I’m Jessica Zwaan, and I organise my thoughts by thinking and then writing down the bits that feel helpful - to me, and hopefully to you reading this. One of my favourite things to write about is how humans organise themselves into “work”: the mess, the meaning, and all the strange systems we build to make sense of it.

Outside of writing, I help companies notice what they’re doing (not the aspirational version, the real one) and redesign it so people can move with more meaning and less friction. It’s part anthropology, part product thinking, part structured nosiness. Sometimes the work becomes a book. Sometimes it becomes a new way to design work. Sometimes it becomes a tool, a ritual, a way of seeing things differently.

A foundational session unpacking the methodology Jessica developed in her book Built for People. The premise: your employee experience is a product that team members subscribe to, and like any subscription, it can be cancelled at any time.

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What's covered:

• The origin and evolution of People Ops as a Product, from Jessica's 2020 blog post through to the Modern People Leader Academy.
• The two coexisting elements of the People function (the systematic build work and the genuinely human work) and why great leaders excel at both.
• The three-layer product model (core, actual, augmented) and where People teams should be putting their energy for maximum impact.
• Two operating principles for product-led People functions: maximising impact to the mission, and accomplishing everything through others.
• The employee lifecycle viewed as a customer journey: employer brand, recruitment, day-to-day experience, referrals, and exits.
• Where most People teams under-invest: output metrics, experimentation, user research, and cross-functional collaboration.
• Why "strategic HR" on its own falls short, and what it looks like to build solutions inside the business rather than waiting on six-month vendor cycles.

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What you'll walk away with:

1. A working mental model for treating People Ops as a product function.
2. Practical first steps for getting started: journey mapping, structured user research, output metrics, roadmapping, and test-and-learn cycles.
3. Confidence to operate as a builder inside your business, not just a consultant to it.