“People first” sounds great — until it puts the business at risk.
I’ve been hearing the phrase people first more and more lately.
And while the intent is good — invest in people, care about their growth, treat them like humans — the reality is more complicated.
I’m personally a proponent of being business first, people centric.
Here’s why: If the business fails, you don’t have people.
You don't have employees, or customers, or investors, or vendors.
When People leaders don't put the business first, it backfires.
For example, I've seen HR leaders (including earlier career me) push for benefits that were too generous for the size and stage of the business.
Not because they were critical to winning talent.
But because it felt good to be people-first.
The problem?
- Those benefits strained our cash runway.
- They became promises we couldn’t sustain down the line.
- They made future hard decisions even harder.
Short-term generosity that jeopardizes long-term stability hurts the very people you were trying to help.
⚖️ Common Tensions Between Business-First and People-First Thinking
Here are a few examples of where this tension shows up:
→ Severance Packages
People-first mindset says: "Let’s offer generous separation packages to anyone we part ways with — even during performance management exits."
Business-first mindset says: "We have to balance fairness to individuals and fiscal responsibility to everyone still here. Let's do that with calculated severance packages based on level, tenure, and company performance."
→ Paid Holidays and PTO
People-first mindset says: "Let's offer unlimited PTO, company-wide holidays every month, and Summer Fridays!"
Business-first mindset says: "We need a time-off structure that recharges employees while keeping sales pipeline growing and converting, meeting customer SLAs, and performing all other critical business obligations."
→ Paid Leave Programs
People-first mindset says: "Let's offer 6+ months of paid parental leave starting at 1 day of employment!"
Business-first mindset says: "We should support new parents while ensuring the business can operationally and financially absorb long absences and predict the impact on cash flow. Let's benchmark all our paid leave offerings against peer companies."
→ Equity Refreshes
People-first mindset says: "Employees deserve automatic new stock grants every year."
Business-first mindset says: "Equity is a limited resource. It needs to be tied to meaningful impact or milestones so we don't exhaust our pool and have to dilute everyone."
→ Promotions and Title Inflation
People-first mindset says: "Let's promote quickly to show people we value them!"
Business-first mindset says: "We should promote based on business need, skills, and interests — not just feelings. This also lets us model out the average time to promotion by level to plan our budget appropriately."
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👉 Tip: When you're making a tough call where the business and human interests seem to be in opposition, use a series of questions like — Could the business sustain itself if we made this same decision 5, 10, 200x over? How would I feel if this happened to me/my child/my friend at work? — to make sure that you're balancing business and human interests in a way that you'll be proud of.
Final thoughts:
It’s easy to say you're people first, especially if it's just marketing talk with no real policies to back it up. It’s harder — but much more impactful — to be business first, people centric.
It means saying "No" sometimes. But, it's crucial to build a company that can take care of people today and tomorrow.
I'd love to hear: Where do you land on this spectrum?
Hit reply and let’s talk.
Until next time,
Melissa
