Work as a Product with Chris Metcalfe

“I am yet to meet someone who wakes up in the morning and says, the main thing I am absolutely pumped to do today is to engage with HR products and services.” Chris Metcalfe is the founder of Red Oak and cofounder of PX as a Product, where he helps people teams think and work like product teams. Born in New Zealand and based in Dublin, he spent nine years building Workday’s core HCM product, led product and design at Docebo, and headed product for people and culture at Primark. We cover work as a literal product, the multi-sided business, engagement surveys, the four risks every product team manages, and where a people team can start. What we covered: Sourcing bathroom products in China at 23 for the family business Joining Workday in Dublin among its first 100 people Why Chris treats work as a product in the literal sense Labor as a negative good, and why machinery sits on the asset side of the ledger while people sit on the cost side Uber Eats and DoorDash as three-sided marketplaces The company as a platform, with employees outside it in the same way as customers James’s time as an Uber driver, from tier perks to drip-fed onboarding videos Happy deliveries as a leading indicator of customer and employee value Nike and durable problem spaces The center of expertise as the least important thing The four product risks: value, usability, feasibility, and viability Engagement surveys as “a total waste of time,” and the NPS score nobody can act on A Workday deployment for 40,000 people in nine months, and the job rec to paycheck journey Workforce planning hidden inside the job requisition process Starting with why the company exists The manager who asked James six or seven questions about what he wanted from his work The ski resort as a participatory product People: Dart Lindsley, previous guest on this show Luke O’Mahoney, of SapienX, previous guest on this show Megan Bernard-May, previous guest on this show Jessica Zwaan, author and previous guest on this show Gerry Murphy, previous guest on this show Dave Ulrich, HR scholar Niccolò Machiavelli Books: Built for People, Jessica Zwaan Purpose and Work, Jessica Zwaan The Prince, Niccolò Machiavelli Articles: Reimagining Work as a Product, Eric Anicich and Dart Lindsley, Harvard Business Review, 2024 https://hbr.org/2024/11/reimagining-work-a... Organizations: Red Oak, PX as a Product, SapienX, Workday, Docebo, Primark, SAP, Uber, Uber Eats, DoorDash, Nike, Apple Find Chris: LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/chris-metcalfe... Website: https://red-oak.agency Coaching program: https://pxasaproduct.com Newsletter: https://metcalfec.substack.com Music licensed through Soundstripe. Code: DLQOKHPSWUMSTCMH.