HR, Party of One, With Anisha Thomas

Like many HR teams of one, Anisha Thomas has a full plate — and we don’t mean the kind piled with charcuterie while standing in the corner at the office holiday party. (Just us?)

Fitting, because she has a strong appetite for challenging work. She’s involved in every aspect of the employee lifecycle as head of people at Inscribe, and says she loves the mix of operational and strategic work. 

“I have to flex myself between being a strategic business leader and a people operator and actually doing the work. I am in the clouds, but I'm also really deep in the weeds and every day it looks different,” she said.

In this edition of HR, Party of One, Anisha tells us how she straddles the big picture and the interminable tiny details while keeping her eye on her North Star: equity. 

How would you describe your current role at Inscribe?

I am on the leadership team, but I am also a team of one, so I have to flex myself between being a strategic business leader and a people operator. I am in the clouds, but I'm also really deep in the weeds — every day it looks different. 

Part of my role is being a strategic advisor to the leadership team in how they shape the challenges they're trying to solve. I get to understand where the gaps in the business are or what they need. I also help with the goal setting at the company level, which trickles down to every employee. 

I do all the operational aspects of running a hiring process from end-to-end, like hands-on recruiting, sourcing, interviewing, sending offer letters, and then straight to onboarding, payroll, compliance, and benefits for a global company. We've got team members in the US, Ireland, UK, Italy, Germany, Sweden, and Portugal. Anything and everything in between the entire employee lifecycle, I've got it. 

How did you end up in HR?

I chose it. In college, I was thinking, “Am I going to be a professor? A dentist?” I was all over the place, but I took an organizational psychology class and I fell in love with it. 

After taking that class, I shifted my focus to business psychology, and earned my master's in applied psychology. Then I got my first role as a people coordinator at a small medical device company. I was a team of one there, so I looked after the entire employee lifecycle, and reported to the CEO.

I was too young in my career to be a team of one — I was figuring out a lot by Googling. But I actually wanted to learn from others and get into SaaS. 

So I moved to Intercom’s recruiting team. Being in the heart of Silicon Valley, tech was booming and they were thinking about HR differently. I was very keen on how to actually retain, engage, and motivate employees. 

You can have the best product or best service, but if you don't have the people behind it, you're not going to win.

As a recruiter, I knew how much effort and time and energy goes into finding candidates, but it was never a success for me if someone left within six months. So I internally transferred to the talent development team to focus on the onboarding program, learning and development modules, and performance reviews. 

Then the CEO of Inscribe reached out to me, asking if I wanted to be Head of People — essentially back to being a team of one. I felt ready, after having seen the best of both worlds. So I got to be a team of one again, and then I also got to build the team out. 

My team unfortunately went through a RIF, so now I'm back to being a team of one. I think that's made my role stickier, though, because I have been able to be a strategic leader and an operator.

How does being a generalist help future-proof your career?

I've seen it all and done it all, so being a generalist in this sense was a lot more attractive for the company when the RIF happened.

That's where the world is heading, especially with AI. I think more teams will be much leaner because there are a lot of operational tasks that can be automated or enhanced with AI. It can help me prioritize where my time and energy is spent, but I have an understanding of the work to know what great looks like, too. 

When you think back to your first role as a team of one, what did you know about HR then, and how is that different from now?

I had no idea what to expect of how much it entailed. In my master's, I was learning about a lot of theories, but it wasn't “here's how to recruit,” or “here's how to run payroll.” It wasn't practical or tangible. 

So when I first stepped into that role, I had to learn a lot on the job and about the business in general. I was attracted to the Inscribe role because of reporting directly to the CEO — I get so much access to understanding budget forecasts, strategic goals, all of which made me better equipped to make better decisions for the business and the team. It’s clear to me now that good judgement and intuition are crucial to success as a people leader.

What’s your relationship like with your CEO?

It's great. We have built a lot of trust. I conduct his performance review. We hold space for him to reflect on the feedback that he's been given.

I always ask, “What are some of the areas that you want to work on?” And since it’s a partnership, I’ll hold him accountable, and he’ll hold me accountable. At the end of the day, we view each other as peers — we both want to make Inscribe and the team successful.

I like to use this analogy from Billions: I'm like Wendy, the in-house strategic advisor, and I get to have a lot of influence and impact. It's the work behind the work. It’s all the conversations I have with my founders, and getting to help out with culture. I always say their priorities should be “people, product, profit.” People has to be in the top three, and I get to have those discussions with them.

Why did you put people first in that list?

People are the biggest asset for the company, they’re central to making sure that a business actually works. I always say that you can have the best product or best service, but if you don't have the people behind it, you're not going to win.

Does the “work behind the work” ever get lonely? 

Yeah, but the leadership team are my peers, they help advocate for me. I look at them as my colleagues; it's not just a one-way street of sharing advice. It can be isolating, but I have a great support system within that team. 

Also, building communities or going on LinkedIn or Slack communities has been very helpful to ask “Hey, has anyone gone through a RIF and how have they gone about it?” At Inscribe, it was my first facilitating one, so I had no idea where to even begin. Reaching out to the community and being at Lattiverse gave me a lot of great connections to lean on.

What was it like to offboard your own team?

The way we went about it was very transparent — we never sugarcoated how the business was doing. My big thing is transparency, so no one is ever shocked.

We get equity for a reason — everyone is a stakeholder in the company. They should know how the business is doing. That calls for as much awareness and education as we can provide. Being very open about that is the starting point. 

From there, going through difficult conversations becomes a lot easier. Obviously it sucks to go through things like that, but people have also come back to Inscribe after that because of how our culture and people are so tied to our values. We’re all still in touch and cheering each other on — there are no hard feelings.

You described your role as both in the clouds and also down in the weeds. How do you balance the two?

The real, honest answer is that my husband helps stay grounded. It can be hard being a team of one. A lot of things are on my shoulders and I can't vent to the founders or my peers about it. 

Having a support system outside of work, whether that’s my husband or a community is how I stay grounded. Without that outlet, I often say “the therapist needs a therapist.” It’s hard. 

ChatGPT is also great as a thought partner when I can't get it from others. Sometimes I have to talk out loud to someone else who has no context or ties to the company to help me think about things.

Given your upcoming parental leave, how are you handing over the reins to people who have less context about your work?

It's difficult because, on paper, it seems so simple. Onboarding, offboarding, performance, engagement, strategic advising — the components seem easy. But once you’re actually doing the work, there's so much more to it. 

It's not just like there's one step to onboarding. It's constant communication with the new hire, getting them set up in the systems, making sure then they get access on day one, all the I-9 verifications. Doing it globally requires even more context. There's so much nuance and context that comes with each individual situation that I take on that no one can see, and if someone does take it on, it's not black or white. 

I'm still debating whether there should be a performance cycle when I'm not around. I’m very curious about what will happen if I’m not there. The perspective I bring is equity for everyone, and making sure it aligns to our comp philosophy. If I'm not there, who is looking out for that?

I have shared that with our founders. They said they will channel me in those conversations. I do have to trust the process and the team to wear the “people” hat.

Either I go on mat leave and things go on fire, which means they need me, or things are running so smoothly that I set up everything so nicely. It's a win-win either way.

If you could have a larger team, would you want to build it out? 

I'd love to grow the team eventually, but I'd keep it lean. I wouldn't hire ahead of what we need. 

The way SaaS worked a couple of years ago is totally different from how we operate today because of AI. There are companies with 35 employees hitting millions in revenue already; it makes you think about growth differently. If you can achieve that with a team of 35, do you need a 500-person org? 

I used to think I needed one recruiter for every 10 roles, but I can't think like that anymore. If I have to hire again, it's definitely going to be for people who complement my skillset. I'd love to get better at data, so someone who's a lot more data-oriented than I am could round things out. 

Since Inscribe is an AI company, how do you foster a culture of experimenting with AI?

We want to be the first company to build risk agents for financial institutions in the market. We have very ambitious goals, but won't be able to achieve that without changing the way we’re operating. We need to get the team bought into that. 

One way to do that is through AI and experimentation, so if we can strategically rally the team around what we have to achieve in terms of our mission and vision, hopefully that instills this energy and conviction and the team being bought in. For example, our go-to-market team held an offsite hackathon to explore using AI to automate workflows.

It’s one thing to make time for it, but the “why” behind it is important to communicate. It's not telling someone to just work harder or more efficiently, it’s giving them the reason why. I don't want there to be a disconnect with what we're building and selling and how we're operating internally.

How are you making your work more visible? 

I’m not someone who shares my work all the time. It's funny because I preach to everyone to make your work visible, and I’m the last person to think about for myself. But I need to lead by example. 

I use Lattice Updates and one-on-ones to share what I have been doing. I also have my peers and leadership team to help advocate and share their perspective on what I've been doing and how I've been influencing them. I share things at All Hands — even if it's not a super meaningful program update, someone might care about it and show what I'm working on.

I use Slack for candidate updates, but it's not just talking about which candidates got an offer. I am shining a light on the process itself of how we even got to closing a candidate. 

What keeps you feeling drawn to HR?

It's the people at the end of the day. I always knew I wanted to help people in some way. When I chose this path, I wanted to make a difference, so I lead with kindness. 

Something I've learned is you have to be a business leader first and a functional leader second to be the best when it comes to HR. That’s not to say that it's about protecting the company, it's just really understanding how to prioritize what the company needs or does.

That’s hard because some people think you just need to have a high-performing team, which burns them out, or that if you have a positive culture but you're not achieving your goals, that's not successful either. So I’m trying to help everyone find the sweet spot.

The founders have said, “Your role is very critical to our success.” When they say something like that, I think, “Wow, I am actually doing meaningful work and having an impact and it's being recognized.”

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