People Operations vs HR — What’s the Difference?

We spend more time at work than we do almost anywhere else, including our own homes. In the past few years, as employers and employees are re-evaluating our work environments and roles, we’ve begun to see a shift in the organizational structure of companies and the function of different roles within them. Employees are a company’s bottom line, and employers are navigating new employee needs and investing in their staff.

Where organizations used to have traditional HR roles, we are now seeing an increase in “Chief People Officer” and “Head of Workplace Culture” positions as well. These roles are broadly known as “People Operations” roles. So what’s the difference between these and the HR office you’re already familiar with?

Human Resources: The Day-to-Day Organizing

Human Resources is an umbrella term that describes a huge array of responsibilities within an organization. The exact scope of an HR department’s responsibilities will vary by company, but they are almost always responsible for three broad categories: staffing, conflict resolution, and compliance.

Staffing

An HR department is responsible for something known as the employee life cycle — this is exactly what it sounds like: the life cycle of an employee in a given company…