Building a performance management system in five minutes with Claude

Summary Vidyard's performance system was broken. Managers placed employees in nine-box grids with no clear expectations, no career framework, and no two-way conversation. Decisions on compensation and promotions happened in silos, riddled with bias. Employees felt the process was opaque and unfair — yet Sarika Lamont, Vidyard's Chief People Officer, had no technology, no team bandwidth, and a business contracting through a SaaS downturn. Three and a half years later, she's rebuilt the entire system — career frameworks, competencies, performance reviews, and now an AI-powered interactive tool that took five minutes to prototype. What once required two quarters and a team of specialists now happens in a week. In this episode, Sarika walks through how she dismantled a one-sided performance process, designed for scale during contraction, and used Claude to compress months of work into days — all while solving for what employees and managers actually need, not what HR traditionally builds. Timestamps 00:01 How Sarika fell into HR from management consulting at a federal contracting startup 05:59 The broken nine-box system she inherited: no expectations, no framework, pure manager bias 11:28 Why cross-functional partnerships with finance and business leaders matter more than HR credentials 17:22 Building a career framework from scratch: IC paths, management tracks, and leveling for scale 23:35 The SaaS downturn, AI disruption, and why the system went stagnant 28:19 Using Claude to redesign competencies in days instead of quarters 33:55 What replaces the time saved: ongoing enablement, adoption, and human-to-human coaching 38:12 Where to start if you're overwhelmed: validate the real problem first, then ask AI where to begin Takeaways Build your performance system from the business problem backward — not from what HR traditionally designs — or you'll solve for process instead of outcomes. Career frameworks need differentiation level-to-level so employees see the gap between "intermediate" and "senior" in concrete, actionable terms, not themes. AI compresses iteration cycles from quarters to days, but the time saved goes to enablement and adoption — the work HR has always neglected because building took too long. Start by validating what employees and managers actually need through exit data, engagement surveys, and one-on-ones — then use AI as a thought partner to fill the gaps you can't solve manually. Performance transparency isn't about revealing ratings — it's about documenting expectations, competencies, and decision-making frameworks so people understand how to grow. Connect with the Guest LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/sarikal/ Learn more about Vidyard: https://www.vidyard.com/ Sponsor This episode is brought to you by Kinfolk, the AI service desk built for HR. See more at kinfolkhq.com