Let me give you a “hypothetical” example that has definitely never happened in real life. It’ll make your blood run cold.

This wasn’t payroll. It was a cold case. Policies contradicted payroll data. Contracts were locked behind sharing permissions from people who’d left the company. Folder names were gibberish. People paid hourly were getting flat rates with no timecards to confirm overtime. A million Scribe docs with no annotations. Hours of 20-minute videos with no transcripts.

People Ops doesn’t have to be in-house. It doesn’t have to be full time. It doesn’t even have to “feel” like HR. But it does have to be done right.