Christine Luo People Partner
Airtasker
What do you do? What are the duties, functions and responsibilities that you are involved in as a part of your role? I’m a part of the People Operations team. Our team mission is to build and maintain high performing teams at Airtasker. My focus is to ensure we deliver seamless, friction-free and scalable employee experiences to all Airtasker employees. My responsibilities involve providing advice and support to our employees throughout their journey from pre-employment, onboarding, all the way to when they leave Airtasker. I work closely with the rest of the People Ops team to drive process improvements that help optimise our people processes, tools and systems to help scale our day to day impact. This usually means looking at ways we can automate our processes and ways of working so that we are able to reduce our collective manual load. I also support business leaders and managers to create the conditions for people to be able to grow their talent and impact at Airtasker. Lastly, my role is to make sure everyone is also having a kick ass time at the same time. Can you tell us a little about your firm's work culture and the environment? What sets it apart? Besides all the fun stuff like dogs in the office, free coffee and lunches, unlimited drinks and snacks in the kitchen, super yacht parties… I think there are two main things that stand out to me as both an employee and as someone working within HR. Firstly, it would be our values. I strongly believe we live our values in all aspects of our work. People Matter and Own It are the key ones that first come to mind for me. I think it is incredibly important that organisations value their people and always keep the impact of business decisions on their people at the forefront of their mind. I think we take full responsibility in this regard by ensuring there is always compassion and a human-centric approach in all our decisions - business or people ones, because at the end of the day, every business decision impacts its people. Next, would be the level of transparency we have across the organisation. We believe in leading with context, not control and this is reflected in how openly we communicate information. We also ensure this is reflected in how we work, and I can confidently say that all our teams operate under high levels of trust and autonomy.
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How did you get started in this field? How well did your work relate to the experiences or studies you had in university? I think I’ve always known that I wanted to work in HR, but not the boring traditional type of HR - the type where everyone shudders when they hear that the person from HR is coming to speak to you. I wanted to work in an organisation that had a progressive way of working and one that really believed that investing into its people was a priority. My studies barely did anything to help me get to where I am now if I’m completely honest. There are only so many case studies in a textbook (and we hardly looked at any) that can help prepare you for the type of people problems you end up facing in the workplace. Processes that may work for certain organisations, may not be fit for purpose for others due to a myriad of factors (size, industry, context etc). That being said, my involvement in extracurricular activities throughout uni really helped me build the foundations for my soft skills. These interpersonal skills such as strong communication and structured problem solving have formed the foundation of how I work and approach my work. What do you find to be the most interesting or challenging part of your work? The most interesting part of my role are the opportunities. Our mission is to empower people to realise the full value of their skills, and this extends to the employees within Airtasker. We encourage people to challenge existing processes and ways of working because this ensures we are continually moving forward and staying competitive. This means I get to rip things apart at work (even if it’s something my manager implemented) and rebuild it so that we can achieve better outcomes. I find this exciting as it’s a great way to learn and have an impact. The most challenging part of my role is being able to balance my role as someone who works in HR, with my role as an employee. In my team, our priority is to ensure everyone is having a great time no matter where you are in your journey here. However, sometimes we are so focussed on looking after others and celebrating their wins, that we forget to do this for ourselves.
