Amplify Digest: Ways to Support Ukraine

Written By Lars Schmidt

Subscribe to the Amplify Digest: a weekly newsletter designed to help modern HR operators stay on top of the latest news, trends, and resources in all things people.

Welcome to the Amplify Digest. Every week, I break down five articles in five minutes; discussing the top people news, stories, and resources that are worth your time. Scroll down for links to the articles covered in the video (and more), a helpful thread from the Amplify Accelerator Community, and curated jobs from the Amplify Job Board.

This week’s digest is a special episode focused on supporting Ukraine, including open-source HR resources and more.

 
 

Sponsor

The Amplify Digest is sponsored by Greenhouse. As modern HR leaders and professionals, you know that your company’s ability to hire great talent is as important as ever. Whether you need to scale your team quickly, or improve your hiring process, Greenhouse gives you the right technology, know-how, and support to take on what’s next.

 
 
 

Amplify Accelerator Echo Cohort (April 21-May 20)

The Amplify Accelerator is a new approach to building readiness for modern HR and people operators through cohorts (peer-based learning). Designed to build capability and connections, the Amplify cohorts help modern people leaders build the necessary skills and network equity for the new world of work.

Accelerate your HR career and become a more confident people leader, armed with a new global peer community and a toolkit full of actionable advice, resources, templates, and more.

The Echo Cohort runs April 21 - May 20, with live sessions Tuesdays & Thursdays 1:00 - 2:30pm ET.

“The only thing better than the resource library and the world-class speakers is the community, an engaged group of vetted peers from whom I can learn and with whom I can collaborate.” — Claire Kennedy, Axios VP of People Operations

 
 

NEW: ✨ Amplify Community Wisdom ✨

The Amplify Accelerator Community was specifically designed to help modern people operators expand their networks, thinking, and connections. Each week, I'll spotlight a helpful thread from the Community to help Amplify Digest subscribers learn from the discussions.

[Question] We’re considering hiring an in-house employment lawyer. We’re about 250 FTEs (heading towards 750 this year). On the one hand, we realize that it is very early to consider an in-house employment lawyer. However, with the explosion of remote work we’re spending more and more time with our employment law advisors. I’d love to hear at what size you hired an employment lawyer (and at what size you wish you’d hired one)?

  • A1: We hired one at 450 employees. We should have hired at 300 employees - with the anticipation of the growth we had. Helpful to set a strong compliance and governance foundation especially in a SOC-2 organization with global expansion. Our GC was a great champion and partner for our HR team supporting the culture and driving accountability with management on performance conversations as well.

  • A2: At my last company it was around 400 I think, but the person we hired still seemed to know a bit less than our team on many subjects. I would think about how much you are spending on external counsel and how much expertise you need.

  • A3: I would definitely look for someone who has experience scaling a company at your stage, and who is prepared for challenges that come up in the next couple of stages. You need someone with an appetite for risk who can help you decide between multiple challenging paths forward. I think by far the most interactions we had with outside counsel and then in-house were around separations. Then issues that arose around said separations. As we've grown in the pandemic especially outside of California, they also spend a fair bit of time analyzing differences in local law to determine compliance needs - like for the Colorado fair pay law. Someone coming from a huge public company with low appetite for risk might not be the best fit at a high growth startup that needs to be agile and turnover low performers fast, for example.

  • A4: We hired when we got close to 400. We had a GC prior but quickly realized when we got to about 400, it was time to have in-house employment counsel.

You can learn more about the Amplify Accelerator Community in this post or by clicking the button below. 

 
 
 
Lars Schmidt
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