We wanted our software to rewrite the HR industry, so we took unorthodox product decisions

Sindhu Shivaprasad
Bootcamp
Published in
4 min readMay 21, 2021
A male and female character happily working together in a boat while sharks swim in the water around them
Illustration by Harini Kannan

Using HR management software is a lot like buying a pair of ‘one size fits all’ gloves: it does the job, but it never feels right. Oh, and it has all these extra bits and bobs that you don’t need, but can’t get rid of.

The tools we first used for time-off management were just like that: clunky, untrusting, and systems-first. But as a company that takes pride in being human-first, we needed a human-first tool made for healthy and happy workplaces. A tool that crushed stereotypes about burnout and time off, put team wellbeing first, and didn’t use complex processes to discourage breaks.

We didn’t find the answer, so we built it: Pause. It’s a people-first time-off management tool that fits your organisation like, err, a custom glove. Pause is functional, accessible, and easy on the pockets. It’s also anti-burnout, team-first, and pro-recharging.

But the pleasant interface and intuitive features belie the scores of product decisions we make every day to rewrite how burnout, breaks, and team planning are perceived in our systems-first world.

Most of these decisions are controversial. But don’t most world-changing ideas start off by ruffling a few feathers?

Here’s a look at some important product decisions we took to make Pause a humane time-off management tool that encourages rather than penalises:

Don’t penalise good actors to keep occasional bad actors in check

It’d be a crap world if everyone was thrown in the slammer to keep the bad guys in check. But that’s the exact mental model that a lot of enterprise software operate on: restrict the good actors to prevent the bad ones from causing a wreck.

In our case, parental leave was one such area. We decided to make parental leave unlimited, and that’s a hard left from conventional restricted parental leave days intended to prevent vacation abuse. But our thought process was this: A situation where employees exploit this leave type will need multiple people — applicants, approvers, teammates, admins, HRs — colluding. And if that seems highly likely, then that organisation has 99 other problems that parental leave can’t solve.

Software can’t fix what culture breaks

It’s delusional to assume that software can fix broken culture. If the rules are different for some players, or if everyone’s caught in the crossfire when a teammate takes a break, then that’s a cultural problem, not a software glitch. To that end, we built Pause to support positive work cultures, not save negative ones.

Build to prevent, not to correct

There are two ways to approach feature-building. One, look at lagging indicators and solve those. You don’t bother the user unnecessarily, but by the time you’ve fixed the problem, the damage is done.

Two, look at leading indicators and solve them preemptively. You’re encouraging action to avoid a problem. But you risk bombarding the user with solutions to a problem that might not exist.

In our case, we wanted to prevent burnout. Since that’s a proven workspace problem, we went with the second approach and introduced ‘burnout’ indicators to prevent, not correct. But we were also mindful of user needs and careful about our intervention timings so we never pollute the signal with noise.

A boss puts a life jacket on a happy employee as the latter prepares to dive off a diving board into water

Use defaults in moderation

Expecting all of your product’s benefits to be immediately clear to your users is a fool’s errand. We started our users off with some defaults so they see the value in what we’re offering.

But we also kept in mind that setting defaults is an ethical tightrope that’s easy to fall off. What starts out as a way to help users get the most out of your product can spiral into tricks and dark patterns that only help the product makers at the cost of the customer. You don’t want to be that jerk who tricks their customers, do you?

Promote a ‘transparent by default’ mindset

At Pause, we’re huge believers that transparency can change the dynamics of a team. This is why we built in clear visibility at any stage of using Pause, to keep everyone in the loop automatically. Underhand methods and time-off discrimination, begone.

Use supporting platforms to make your software powerful

Building a great product doesn’t always mean making it stand alone. In some cases:

The mark of a truly useful product is how well it enhances the power of the tools your users swear by.

Take Slack’s “away” feature. It’s thoughtfully designed, but left some important information out: if someone was away, did that mean away from their desk? Their laptop? The country?

Our decision to automatically add a simple 🌴 emoji when someone took time off enhanced the power of a useful but tucked-away Slack feature. Users now get the most out of both our software and the other ones they use every day.

Product decisions can change the name of the game

As product-builders, we often underestimate the power we hold to change society for the better. So many digital products have transformed the way we work, interact, and live — for better or worse. Often, these products stemmed from beliefs that were contrary to the status quo or catered to those outside the mainstream first.

Choosing to take responsible product decisions that put the power of change into the users’ hands can pave the way for better work ethics.

With every new user who finds their human-first agenda reflected in the product they use, we take a step closer to a global culture that is less robotic and more empathetic.

With inputs from Dhruv Saxena

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Published in Bootcamp

From idea to product, one lesson at a time. Bootcamp is a collection of resources and opinion pieces about UX, UI, and Product. To submit your story: https://tinyurl.com/bootspub1

Sindhu Shivaprasad
Sindhu Shivaprasad

Written by Sindhu Shivaprasad

Chief of Staff, documenter, writer and marketing strategist. Mind gardening at https://sindhu.live 🌱

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