Q&A – Kristy Lane
What is it about your current role, that makes it different from the past?
One of the most attractive parts of my role is the ability to create the function from scratch. I can leverage my experience gained from other roles and apply that here, without having to reverse engineer or execute significant change management. We have an incredibly supportive, tight-knit team in ANZ that allows each of us to put forward our ideas and provide feedback to ensure we’re getting the best outcomes.
What excited you about taking the leap of a greenfields opportunity in what is a new market for PeopleStrong?
What got me excited about taking this role is that it has the element of greenfields – so I can create processes and ways of working that best suit our desired delivery to clients, while having the backing of 15 years of experience from the wider team in India. So there is already established templates, processes, systems in place, but I can take these and adapt to suit the ANZ style of working where we need to. This also means we’re bringing an established product offering to the ANZ market, but with some new features and functionality that differentiate us from other vendors. Our AI virtual assistant, Jinie, is a game changer for HR teams – something I wish I’d had available back in the day!
Do you get to inject your own ideas in how work gets done or how we deliver to clients here?
Absolutely! We’re in a fortunate position where the senior leaders of the business recognise that each region has unique requirements, expectations and ways of working. From day 1 we’ve been encouraged to voice our recommendations on how things are done in ANZ to ensure we’re setting up both the PeopleStrong team and our clients for success.
We have regular meetings with senior stakeholders across the business, including a dedicated session for product requirements. This ensures the ANZ team continues to get direct consideration and support time in amongst the more established regions.
What is a typical day for you?
I’m not sure there is such a thing as a ‘typical’ day – every day has been different so far! Being a small team in ANZ at present means we jump into whatever needs to be done. So this can be anything from marketing activities and sales discovery calls and demos; to industry research and discussions with our internal product teams re functionality requirements.
Part of my week is spent on maintaining my demo site. With a wealth of feature releases in the past 3-6 months it’s so much fun to set these processes up, ready to showcase and knowing first hand how much value our solution will deliver to prospective clients (did someone say employee driven career paths?!).
Regardless of what’s on the agenda, my day always begins with a ginger and lemon tea. There’s nothing like a morning ritual to kick my brain into work mode!
The highlight of each day for me is our team catch up. Working remotely for the past 6 years I know the importance of having these social interactions. Whilst the team discussion is mostly focused on work, I try not to derail the team too often to discuss our latest crafting creations!
