Summary

Payroll problems were blowing up Slack channels at SurveyMonkey, and employees weren't taking them to finance. In this episode of The WorkOps Podcast, host Jeet Mukerji talks with Becky Cantieri, Chief People Officer at SurveyMonkey, about the decision to hit the blow-up button and move payroll out of finance and into HR, how a willing CFO and one simple question (who is willing to talk to the employee?) made the handoff a slam dunk, and why the defining skill for HR leaders right now is metabolizing change: finding signal in noise fast enough to prioritize, pivot, and keep up in the AI era. A practical listen for people leaders, HR operations teams, and anyone rethinking who should own the employee experience.

Chapters

00:00 Cold open

01:16 From the Nordstrom sales floor to CPO

06:37 Fifteen years of reinvention

09:26 Metabolizing change

14:22 The payroll problem

18:31 Winning over the CFO

21:44 Rebuilding the team

28:03 The AI champion at SurveyMonkey

32:51 Refusing to wait in the AI queue

35:21 Permission, capability, agency

Takeaways

-Employees don't think in org charts. When something breaks, they go to whoever usually answers, so design ownership around the employee experience, not department history.

-The team willing to talk to employees should own the employee-facing function. SurveyMonkey moved payroll into HR when it became clear finance didn't want those conversations.

-Make handoffs safe with data: SurveyMonkey's HR team committed to SLAs and email volume reporting while banking controls stayed with finance.

-The defining HR skill right now is metabolizing change: finding signal in noise fast enough to prioritize, pivot, and keep up with AI.

-Metabolizing is teachable. It starts with curiosity, a growth mindset, and the willingness to throw out a process you built and are proud of.

Connect with the Guest

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/rebecca-cantieri-85654a/

Website: https://www.surveymonkey.com

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