People Operations vs. HR: The Key Differences
Based on their titles alone, people operations and human resources sound pretty similar. Both departments deal with the employees of an organization and the relationship between a company and its employees, but while there is certainly cross over, the two are not one in the same.
Take a mid-sized finance firm my company works with. Once my team has identified a great candidate and they’ve been hired, the company’s HR team sends over their new hire paperwork, distributes the employee handbook, and answers questions about benefits. On the other hand, the people ops team organizes a welcome lunch for the new hire’s first day, assigns them an onboarding buddy to help acquaint them with their team, and creates a tailored 30-day new hire success plan. Though the activities complement one another, they’re very distinct.
Here’s another way I like to look at it. If there’s a party, HR organizes the venue and sends out invitations. In contrast, people operations would mingle and ensure everyone is having a good time.
Why does the difference between people operations and human resources matter? Because we’re not talking about a party. We’re talking about the success of your most important business asset–your workforce–and HR and people ops can both play a critical role.
Learn the difference between people operations and human resources and better grasp the situations where you might leverage one or the other in this post.
What Is HR?
HR stands for human resources. The department manages a company’s activities related to its employees, like hiring, onboarding, training, resolving conflicts, and so on.
HR is responsible for many logistics that arise from employing people, like administering company benefits packages and ensuring staffers are paid for their time. HR also has an important compliance duty, ensuring that the company provides a safe and equitable work environment and follows all applicable labor laws.
Human resources as a business function have been around for more than 100 years. Its origins date back to the early 20th century when business magnates like Andrew Carnegie began to recognize the value of strategic workforce management in helping an organization accomplish its goals.
What Are People Operations?
People operations is under the umbrella of HR, but its duties have a more defined scope. A company’s people operations department is focused on optimizing the employee experience, which may include employee engagement, development, and retention initiatives.
People operations think about employees the way marketing thinks about customers, looking for ways to improve their experience with the organization and increase satisfaction. They also concentrate on how HR operates, working to modernize systems to make them more user-friendly.
The idea of people operations as a formalized corporate department has been a new development within the last decade. The concept was pioneered by Laszlo Bock, who spearheaded Google’s famous People Ops department. Bock advocates for focusing on purpose rather than processes, which is also a great way to define what people operations does.
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Contrasting People Operations vs. HR
The differences between HR and people operations are subtle; it’s one of those things where you know it when you see it, but it can be tricky to define. To help illustrate their distinct roles, here are some key ways in which HR and people operations differ.
Approach
HR takes a practical approach, carrying out the day-to-day employee-related activities necessary for a company to function. People ops take a more conceptual approach, thinking strategically about the relationship a company is building with its employees and the culture that’s being created.
Systems
HR operates within well-defined systems, which are essential to make sure work gets done efficiently. Payroll, for example, is administered the same way each week to ensure employees get their checks on time. People operations have more leeway in their processes, often experimenting with new ideas and looking for creative ways to get things done.
Legal function
Legally speaking, HR ensures the company dots its i’s and crosses its t’s. HR specialists are responsible for knowing the law concerning employers and helping the company operate within its bounds while accomplishing business objectives. HR is also the first line of defense if the possibility of a lawsuit arises. While people operations must work within these legal boundaries, PO specialists don’t typically focus on legal matters.
Reactive vs. proactive
HR is traditionally reactive, dealing with employee-related issues as they arise. For example, an HR representative might step in to act as a mediator in a disagreement between two employees. Or, as was the case with one client’s new hire who was struggling to meet expectations, the HR team scheduled a six-month performance review for the employee’s manager to provide detailed feedback and action items for improvement.
People ops are proactive, seeking to establish practices that prevent issues from arising in the first place. In the case of the struggling employee we just mentioned, people ops might initiate a company-wide program of continuous feedback in which managers meet weekly with their reports to discuss challenges and brainstorm solutions, addressing imminent performance problems head-on.
Shared goals
Despite some nuanced distinctions, HR and people operations share many of the same goals, though their roles in achieving them may differ. Here are a few of their common objectives.
Hiring
HR handles the candidate life cycle, overseeing the systems used to attract talent, collect applications, track candidates, administer interviews, and make job offers. People operations focuses more on the candidate experience, optimizing communications with applicants and working to provide a more seamless experience during the hiring process.
Related: Candidate Experience Best Practices and Why You Should Follow Them
Employee retention
Retaining employees helps control recruiting costs and contributes to a more skilled workforce, so it’s in the best interest of both HR and people operations to focus on keeping good workers around. HR may do so by providing effective onboarding, coordinating an attractive benefits package, and prioritizing diversity and inclusion initiatives. People ops can aid in retention with strategies like employee development opportunities, employee recognition/rewards programs, and creative perks.
Related: Highly Effective Strategies for Employee Retention
Company culture
People operations play a major role in defining a company’s vision and creating a culture that supports it. HR helps execute the initiatives that bring that vision to life. For example, people operations might decide that greater employee autonomy is an important element in building the desired culture. HR might then implement a policy of unlimited PTO to empower employees with more control over their schedules.
Technology
HR and people operations rely on technology to do their jobs and make those jobs easier. HR and PO leverage technology to streamline workflows, reduce costs, save time, and automate processes. People operations pay particular attention to employee use of technology, looking for ways to deploy it that will make workers’ lives easier (i.e., digitizing old systems, using convenient apps instead of desktop software, etc.)
Key HR Trends
Skill-based workforce planning
Traditionally, workforce planning has been geared primarily toward headcount planning (anticipating the number of employees needed to meet business goals) or succession planning (identifying employees to develop in order to fill key openings). In 2025, HR strategists are increasingly focused on skills-based workforce planning.
Skills-based planning focuses on hiring or developing workers with the critical skills and capabilities the business will require in the long term. It factors in current talent, business goals, market trends, competitor movements, and emerging technology.
This approach requires taking a long view–usually two or more years out–and it’s a complex task involving many inputs. When appropriately executed, skills-based workforce planning can optimize the resources involved in hiring while keeping skills gaps from threatening the organization’s livelihood.
Preparing leaders of the future
Business is changing, and there’s growing concern that the leaders of tomorrow won’t be ready for what’s ahead in time. According to Gartner, only 36% of HR leaders believe their organization’s leadership development programs are effective at preparing leaders for future challenges, while just 23% say they have rising leaders who can meet the future needs of the organization.
The big problem is that leadership development programs often lack follow-through. Emerging leaders learn a concept, but months or years may pass before they’re called upon to deploy it in a practical setting, and by then, the learning initiative is over.
Forward-thinking HR professionals can better develop future leaders by investing in events and programs contributing to lasting, repeated connections. Building meaningful relationships between future leaders and their mentors and peers creates a network of connections emerging leaders feel they can rely upon for continuous learning and support in applying the concepts learned in their day-to-day work.
Deriving greater value from technology
I can say from experience that AI has impacted how HR work gets done, but I’d stop short of saying it’s had the “transformative” effects some have raved about, at least in its current state.
I see the potential, but right now, HR technology is mainly used to automate tasks. It touches on many parts of the employee experience (virtual onboarding is one example). Still, the systems are largely disjointed, and employees underuse or abandon them rather than muddle through navigating their complex web.
As a result, there’s a growing push to derive greater value from HR tools and technology. Rather than focusing on “quick wins” that only deliver short-term, marginal gains, organizations will look to identify opportunities to gain meaningful returns from AI and other solutions. Then, business leaders must allow sufficient time for innovation to be adopted and transformation to occur before a new initiative is implemented. In other words, big gains can happen, but more patience is required.
Key People Ops Trends
Change management as an emerging necessity
It seems change is the only constant in our rapidly evolving landscape, and all the newness is wearing on employees.
Seventy-three percent of HR leaders say workers at their organizations are fatigued from a change in a landscape where there isn’t time to complete the adoption of one change before another one is announced. Change fatigue contributes to reduced employee engagement and a lower intent to stay, driving the need for strategic change management as a people ops priority.
In a strategic approach to change management, managers work to build their teams’ resilience to change rather than championing change initiatives. They identify and empower team members who are “change influencers”–well-connected employees who handle change well and can act as guideposts for their colleagues.
Research from Gartner has shown that managers who encourage employees to take ownership of change initiatives boost sustainable performance by up to 29%.
