Interview with Cecily Motley, Co-Founder of Harriet
Meet Cecily Motley, co-founder of Harriet, the first full-stack AI solution designed to relieve HR burdens. Learn about the inspiring story, challenges, and opportunities behind Harriet in this founder spotlight edition.
Welcome, Cecily Motley! Can you provide an overview of Harriet and its role as a 24/7 AI-powered people ops assistant, and how it aims to transform HR processes to boost productivity within companies?
Hello! Yes, absolutely. Harriet is an AI-powered HR tool which acts as a personal HR assistant for every employee. Harriet links together your knowledge and HR systems and brings them right to where your team are – in slack, GChat and Teams.
Harriet is on hand to handle any HR-related queries employees might have. By gathering information from company documents and integrating it with existing companies’ systems, Harriet can then provide answers to questions like “What’s our maternity leave policy?”, and help to book annual leave, for example.
For employees, this offers instant, confidential support that avoids the need to trawl through masses of company documents. Crucially, the tool also relieves overstretched HR teams from mountains of admin-heavy ‘microrequests’, and enables them to focus on more meaningful, higher-value tasks.
What inspired the creation of Harriet, and what specific challenges in HR administration were you aiming to address with the development of this AI-powered people ops Assistant?
Admin is part and parcel of any role – and a necessary part. But it can also be repetitive, time-consuming, and prevent teams from focusing on higher value tasks. This is something that I experienced first-hand while running my previous business, Motley. I also noticed that, of all the departments drowning in admin, HR was being hit the hardest.
HR teams currently spend 20% of their time on admin-based tasks. This involves everything from answering questions about annual leave allowances, to signposting employees to support services. Dealing with these requests is essential, but takes HR professionals from other important work that cannot be done without them. And it’s not like People teams have time to spare – the knock-on effect of layoffs last year is that HR professionals are even more stretched than ever. The solution is to automate admin.
What’s more, these micro requests have a wider impact on the entire company’s productivity. It’s estimated that employees spend a month a year on work-related tasks that are not part of their core role By making Harriet the go-to contact for employees’ microrequests, we’re freeing up People teams to focus on their people and making the entire company more productive.
As a co-founder, could you briefly discuss your role at Harriet and how your experience contributes to the company’s mission of relieving HR teams from administrative burdens and improving overall productivity?
As a co-founder, I wear many different hats. One day I’ll be focused on the marketing side of the business, the next might be spent meeting with various customers and investors. One of my main responsibilities as a founder (and the one I enjoy the most) is speaking to HR professionals and their teams to understand the biggest challenges they’re facing. I can then work with designers and developers to ensure these insights are shaping our product in a way that meaningfully answers the needs of workforces.
In your current role at Harriet, what strategies or initiatives have you implemented to integrate the AI-powered assistant seamlessly into Slack and ensure it effectively supports HR functions?
Companies use a variety of interconnected systems to facilitate HR processes, and store company documents and data. Many businesses also have different policies for different teams and departments. So it was essential that we built Harriet to speak the languages of different systems, and work seamlessly to deliver the right information to the right people – based on just a short Slack message.
To ensure Harriet’s responses are as accurate and relevant as possible, we also built safeguards into Harriet’s interlocking Large Language Models (LLMs). This ensures that Harriet is working with the right information, and keeps company data safe and secure. When answering employees’ queries, the tool also links users to its source, so that responses can be checked against relevant policy documents, for example, if needed.
How has your varied experience, from Co-Founder at Motley London to gallery management at Louisa Guinness Gallery Limited, shaped your approach in developing and expanding an AI product like Harriet for human resources and management?
My experience has taught me that people are the foundations on which any organization is built. And what department looks after people? HR. People teams are invaluable.
Overseeing HR teams as a business owner, I could also see that the most valuable work People teams do revolves around building positive working relationships and environments. These tasks rely on human skills which cannot be replicated by technology. So when we were building Harriet, I knew that the tool’s focus needed to be on handling repetitive admin-based tasks which could be automated. When admin is taken care of, HR teams can get back to doing work that makes them so vital.
Can you highlight the unique features or capabilities that make Harriet stand out as an AI-powered people ops assistant, and how do these contribute to the platform’s effectiveness?
Harriet starts out by scanning companies’ policies and documents. This builds a picture of what’s currently in place, what’s missing, and where conflicting information exists across different copies. This helps companies tidy up their data and get the most out of any AI tools they choose to use – not just Harriet.
Harriet offers HR teams anonymised insights into what kind of support staff are searching for the most. HR can then use these insights to effectively tailor company policies and benefits offerings to the needs of their teams. Meanwhile, employees can continue to rely on Harriet as a confidential route to support. This is particularly important for users seeking more sensitive information, around bereavement leave or parental policies, for example.
Can you provide insights into recent developments or initiatives at Harriet that contribute to the platform’s growth? Are there specific areas or advancements you plan to focus on in the near future?
Harriet integrates seamlessly with different systems, including BambooHR, HiBob and Zapier, and can retrieve information stored anywhere from Notion to Google Drive. We’re currently working with developers to make Harriet compatible with an even wider array of systems, including many more HRIS and payroll systems, as well as Sharepoint.
Congratulations on Harriet’s recent funding round of US$1.5M! How does the company plan to utilize the funding?
Our recent raise will allow us to extend Harriet’s capabilities and integrations. And as AI continues to advance, we will continue to adapt and grow our offering to develop the smartest, most secure, and most useful tool possible for HR teams.
As Harriet grows, could you discuss the importance of the cap table management system in dealing with relationships among founders, investors, shareholders, and other Stakeholders?
A cap table management system can support everyone’s interests. The visibility they provide helps everyone to know where they stand in terms of equity and company performance. This allows us, our investors, and other stakeholders to make the best and most informed financial decisions possible to support the long-term growth and success of the business.
What advice do you have for founders in the technology and AI space, seeking funding from investors?
AI hype means that there’s a plethora of uses for the tech and opportunities to secure funding. At the same time, there’s an ever-increasing number of companies competing for that investment. Founders therefore need to show investors what sets their offering apart from the rest. It’s also important to prove your product and your company’s agility. AI is a fast-moving space, so show how you’re factoring this pace of change into your plans to grow and sustain your company in the long term.
