations on the people side with 20 people than it is 100 people or when things are going wrong. So I also really appreciated that, yeah,
Chris Rainey 8:35
and by the way, back to your point, what we should say for the for the audience, tell them on what inscribe does. Yes, they're not familiar.
Anisha Thomas 8:43
Yeah. So when I first started, it was primarily on like Doc fraud, and we still very much specialize in in that category. But right now, our strategy and focus and vision is on building AI agents for risk teams at financial services, very interesting. Yeah, we're at the forefront of this whole world of agents and AI and so we're doing some really cool things. I need
Chris Rainey 9:11
to chat to your founders like so outside of HR leaders, we build AI agents for HR. Oh yes. So Atlas copilot is the name of our platform. So we're just doing it in a different space that we're doing. First of all, I love the story, because you're one of you know, I've done one, over 1000 episodes of the show, right? Very few people actually chose this career. Yes, you were one of a few. They're from a very early age, identified through lived experience, right going to your parents offices, thinking, actually, I wouldn't want to work in this to then recruiting and saying, Actually, I love recruiting, but if we don't create the right environment and experience, they're just going to leave so they're moving into employers. Experience, and then how do we make sure to where you are now that there's this clear, like, path that you've called for yourself, and that's very common, just so, you know, like, out of the 1000 episodes, maybe like 10 people that I've interviewed chose this career, everyone else kind of found it along the way by accident, you know, for somehow. So that's really unique, that you saw that from such an early age, and it stuck with you all the way through. That's really cool, yeah? I mean,
Anisha Thomas 10:28
don't get me wrong, there was times where I explored being an astronaut or a dentist,
Chris Rainey 10:34
every kid, hey, child would do Yeah?
Anisha Thomas 10:40
So I, I've had my, my fair share of different avenues to explore, but yeah, I yeah, there's just a weird i don't i just shouldn't call it weird, but just this calling of like I this is what I'm meant to do, yeah,
Chris Rainey 10:54
how do you balance? Because you're, you're, you're, um, a size now, where you're both implementer. And strategist. How do you balance between strategy and actually executing? Because you're still small enough that you do still need to be hands on. Yeah, because I'm sure there's many people listening that probably struggle with that, or maybe war in the future.
Anisha Thomas 11:16
Yeah, I honestly consider it to be a great like benefit, or, yeah, it's just something very special. If I think every leader, especially at these smaller stage companies, needs to be both needs to be an operator and needs to be strategic. And I get to have that 30,000 foot view as well as that three foot view get shit done mentality, and I'm able to kind of connect all the dots. I can see what's happening throughout the company, but I can also do something about it, versus just delegating it to other team members. And there was a point at inscribe. I did have a have a team, but I honestly felt like I wanted to kind of get back into the weeds and be on the ground and actually make more strategic decisions that way, because it becomes through the grapevine of what you're potentially hearing or through survey feedback, right? And I think this just is actually makes me a better leader that way. Yeah,
Chris Rainey 12:30
so when you think about tools and technology, you mentioned deal, how are you leveraging deal in with the current size of the business and the challenges that you're facing. Yeah, great
Anisha Thomas 12:43
question. Having a really strong HR tech stack needs to kind of be my best friend for me to be successful in, because I can't do it all. I'd like to say I can do it all, and I am doing it all, but I'm getting a lot of help by having a strong tech stack such as deal, right? We have a global team. We have team members in Portugal, in the UK, Ireland, in Italy, and I can't keep up with all employment laws and making sure everything is compliant with, you know, PTO policies and benefits
Chris Rainey 13:23
entities in every location, which would just be so costly
Anisha Thomas 13:26
the amount of team members that we have. And so platforms like deal and solutions like deal are super helpful and valuable to me. And of course, like I said, my founders had already implemented deal, but of course, I did look at other EOR services and just the customer service that I received from deal outstanding, because I needed to, like, also help understand, because also being the internal rep, I wanted to be able to communicate successfully to our internal team members like, what are the benefit packages and explain it appropriately, or policies. But of course, I could lean on the deal team to answer these two but they really helped educate me and make me aware of all these things that I needed to think about, yeah,
Chris Rainey 14:22
with such a lean team, like, what are some of the biggest sort of challenges that you've had to overcome that? Because one of the things I noticed about the smaller startups or scale ups I speak to, they normally and actually they are the most innovative because they don't have the big resources, the big budgets, etc, they gotta be scrappy. So give me some examples and some of the things that you've done on challenges you've had to overcome.
Anisha Thomas 14:50
Yeah, but I could talk about a really hard challenge, which was going through our first and ever and hopefully last. Riff process that we had to go through last year, and that was really from a first principles, like, we've never done this, all of us, like the founders, we've never, I've never executed on a riff before, and we had to
Chris Rainey 15:18
actually do the Wale riff is, sorry,
Anisha Thomas 15:20
oh yes, um, reduction in force only. Oh yeah,
Chris Rainey 15:24
sorry. I don't know. I do know what that is. I just never heard the acronym. And all these years, I've never heard someone say a riff. You just taught me something today. I was like, I was like, everyone normally just says a reduction in force. I love to I love the acronym. Sorry. This
Anisha Thomas 15:38
is good because I was like a riff. I was like,
Chris Rainey 15:42
What am I missing? Here? Go carry on.
Anisha Thomas 15:45
Reduction in force. It sounds better.
Chris Rainey 15:48
I like riff better. It sounds a little Yeah, I'm with you. I'm using that from now on, great. And maybe it's
Anisha Thomas 15:55
good that no one knows what that is now. And hopefully term we don't use much.
Chris Rainey 16:00
We don't want to use that term much, but I like the way you branded it. It's good, yeah. Sorry,
Anisha Thomas 16:07
yeah. And so it became, yeah, it's just that became kind of that priority, right? I just so some backstory to before leading up to that is, you know, during pandemic times like tech was booming a lot, you know, high valuations, funding and just kind of how businesses worked was okay, invest before you grow. Right? Hire quickly, hire a lot, and then the growth will come. But that isn't always the right way to go about things. It's just a lot of advice that's been best practices, you'd say, and that actually wasn't the right way for us to go about it, because we ended up losing product market fit along the way, and we just weren't hitting our goals. And so we had to really make a tough decision of parting ways with a lot of our team members, and so being, like, talking about being scrappy and like, first principle standpoint, like it was a true effort, I'll say, within the leadership team. And I think it put me in a really good position of just like, the relationships I had with everyone, and the relationships I have with the leadership team, and the trust I have with the leadership team to execute successfully on it and trying to find the right resources and making sure that we're and like my priority was just empathy and keeping the team members who are being impacted top of mind, and so that was kind of my driving force. And so
Chris Rainey 17:46
personally, though, how did that impact you? Personally, having to have all those conversations,
Anisha Thomas 17:51
it was a lot, I'll say on the Day, like I got very emotional. It's really hard to it's compartmentalize those those feelings, because there's the business hat you have to wear. But I'm also human. I also have a lot of my own emotions and feelings, and so at that time, you're kind of just trying to put that personal feelings to the side and just keep inscribe, you know, and like, what the goal and like, why we're doing this, top of mind, but also the people who are being impacted top of mind, and trying to balance both of those. And so to be honest, I was just kind of going through the motions and just getting getting through it. And it wasn't until that day when it happened, when I kind of just had this, like, release of emotions and feelings and so, yeah, I think that was probably the biggest challenge of just being an HR leader, is even if you don't personally agree with certain decisions or ways we're going about things, you have to still be like, I'll always say you have to be business leader first, and then your kind of department leader next, because you have to keep your company at the forefront of why we're doing these things. Yeah,
Chris Rainey 19:19
is that something that you wish you knew going in, that you kind of had to learn the hard way?
Anisha Thomas 19:27
Yeah, I did. Because I used to always think what the people learns first, or emotions first, or how is this going to make someone feel first, versus goals and initiatives, right? Like the business aspect, I think that's a huge learning I had being in this position is being close to the numbers and being close to product strategy, the go to market strategy, and how it all works together. I would always just lead with, oh, but this is not going to make people feel good. But it's also understanding, like, Well, why or what are the outcomes? Like, what is this related to? Why are we doing this in the first place? And so I had to kind of change my my thinking around that we're still, I'm a very, I'd like to say, empathetic leader, and I care deeply about team members, but I needed to kind of switch the way I'd go about things. Yeah,
Chris Rainey 20:23
yeah, there is no otherwise, there is no business, right? So, like, you know, and I always struggled with that when I was a sales manager, and we had quite a high turnover in the sales team. And I would always, like, take it personally early on and like, really get attached. And it's not they got it never gets easier. It's just that I understand that this is the current circumstance and where the business is, and this is what's the best decision for the whole business to be successful, and for the rest of those people at the business to be successful. But it never makes you feel good. You know, I thought in the moment, I feel like I always said this to my wife. I was like, the moment I have those conversations that I don't feel anything, I'm gonna leave. Yeah, you know, because, yes, you gotta lead with that mindset, but you also the human part. You gotta lead with empathy to your point earlier. Yeah, I think there's a lesson that many HR leaders I speak to you over the years, they learned trial by fire the hard way. I think nothing really can prepare you for that, right? Yeah, I
Anisha Thomas 21:30
like to say it like being a mom too, like people can give me all this advice, right, or through pregnancy and all this stuff, but it isn't until you actually go through it yourself where you learn all of this. Like people could tell me, like, oh, you need to put the business first, or you need to lead with empathy, or you need to do this. But it isn't until you're in the situation where you learn by whether you're making mistakes and how you're executing on it, like you just have to live through it yourself. And that's why I think the community, especially for HR leaders, is so strong, because, because we just, we get each other, yeah?
Chris Rainey 22:09
Well, now I've got the terminology I would say, like every, every HR that I speak to remembers their first riff, yeah. Yeah. Like, it is, like, almost like a rat of passage, yeah, yeah. In some ways it not, it's not nice. It's never nice, right? I've been, I've been on the other end myself, where I've been let go, even though I was a high performer, because the business wasn't doing well. And I'm like, wait a minute, I'm like, absolutely smashing it right now, and I've just been let go, what's going on, and I was actually a boomerang of that company because they did, they did it in a really empathetic way that I actually rejoined that company a year later and was there for 10 years after that, after let because of the way they did it, they kind of explained the why. This is why it's happening. You know, it wasn't, you know, personal, my because of me, right? And then they called me back a year later, like, we're doing really well when I was like, Well, I enjoyed working there, and I was there for 10 years as well. So it also shows, like, how important it is during that time and how you approach it, because you could have some boomerang employees. They come back, right? Yeah, as well. So kudos to the team. And that must have been tough, but also brought the you and the leadership team closer together, yep. And employees, exactly.
Anisha Thomas 23:33
And I have you watched the show billions.
Chris Rainey 23:37
I love billions. Okay, yeah, I'm with you. Any episode, I'm there. I love billions.
Anisha Thomas 23:45
There are days I feel like, Wendy, yeah,
Chris Rainey 23:47
in the office, yeah, she is. HR, literally, yeah, high performance. But they coming with a challenge. That's such a good analogy, by the way. Yeah, really good one. Yeah. There
Anisha Thomas 23:59
are days or, yeah, and there's, there's a lot of advice out there, being like, don't be your team. Like, leadership teams therapist, right? But I actually think that puts me in a better position where they come and vent and
Chris Rainey 24:12
she's just teaching advisor, right? But it's like, you know, if anyone listening, by the way, in the show billions, all of the high performers in the on the on the trading floor, will come into her office with their challenges, and she kind of helps unlock their performance. But in reality, she just sits there and listens, they vent, they come up with their own solution, and then they leave most of the time, and it's just like, that's kind of the experience, right? And sometimes that is kind of what HR does, but you're actually, you're not a therapist, you're a strategic advisor. You're not just an order taker, you know, you're a strategic advisor to the team as well. And that shows the respect that they're coming to you asking for your guidance, right? And. Good analogy. I've actually thought about that whilst watching the show as well, so that's pretty cool. Yeah, yeah,
Anisha Thomas 25:08
yeah, that's how I feel. But I think that actually makes my role even stickier and more valuable, right? Rather than just being that operator, like I can run payroll with my eyes closed. I can say
Chris Rainey 25:22
that too quickly. Yeah, don't jinx it. Something goes wrong. No one in HR should ever say that my eyes closed. What did you say? Don't say that.
Anisha Thomas 25:38
I take that back, because maybe send a survey. Let's just engagement survey or something, yeah, but these, these things I can kind of just do and run, you know, run with it. But I think where the most valuable value and impact I have is actually being that strategic advisor and almost being the glue within our leadership team. Like, I understand where the gaps are on EPD, I understand where the challenges are from GTM, and it all sometimes comes down to just communication or getting the team together in the same room and being like, let's just talk about it, right? And or giving advice of like, hey, why don't you approach a situation like this? Or have you thought about it this way? And yes, they'll always, most of the time, come up with their answers by themselves. I'm just there to kind of help facilitate and get that out of them. Yeah, and I just appreciate all the trust and yeah, building that rapport was was very important for me, and probably my not just running a performance review cycle, but actually gaining the trust and respect with the team.
Chris Rainey 26:59
Yeah, well, you kind of just answered half of my next question, because you mentioned rapport and building trust. But my question was going to be, if there's anything else you want to add, like, how do you deal with conflict with the founders when you have disagreements? Because you're not always going to agree, right? My chief of staff, we're always, we're always going back and forth, and some of our best relationship building moments and innovations in the company come through conflict, right? And tough conversations. How do you manage that? Yeah,
Anisha Thomas 27:31
I'm laughing, because actually, our founders are probably conflict averse. Instead,
Chris Rainey 27:38
the social thing is a founded as conflict, a verse that doesn't exist. It's like a their founders, they're already conflict. There's already the fact that they decided to start a company. They were already there.
Anisha Thomas 27:52
I'll say how they approach it is more. They'll like subtly. Let me
Chris Rainey 27:57
know. You know, oh, really, okay,
Anisha Thomas 28:01
I like that. It's not very Yeah. You have to, like, I have to, I had to get to know them really well, to really pick up on, okay, on. That was the thing of like, talking about building trust and rapport like, and me being a people person and reading people i i had to kind of pick up on the cues of, like, something's not going wrong, or, you know, really trying to be like, Okay, why don't we just directly communicate this if something you know you're not happy with, just just let me know if you have feedback for someone. Just let them know. And yeah, there. But basically, kind of just when it comes to conflict, like, when there are situations where there is conflict, it's, it's not just a conversation there were, how we deal with this, maybe I probably want them to have more conflict. Or I want
Chris Rainey 28:56
because, you know where that's the issues are. I mean, that's why, that's where the progress, that's where progress is made. Yeah, yeah. We would call it, which is a term, which quite common, is radical candor. Yeah, right. And so me and my co founder, Shane, like some of our employees when they first joined, are quite shocked, because we're so transparent in front of the whole team. And you know, even where, even if it's Shane saying, Chris, you did this wrong? Give me constructive feedback and like, go and do that. Like everyone's, like, you just spoke to a founder or the CEO, like that. But we aim for, got time for egos or or, you know, being, you know, seeing it as a personal attack. It just things need to get done and things need to move. And I take everything as everything with positive intent. Assume positive intent in everything. I think that's been like the key. If that makes sense,
Anisha Thomas 29:51
yeah, 100% and actually, our founders are twin brothers, so yeah, they. Really communicate very transparently with each other, or read each other's minds. And I'm just like, Okay, now say that to me now, like,
Chris Rainey 30:08
it's great that you both know that now, but I need to understand that. Yeah, that's really interesting dynamic. Are they co CEO or one CEO ones, CTO and CEO, yeah, interesting. Wow, incredible. Never heard that before. That's a new one of all my years and doing in doing this, and the fact that they've been able to maintain that relationship as brothers and run a startup, someone as someone who's building two startups right now. I can only imagine how hard that is. Yeah,
Anisha Thomas 30:47
it's funny, because in our policies, it's like, don't hire like your siblings or family members, which is
Chris Rainey 30:55
funny. They are, by the way, they're not there. I've hired a few of my best friends, and Shane is my best friend, by the way, my co founder and next door neighbor growing up, right? So that every other time I've done that is failed, failed miserably, and been because it's really hard to be to give feedback to your friend and then they'll take it personal, right? Or to have conflict when someone's so close to you and you want to have a relationship outside. But for some reason, probably like your two founders, for me and Shane, it just works. I can't explain why. There's a sort of level of, just as I said, humility, that he can say anything to me. And even though it may be harsh, I know he means it. He means the best for the business and for me. No Mau, even if I hate it I disagree, like I just know that he's only doing this and saying this because he wants the best, and that's vice versa. And it took us, you know, 30 years to build that level of trust, you know, that unbreakable trust that we have, yeah,
Anisha Thomas 32:04
when they have that much trust and with each other, right? I have to match that, or get to that that's tough for
Chris Rainey 32:10
you to be in that relationship, by the way, yeah, like, because we don't have, like, I think Lisa, my chief of staff, is probably as close to that, because she's really, you know, right, right there with me and Shane, and it must, and I can see sometimes just suffer her to be there in that position. What are you most excited about as we as we move forward? What you most excited about?
Anisha Thomas 32:32
Yeah, I'm actually really excited to see how HR evolves in the next couple of years. Right? So, right, going back to when I was going to my parents office, like there was one way of working at that time, which was in the 1990s and early 2000s then a big, you know, shift happening in the 2000 10s, Till where we are now and now with the next wave of AI. Like, what does that mean for HR? And how can we make our roles still very valuable, with agents coming out right as well, and I really, truly believe that in the next couple of years that we're going to have 30 person companies reaching a billion dollars easily, and companies staying very small and lean and all about efficiency. So I am very curious to kind of see how, like, my role even adapts, and I think there's a lot of good that will come from it, though.
Chris Rainey 33:36
Yeah, it's exciting. Like we, as I mentioned, we're already building a lot of HR agents, as we speak, that are replacing a lot of some of the administrative tasks or transactional work. That doesn't mean jobs are going to go away. It just means you can focus more on value, add right more on the people, the experience, etc, as well. But inevitably, it will mean for the bigger what the workforce that there is some shrink there. And we've already seen companies, many tech companies right now, who have already put a hiring freeze, quote state, quoting and saying that they are going to basically replace, rather than hiring people, they're going to create agents. We've seen many big tech companies come out and say that already, and we're a small team of 20, and I think we've got probably over 15 agents. Yeah, I've got agents that do editing now. I've got agents that transcribe my podcasts. I've got agents that do our social media marketing campaigns. I've got a LinkedIn agent that connects to my LinkedIn account. I've got an email agent that connects to my Gmail and all of that saves me. We worked out recently just me personally, an entire day, a week, of tasks that I was doing. We just replaced by with agents that cost a few 100. Pounds. Yeah, that's it. It's actually crazy. And I can only imagine at scale, and we're a small company, so I can only imagine at scale in a large company, what that means. What do you where do you see? HR role in all of this, though?
Anisha Thomas 35:18
Yeah, I can speak from my experience so far and so far, like our what our goal right now is to find PMF right with our agents that we're building. And so that means focus needs to be on EPD and finding product unlock, so looking at the developer experience and agents right cursor, for example, which is an agent for engineering and coding and getting around like compliance issues and things like that, and actually implementing it. And so I'm not only thinking about like agents for HR, but agents for other teams to increase their productivity, because to like this here is all about shipping quickly and delivery and picking up the pace. And how can we do that? And so that's kind of one starting point. And then now it's when we kind of have that unlock. It's the GTM on the GTM side of STRS, or AI STRS there, and implementing that there. And so I feel like my role is to kind of help, you know, if, when a hiring manager comes and asks me for head count, it's going through questions of like, well, can someone else on the team take it and in terms of being within capacity, have we looked at agents instead of going resorting to hiring, and so these conversations are actually changing. That's so
Chris Rainey 36:45
interesting now that you're actually having a conversation of, actually, do I need a human or do I need an agent already? And the fact that you're a company that creates them, you have the know how to both do this internally, because you're already doing it for customers and that's where I didn't
Anisha Thomas 37:02
want the disconnect. I just we can't be selling AI agents ourselves if we're not implementing it internally ourselves. And so that that was a big thing for for me too, is just making sure that what we're doing is also what we're doing internally.
Chris Rainey 37:20
Wow. So do you have agents deployed in all departments, like sales, marketing, product? Yeah,
Anisha Thomas 37:27
so far and more, more to come, we're still small. And you know budget, sure. The question about budget too, actually, right, is, is it head count budget, or is it software budget? And who's making that decision? That's
Chris Rainey 37:40
a really interesting point.
Anisha Thomas 37:41
Yeah, and where does it come from? Now? Where does it come from?
Chris Rainey 37:46
That's why, by the way, I said, when I meant what's HR role, I meant in terms of, should HR leaders be leading the way? This AI revolution, right? Because either they're going to lead the way or be left behind, and they're going to be, you know, remain order takers and stay in the same position that HR has been for many years. So I feel like this is a moment in time for HR to step up, like they've already been doing, to lead the way through this. Ai, you know, revolution is here to stay. And to your point, the fact that, like, I've never even thought about the fact of if it's an AI agent, has that come out of our head count budget, like, versus, is it technology like, I've never even thought about that before. That's actually so interesting to think about, right? And I can imagine, I can imagine so many companies are wrestling with that right now. Yeah,
Anisha Thomas 38:40
right now we're treating it like software technology,
Chris Rainey 38:43
budget and back and see where it goes in the future. That makes sense
Anisha Thomas 38:47
in the future, right? Like, depending on how you define agents, right? I like, and I don't want to say it's, it's to augment the team and make them more efficient, right? But to
Chris Rainey 39:01
empower them, yeah, especially enhance like, it's like a Yeah, like, for me, it's like, it doesn't replace what I do. It just empowers me to do more, and it almost supercharges me. There's I went to a conference recently, and they talked, they spoke about AI being the rise of the super worker. So Chris, with his group of agents, now becomes a super worker. And they've done some preliminary research to say that you can 10x an employee through being able to have this sort of suite of agents at your disposal, like, kind of like what I meant described earlier, and I feel like that I'm already doing that to a certain level, whereas I would probably have to have two or three more employees for what my agents currently do. HR, leaders, yeah, which is crazy to think about,
Anisha Thomas 39:52
yeah. And I think, yeah, I'm talking about the head count budget is because so what we're doing at inscribe, we're. We want to build, yeah, a suite of risk agents, a risk workforce. We call it, where we've got a credit analyst, agent, we've got a risk ops agent, a fraud analyst, agent, compliance analyst, agent, and they should all be talking to each other too, so they're not like, separate, no, yeah. Agents, like, they need to communicate as, yeah, we will be communicating internally, bi directional, yeah, yeah. And so I'm very excited, yeah, to kind of see wow, that you're in,
Chris Rainey 40:34
you're at the forefront of something truly special. Yeah, we're only just early on our journey with Atlas copilot, but what you're doing as a whole organization, and deploying that for companies all over the world is pretty amazing. Are you hybrid work, fully remote? What's the current
Anisha Thomas 40:54
we're fully remote? Yep, but we do have, like, office space in Ireland for the team to get together. No particular mandates about but it makes
Chris Rainey 41:06
sense, right, that the fact that you can tap into like you mentioned, talent all over the world, which is why I'm sure your founders, like me, I use deal as well. Like this, not a sponsor ad for deal that we we use deal, and it allowed us to hire our engineers for Atlas in Nigeria. Yeah, nice, right? Like, that's and people always surprise that, like, your engineering teams in Nigeria, I'm like, yeah, they're amazing. Like, there's incredible, like, a talent that exists there. And I had no idea, and I would never have done that if I didn't have deal to be able to do set because it used to, anyone who knows, you know, before we had things like deal, it was very costly and time consuming. If you wanted to sit up an entity somewhere, and all of the legislation and legal compliance, etc, it's like, especially when you're trying to grow a business, there's a huge headache. And it now it's just simple. It's almost so simple that when Shane brought to me, I was like, Is that easy? And I just press that button
Anisha Thomas 42:05
and it pays them payroll with eyes closer and click that button. We haven't
Chris Rainey 42:08
all made it to that extent yet. That almost too scary to get to the point where I don't press the button. I feel like I need to press the button, just to, just to, know, listen, before I let you go, I should, I should say congratulations, because you have another little young one on the way. I hope you don't mind me saying that, but I'm so happy for you. Is it? Is it? Is it the second? Yes, yeah. I hold you. How was your your first child. She just turned two. Oh, amazing. So y'all together, like, what? My daughter's six, and she's saying, Daddy, I want a brother and sister. So so I'm getting the pressure right now, and now I'm like, did I wait too long? Because six is quite a big gap, but as well, amazing two year gap, that's cool. They're gonna be able to grow up and have fun together. So congratulations to you. I'm so excited for you. Yeah, thank
Anisha Thomas 43:06
you. Yeah. I you know every age gap is going to be beautiful, but for me, just I was like, if we wait too long,
Chris Rainey 43:14
that's how my wife's feeling now. I was like, the longer you wait the laugh, like, now it's like, we gotta either do it now or never, because it's gonna get the more you value your current freedom. Really, one's fine. You can drop, drop drop Robin with, you know, our family, and it's like, we can go out and have fun. It's like, right now, it's like, gets a bit harder, but I don't think there's any good time, but it definitely the lot, the bigger the gap is gonna be for challenging. Yeah, as well. So listen, we'll have to catch up when you get back and but enjoy the time off, and I appreciate you taking the time to join me on the show. Where's the best piece for people to connect with you? LinkedIn, yeah. LinkedIn, would be great. Yeah. Cool. Oh, cool. Well, I appreciate you taking the time to come on the show, and I wish you all the best until next week. Thanks so
Anisha Thomas 44:01
much, Chris. This is fun. You.
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Carmen Barboza, CHRO at Crowell & Moring.