How people leader Emily Chardac built an entire HR process with Coda
When Emily Chardac’s people management process was upended, she needed a new solution, and fast.
How people leader Emily Chardac built an entire HR process with Coda
By The Coda team
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Case studies > Emily Chardac
Coda changed the way I ran my people team in such an impactful way. I feel like the power of Coda for the work I do scaling teams is really underestimated.
Emily Chardac
People leader
The problem: A ballooning tool budget and massive headcount growth.
One.app was using several software tools that got the job done, but expenses were adding up. Ultimately, the company decided to consolidate and shift its tech stack to better support engineering and product teams, which meant reducing HR tools. “This really complicated how we were scaling the operational infrastructure to grow talent and culture.” Meaning Emily had to rethink how to make everything come together. “I’ll confess, I was overwhelmed at first. We had just gone through a huge merger, the dust was mostly settled, and the team had built a whole architecture that was working. Now I need to rebuild it? Where does all the work go?!” Change management was going to be the first problem to solve, but with headcount doubling nearly every eight months. The second was a company starting to burst at the seams. Like any good startup, the teams adapted and worked well with what they had, but Emily’s org also was forced to move quickly while juggling a whole new process. “The biggest challenge we were faced with was a lack of a Human Resources Information System (HRIS) to manage basic processes. Which then meant, how are we doing manager changes? How are we doing onboarding, offboarding? All this stuff.” And the “stuff” was piling up. You may get a pass if you’re a tiny startup using Google Forms to onboard people, but when the number of employees reaches triple digits, it starts to become a question of legitimacy, accuracy, and trust.The solution: One tool that does it all.
Emily was cautious using Coda as the solve for the growing tech debt. “If I’d had it my way, I would have started with other specialized HR tools.” But she thought to herself, “I’ve got to make lemonade here. And I’m so glad I did because we were able to do things with Coda that meant we weren’t spending money on yet another piece of software.” While there was a learning curve like with anything new—one made easier by Coda’s customer support team—eventually Emily’s investment in Coda, and herself, allowed for lots of novel (and cheaper) opportunities. Whether it was:- Onboarding and offboarding management: All of those tedious tasks and reminders were easily managed in Coda across a number of internal teams.
- Automating manager reminders for new employees: “Every check-in—one week, one month, one year anniversary. We were able to automate all of that with Coda.”
- Setting up a focused system for employees: “Coda gave us this great balance between depth and simplicity. Team members would input their pieces of the hiring process through super-simple Coda forms, which then got populated into a more detailed backend they didn’t need to be aware of.”
- Making up for headcount gaps: “We would’ve needed to hire three to five coordinators for all the work we were able to automate.”
Coda goes beyond work, and still works great.
“I’ve become such a fan of Coda. I love it!” Emily’s passion for Coda has grown to the point she’s been incorporating it into her personal life, too. Whether it’s customizing Google Workspace packs or building a personal CRM tool, “It really has been game-changing.”Request a demo
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