Cindy Gan has spent more than twenty years in people and culture, from recruiting for the Air Force to leading generalist teams spanning strategy, payroll, systems and safety. Along the way, she noticed something: almost every people problem, when you trace it back far enough, comes down to process, and the systems built on top of it.
In this episode, Kat and Cindy unpack why great systems create great workplaces, and why a new system almost never fixes a broken process. They talk through what actually makes an HR or payroll implementation succeed (the right people at the table early, proper resourcing, and process mapping before procurement) and the common trap of signing on the dotted line before anyone checks whether the system can handle the organisation’s real-world exceptions.
They also get into the HR tech ecosystem and why no single system does everything, what changes when leaders finally trust their data, the employee experience cost of clunky systems, and the reliance-on-systems risk that leaves organisations exposed when the one person who knew how everything worked walks out the door. Plus, Cindy’s take on what AI will and won’t do for HR technology, and why payroll won’t be running itself any time soon.
If you’re weighing up a new system, or trying to get more out of the one you already have, Cindy’s advice is simple: trust, but verify. Give your systems the same regular health check you give everything else.