Treat Operational Debt like Tech Debt — Leah Sutton on Elastic’s Distributed Work Playbook

Today’s episode is with Leah Sutton, SVP of Global HR at Elastic. Leah’s been in the HR space for over 20 years, and now leads everything from HR operations to recruiting and employee engagement for Elastic’s fully-distributed employee base, which includes over 2,000 spread across 40 countries and 48 states. 

In today’s conversation, we look closely under the hood of what Leah calls Elastic’s “distributed by design” company DNA. She walks us through her learnings tackling challenges companies now are paying close attention to — including how to interview for leaders that can manage well remotely — and even dives into the nitty-gritty details about payroll and compensation across regions. She also outlines a few of the tactics Elastic has leaned on to smooth over some of the language and cultural barriers that often trip up global leadership teams.

Leah zooms out even further to discuss Elastic’s source code, which she describes as not so much a traditional list of values but more the things that make Elastic, Elastic. Finally, she sketches out her pitch for why companies should talk about operational debt as much as they do technical debt.

Today’s conversation is a must-listen for HR leaders and founders — and for folks on the hunt for a more systematic approach to the new challenges of distributed work.

Learn more about Elastic’s source code here: https://www.elastic.co/about/our-source-code

You can follow Leah on Twitter at @leahesutton

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