Serena Ziskroit
Chief People Officer
Mighty One People Human Capital Consultancy
Episode 153
Transforming HR: Why Innovation is Your Duty to People & Profit
Current chapter: Built by People podcast features insights from world's top HR leaders
Built By PeopleJune 10, 2025 · 9:22
Thesis
“HR leaders must adopt a growth mindset, embracing innovative technology and AI as a duty to drive business success and enable employees to thrive, moving beyond traditional compliance-focused roles.”
Show notes
"The computer has become the widget and we have become the creative problem solvers." Serena Ziskroit has been building toward that inversion for a career that ran from public service to law to tech HR — a "career jungle gym," in her words — and her work with clients now centers on a conviction that deploying AI in HR isn't optional. It's a responsibility.
At Mighty One People, Serena consults on HR tech stacks and organizational restructuring, and her diagnostic process is distinctive: she assesses both the technology and the people org structure simultaneously. A perfectly selected platform deployed against a poorly structured team will underperform; a well-structured team using inadequate tools will hit ceilings it doesn't need to hit. The dual assessment is the starting point.
Her most transformative insight comes from work with feedback tools: across multiple client engagements, she found that the intervention with the highest impact on employee satisfaction wasn't compensation, career development, or benefits. It was recognition — and specifically, the simple act of making recognition consistent and visible. In one restructuring project, deploying an AI-driven performance review system didn't just save time. It surfaced conversations that hadn't been happening, and it surfaced them at scale.
- AI integration across the full employee lifecycle — from job descriptions and sourcing to performance reviews and offboarding
- The dual tech-and-structure assessment — why you have to evaluate both simultaneously for consulting to produce results
- Recognition as the highest-ROI HR intervention — the data from multiple client engagements
- HR as a "career jungle gym" — why non-linear paths produce more adaptive people leaders
- AI deployment as a professional responsibility — the mindset that separates proactive HR leaders from reactive ones
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What you'll take away
- 1HR career paths should be viewed as a 'jungle gym,' encouraging diverse experiences over a linear ladder progression.
- 2Integrate AI throughout the entire employee lifecycle, from feedback and performance reviews to job descriptions and sourcing, to optimize efficiency and impact.
- 3Implement feedback tools to provide essential recognition, which often has the most transformative impact on employee satisfaction and engagement.
- 4When consulting, perform a dual assessment of both technology and people organizational structure to ensure a tech stack is appropriate for company size and that teams are structured for success.
- 5Proactively pilot and adopt innovative HR tech solutions, such as AI-powered recruitment services (e.g., SeekOut Spot), to significantly reduce costs and improve hiring efficiency.
- 6HR leaders must cultivate a growth mindset, extending their influence beyond compliance into technology and business strategy, connecting all stakeholders.
What most organizations get wrong
- •Sourcers are becoming less necessary with advancements in AI and specialized recruiting tools that can efficiently provide qualified candidate slates.
- •The traditional HR role focused solely on compliance is outdated; modern HR must integrate technology and business strategy to help humans thrive.
In Serena's words
“My career journey is kind of a career jungle gym, and I love that term because it's definitely not a ladder for me.”
This quote introduces her philosophy on career development, emphasizing dynamic growth over linear progression.
“I feel like it's my responsibility as a dynamic people leader to apply the most innovative technology that helps both humans and the technology come together and succeed as a business and help the humans thrive in their roles and in society.”
This statement encapsulates her core philosophy on the strategic imperative of integrating technology and human success in HR leadership.
“And now we've evolved to the computer being more of the widget and us being this creative problem solver.”
This highlights the shift in human roles due to technology, where humans focus on creativity and problem-solving while computers handle repetitive tasks.
“Workday relies on specific developers and specialists to roll out specific parts of the employee lifecycle. And so those leaders weren't really set up to thrive and really bridge that human side and technology together to help the company succeed.”
This explains a key challenge with enterprise HR software for smaller organizations and the need for HR leaders to bridge technology and human elements.
“I think that it's really important for all of our people leaders to have this growth mindset that we're not necessarily in this bucket of quote unquote HR, which traditionally has had compliance and really have that growth mindset that we can help with technology, we can help with the business side, and still stay connected to our other stakeholders in addition to the company, our team members, and candidates.”
This provides critical advice for HR leaders to expand their strategic influence beyond traditional compliance and embrace broader business and technology roles.
“I feel like it's almost a duty for every single strategy that I implement in a company to consider whether there is a relevant AI tool or task that we should be replacing with a current task.”
This statement powerfully articulates her commitment to proactively integrating AI into all HR strategies.
The problems this episode addresses
- •Organizations struggle with ill-fitting or overly complex HR tech stacks (e.g., Workday for a 250-person company) leading to underutilized features and lack of clear ownership.
- •High costs and inefficiencies associated with traditional talent acquisition methods, such as contingent recruiting fees and dedicated sourcers.
- •Lack of effective feedback mechanisms within companies, resulting in employees feeling unrecognized and unsure of their impact.
- •HR teams often remain stuck in a compliance-focused mindset, hindering their ability to contribute strategically to business growth and technology adoption.
In this episode
Built by People podcast features insights from world's top HR leaders
Built by People
Your career journey is kind of a career jungle gym
How to Get Out of the Career Jungle
You helped an organization restructure its HR team using AI
How HR is Restructuring its HR Team with AI
Trina, when was the time you saw a transformative impact after implementing HR tech
What's the Impact of a New HR Tech Stack
How did you approach advising a public company or private equity firm on structuring HR teams
Structuring an HR Team in a Public Company
Serena says AI is changing the way organizations manage their HR functions
The Future of AI in Human Resources
Serena, what parting advice would you like to share with our community
A Human Resources Leader's Last Words
Topics covered
Organizations and entities mentioned
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