Workflow Mapping Question Bank

Source: core/clients/madison-reed/work/MR-people-ops-workflow-mapping-question-bank.md Purpose: The interview instrument CMPRSSN uses to map every People ops workflow. Not client-facing; it's a guide for running structured discovery calls with MR operators.

How it's structured

The question bank maps workflows, not job titles. It has three layers:

1. Universal spine — opening questions for every operator (role transition, workflow inventory, boundary probes)
2. Per-workflow modules — targeted probes for each of the 11 named workflows
3. Systemic questions — cross-cutting issues that span multiple workflows

Each operator (Syra, Nickole, Grecia, Shlanda, Amy, etc.) gets routed to specific modules based on what they own.

The 11 workflows

1. New Hire Onboarding (HCB + HQ)

The pipeline: Greenhouse (hire confirmed) to Paylocity (employee record created) to Google Drive (personnel file) to Legion (scheduling) to Wisetail (training enrollment).

Key pain points:

• 9 systems involved, near-zero automation between them
• Heavy manual plan selection and cross-system copy-paste
• August 2026 API expiry is a hard deadline: the Greenhouse-to-Paylocity overnight feed stops working, forcing manual entry of ~25 HCB (Hair Color Bar) hires per month
• HCB onboarding and HQ onboarding are different paths but share systems

2. Recruiting Funnel

• Field GMs (General Managers) on mobile break the Greenhouse flow
• 7-day internal job posting delay before external posting
• Approval chains stall the pipeline
• High-volume hourly hiring doesn't fit Greenhouse well

3. HR Inbox Triage

• ~13,000 emails per year routed to 5 people
• Manual category sorting
• Risk: employee relations (ER) and EEOC (Equal Employment Opportunity Commission) cases need careful routing
• Weekend coverage gap (no one monitors the inbox)
• Agent triage was targeted for end of June 2026

4. Job Change Workflow

• 100+ manual tasks in Paylocity for a single job change
• Simple changes (title update) vs complex changes (department transfer with comp change) need different gates
• Payroll handoff to India happens Sunday PM, so changes must be complete before then

5. Compensation Change

• Merit increases, equity adjustments, off-cycle changes
• Shlanda and Grecia co-own the process
• Compliance touch required on every change

6. Benefits & ACA (Affordable Care Act)

• Day-1 enrollment, qualifying life events, annual open enrollment
• Paylocity, B Swift, and Fringe often disagree on employee data
• ACA/1095-C reporting creates seasonal load spikes

7. Leave Management (FMLA / ADA)

• Leave approval/denial is human-owned (legal sensitivity)
• PulpStream helps with tracking but return-to-work prep is ad hoc
• Multi-state rules (Oregon has different leave requirements than federal, for example)
• The leave agent now handles intake, status tracking, and notifications

8. Audits & Compliance

• Paylocity biweekly audits done with Excel VLOOKUP (VLOOKUPs exist because Paylocity cannot be trusted to maintain its own data integrity)
• Multi-state minimum wage monitoring (now automated by the minimum wage monitor agent)
• State-mandated training tracking spread across 5 systems
• The pay reconciliation agent now handles the biweekly audits

9. L&D (Learning & Development) and LMS

• No unified dashboard for training completion across the organization
• Wisetail has a 72-hour I-9 delay plus 24-hour refresh, forcing manual user adds
• Docebo LMS transition is pending (your scope)
• Nickole currently does manual enrollment

10. AI Ops and Guild

• Role and authority for AI adoption within the People team is undefined
• Team labs initiative paused mid-month
• Nickole is a candidate for an AI-Ops role but has no formal mandate

11. Offboarding

• Manual resignation email templates
• Email-based handoffs between team members
• Final payout sensitivity (California has strict final-pay deadlines)
• No structured checklist like onboarding has

Operator routing

Each team member owns specific workflows. This matters for your embed because you'll be sitting in these people's workflows.

Operator	Primary workflows	Role
Syra	Onboarding (HCB + HQ), job changes, offboarding	Onboarding coordinator (~3 weeks in as of late June)
Nickole	L&D, LMS admin, AI ops	L&D lead, AI-Ops candidate
Grecia	Benefits, leave, compliance, compensation, audits	Compliance lead (carries dual load: compliance + leave admin)
Shlanda	Everything (governance, policy, workflow design, AI transformation)	Director of People & Culture (single-point-of-failure; holds the whole function in her head)
Amy	HRBP field work, ER cases, engagement	HRBP (pulled off ER into workers' comp/LOA)
Shantae	HRBP field work, safety, workers' comp	HRBP (back from leave July 13)
Lindsey	Recruiting, TA pipeline	TA lead
Victoria, Arianna	Recruiting operations	Recruiters
Courtney	Benefits administration	Benefits support

Why this matters for your role

Month 1 is about doing the work and instrumenting it. This question bank tells you what to look for as you sit in each workflow:

• Where does the work actually happen (which systems, in what order)?
• Where does someone download a CSV, reformat it, and upload it somewhere else?
• Where is a human making a judgment call vs. following a rule?
• Where is data entered in one system but not reflected in another?
• Where does the team work around a broken process with shadow tooling (personal Zapier, manual spreadsheets)?

The answers to these questions are what you'll automate in Month 2.