TravelPerk VP of People: HR needs to have a ‘People as a product’ mindset

After six years at travel management company TravelPerk, Felicia Williams made the jump from commercial account management to the world of HR.

She’s held six roles in those six years, and the latest switch was to become TravelPerk’s interim VP of People. After a year-long stint, she stepped permanently into the role in April this year.

Speaking about this switch from commercial to HR, Williams tells UNLEASH: “It wasn’t something that I had in mind on my first day joining the business.”

Williams continues: “As I grew in seniority, and went from managing people to managing first-time managers to managing leaders, I sat back and realized that investing in people motivated me most.

“As much as I love spreadsheets, targets, and thinking about commercial metrics, it was really the days that I would spend coaching and developing people in the business that was a passion for me.”

Then the opportunity came along to join the People team – “I told myself ‘you love the business, you love what you’ve learned so far, and now you can really ignite that passion’, which is developing others.

“Getting to do that full time was the icing on the cake.”

The need to have a synergy between HR and the business

Williams’ route to VP of HR is certainly unusual – not only does she not have a traditional HR background, she is an internal hire (something which is becoming less and less common for top HR roles).

Therefore, UNLEASH was keen to find out the benefits that a career path like Williams’ brings to the HR function.

She shares that it is “ideal”; “I am very fortunate that I did that because it gave me a true first-hand experience” of TravelPerk as a business.

However, it isn’t the only route – “there are lots of different ways to get that insight to be able to understand the business you’re serving”.

You could achieve the same aims by “spending time genuinely getting to know different teams, taking an authentic interest in learning when shadowing and being in their meetings”.

The key here is really getting to grips with “what the business cares about”, and then factoring that into the HR strategy.

You never want to have such a strong conviction of something that comes purely from a People lens without making sure it’s aligned with the business direction, needs and priorities,” Williams tells UNLEASH.

“There are a lot of established practices in HR but it’s not about lifting and shifting policies onto our business, because then you’re not truly partnering, listening to their needs, or understanding if you’ve designed something that’s meaningful for them”, she adds.

Instead, the key is having a “People as a product” mindset.

For TravelPerk and Williams this is all about building “something that actually adds value across the business” – this doesn’t mean not being innovative or coming up with creative solutions, but about making sure that HR is truly designing for the business.

Williams shares that when the HR team builds anything “we map it out as if it were a new feature of TravelPerk”.

This means “we do user acceptance testing and co-create with the community to make sure we’re building something that adds value. We learn, test, iterate and then roll out”.

TravelPerk as a great place to work

Williams’ route into HR also gives her unique insights into what makes TravelPerk special as an employer.

She shares that even before joining the People team, it was clear “just how invested we are in the talent we have”.

For instance, last year, 27% of employees were promoted or made internal moves, which shows “there’s a general investment in the development of the people that make up TravelPerk”.

In fact, Williams’ own career path at TravelPerk is concrete proof of this career development commitment.

This focus on internal mobility explains why the employer invokes “first principle thinking” in order “to do things differently”, and really get creative in solving problems and creating value for customers.

Felicia Williams, VP of People, TravelPerk.

“Whether you have a wealth of experience and have seen it before, or if you’re stepping into something challenging for the first time, we encourage you to make sure you’re questioning the problem, understanding the current context, and creating a meaningful solution”, notes Williams.

These two focuses go some way to explain why TravelPerk has been recognized by the likes of LinkedIn and Newsweek as a great place to work.

For Williams, these accolades are “a celebration of those things that we do differently to other companies, and how it shows up across our team”.

Ultimately, “we tend to hear from our employees that TravelPerk is unlike other places they’ve worked before,” and employees see that as a positive, she tells UNLEASH.

TravelPerk on moving from a startup to a scaleup and beyond

What is particularly noteworthy about the LinkedIn recognition for TravelPerk is that it has continued despite the business growing “significantly” over the past decade.

Headquartered in Barcelona, TravelPerk has grown from 70 people in 2018 (when Williams joined) to over 1,300 now across Europe and the US. In fact, the employer recently expanded its American footprint by acquiring AmTrav and integrating its 130 employees into TravelPerk.

In 2023, the travel management company saw 70% year-on-year revenue growth, and gross profit increase more than 90% annual year, with annualized booking value approaching $2 billion.

However, growing at speed and moving from “startup, to scaleup and beyond” comes with HR challenges.

Williams states: “What worked for less than 100 people won’t necessarily work in future,” so “we have to make sure that the business grows with your people”, and that requires intentionality.

This is part of the reason why Williams and her HR team were involved in the acquisition early on – this ensured that “not only do the businesses complement each other, but there’s a cultural alignment as well”.

“It was important for me to get to know their leaders and their leadership team to make sure that we can see alignment in how we approach things,” she adds.

In addition, as TravelPerk grows, a core focus for Williams and her HR team has been “empowering leaders that are going to be at the forefront of this change”.

She explains: “We’re investing in manager development and effective leadership development, because they have a disproportionate impact on the rest of the business.

“If you’re able to give them the right tools, context and guidance it’ll have a trickle-down effect when you’re growing fast.”

On the topic of tools, TravelPerk has a “ecosystem of partners that we work with”.

Two noteworthy examples include HiBob and Personio because they are “great partners in growth”; “they work for where we are today but are also evolving to go with us on our growth journey”.

She is thrilled that these partners are including AI in their tech offerings – this dovetails with TravelPerk’s own in-house AI expertise.

Williams tells UNLEASH: “AI is not something we shy away from” – “Our objective was that as the company was doubling in size, we wouldn’t need to double [the People] team.”

TravelPerk has also seen real benefits from using AI across the whole business. “We’ve been able to double the number of queries our customer care team can handle without needing to double the size of the team,” notes Williams.

She continues: “We’ve done that by automating some of the mundane tasks that they do in the background, which means they can spend more time offering our customers a much better human experience.”

But TravelPerk is also very aware that there must be a human in the loop with technology: “With AI, we’re thinking about how it can power our teams in the back end, but still allow humans to make the right decision in the front end.”

Want to hear more from Felicia Williams and Travelperk about HR tech, ROI and making a successful business case? You can watch the replay of a recent UNLEASH webinar featuring Felicia, as well as HiBob’s Toby Hough, Antler’s Lotta Patrickson and Kyle Lagunas from Aptitude Research.