Week 9: Turn days of work into seconds with Automations

/tab

Let me take you inside my brain for a minute.

There’s a space I keep coming back to, a messy, fascinating middle ground between these evolving pillars:

• GenAI – ChatGPT, Claude, etc.

• Workflows – Make.com, Zapier, n8n.

• Agents – Self-built, open source, purchased, Manus-style etc.

• Custom internal tools – Stuff I’m making with Lovable.dev, Cursor, etc

• Ground-up AI products – Like HarrietHR, Paulsjob, Incompass Labs.

What’s wild is how differently AI maturity is showing up across People teams.

I’ve met junior HR folks running rings around senior execs, and the other way around. That’s not new in our field, but the gap this time? It’s enormous.

This isn’t like when engagement surveys became a thing. You didn’t need to rethink your team or skills, you just bought Peakon and rolled it out.

Now?

We’re retraining from the ground up.
We’re rebuilding what HR even is or does.
Teams, skills, roles, org design, everything is in flux.

And it’s not just HR.
AI is cutting across entire orgs, reshaping how we work, for everyone.

That means the People team has to do what it does best:
Navigate change. Create clarity. Lead transformation.

But here’s the kicker: the pace of this tech shift is faster than anything we’ve seen and we’re still only in v1.0 of what’s possible.

Which brings me back to the space between.

Building maturity in this new world means learning by doing:
Start with the basics.
Understand the tech, the tools, the workflows.
Ask better questions about what it all means — for your team, your org, your people.

You have to know what to use, when to use it, and how it impacts the humans on the other side.

I genuinely believe HR leaders, when properly tooled up, are about to become more critical than ever.
But we can’t just buy shiny software and expect magic.
We’ve got to build from the ground up.

That’s why I’m writing this newsletter ❤️

I’m still learning, too, this is my journey as much as yours, into the space between. ⚡️

So, this week, I’m going to focus on:

• A deep dive into an automation - how can we take a process which would take several days a year, and turn it into a fully automated process?

• Sharing my one-stop shop policy creation hub

• Sharing a little side project I took from idea → release in 2 hours. Now with 94 signups 👀

• Walking through the news of the week

Table of Contents

• Who Am I?

  • PeoplexAI updates this week:

• 🎯 Deep Dive of the Week

  • The Challenge:

  • The Setup:

  • Step 1: Automate sending out your survey

  • Step 2: Summarising & Sending the Feedback

  • Now You’ve Got an Always-On Feedback Loop 🔥

  • What’s Next?

  • 🤯 PS - I created all of the above in under (sever …

  • 💡 Quick Win of the Week

• 🧠 Product Updates and Useful Things

• 📰 News That Matters for HR

• 👋 Let's Connect!

Who Am I?

For new subscribers, I’m Matt Bradburn. I was VP People at Peakon, built and sold the DBR community to Talentful, built and sold People Collective to Scede and now combing People Ops expertise with AI to solve my clients challenges.

PeoplexAI updates this week:

Website - updates to come next week - I had a few folks ask for all the resources in one place, which makes sense with the 30+ notion pages I have now, currently using Supabase and Make.com to get these from Notion automatically onto my site 😅

Course - Last week of cohort one, 12 folks signed up for April so far and 3 for May for the full cohorts 🥳 My 4 week, highly practical AI powered HR course, now with a consistent $100 discount for subscribers 🫶

USE THIS LINK: https://maven.com/peoplexrobots/ai-powered-people-ops?promoCode=Friends 

Products - www.joinfraction.com - more on this later…

Consulting and Training - Really excited by a client I’m about to sign with, and 2 more folks looking v positive, if you would like to discuss, then get in touch here: https://peoplexai.co/ 

Community - Over 80 people joined, going to start planning regular building sessions and engaging more… Also going to add link to website.

🎯 Deep Dive of the Week

One of the most impactful things you can do for your People team isn’t flashy, it’s just collecting data and turning it into useful actions for your business.

Let’s say we see a decrease in the speed people are becoming productive.

I want to ensure people in my team get up to speed fast - because improving ramp times increases impact for the whole org, leading to better profit and engagement.

But how?

The Challenge:

Collecting and acting on onboarding feedback is crucial for improving the new hire experience and creating velocity. However, manually tracking 90-day milestones, sending surveys, and summarising responses can be time-consuming and prone to human error, aka, we forget…

We need a system that:​

• Automatically sends surveys to new hires at the 90-day mark.

• Summarises feedback into actionable insights.

• Notifies relevant stakeholders promptly.​

By leveraging Make.com (IT’S FREEEE) and ChatGPT, I created an automated workflow that addresses these needs perfectly.

I am going to guide you through how to make this, with two scenarios.

Don’t worry - I was a complete beginner on make.com before I did this - so you can get up to speed faster than I did with my full guide.

It took me a couple hours, with the guide? It should take you 30-45 mins to automate WEEKS of work over a year 🚀 

Here’s the system I built:

The Setup:

Here's a quick checklist:

Step 1: Automate sending out your survey

Scenario 1: Sending the 90-Day Survey

Objective: Automatically send a personalised onboarding survey to new hires after 90 days.​

Tools Used:

• Google Sheets: Stores new hire information.

• Make.com: Automates the workflow.

• Email Module (e.g., Gmail): Sends the survey email.​

Step-by-Step Guide:

Set Up the Trigger:

• Use the "Scheduler" module in Make.com to run the scenario every 4 weeks.

  

• This is a simple button which let’s you decide how often to run it.

Retrieve New Hires:

• Add the "Google Sheets > Search Rows" module.

• Configure it to search for rows where the Probation Ends column is Yes and there has not been a Survey sent marked off in the Survey Sent column

  

Iterate Through New Hires:

• Insert the "Iterator" module to process each new hire individually.​ This makes sure it finds each individual email for the right person!

Send the Survey Email:

• Add the "Gmail > Send an Email" module.

• Personalise the email using data from the Google Sheet (e.g., name, role).

• Include the survey link.​

Subject: How's your first 90 days been?

Hi {{Name}},

You’re now three months in 🎉 We’d love your feedback to help improve the onboarding experience for others.

→ Here’s your quick survey: [survey link]

It takes 3 mins, and we are actively looking to work on developing the onboarding process so your feedback is super helpful. Thank you!

– The People Team

Then you’re done! You now have a survey which gets sent out to everyone…

This is a lightweight way to not forget to ask. Managers get busy, and People teams often rely on someone remembering to check in. This way, the system always nudges at the right time.

Step 2: Summarising & Sending the Feedback

This is where the AI magic kicks in.

Instead of reviewing every survey manually, we ask ChatGPT to write a 3–5 sentence summary for each response. This gets logged and sent to HR, making it immediately usable.

Objective: Process completed surveys, summarize feedback using ChatGPT, and notify the People team.​

Tools Used:

• Google Sheets: Stores survey responses.

• Make.com: Automates the workflow.

• ChatGPT: Summarizes feedback.

• Email Module (e.g., Gmail): Sends the summary email.​

Step-by-Step Guide:

Set Up the Trigger:

• Use the "Google Sheets > Watch Rows" module to monitor the survey responses sheet for new entries.​

  

Summarise Feedback with ChatGPT:

• Add the "OpenAI > Create a Completion" module.

  

• Craft a prompt that instructs ChatGPT to create a concise summary based on the survey responses.​

• 💡 Pro tip: You can personalise or extend this prompt based on your company’s language or what you want to extract.

You are summarising a new hire’s 90-day experience for the People team.

Create a short, professional summary (3–5 sentences) that includes:
- How onboarding went overall
- Anything that helped or slowed them down
- How they felt supported by their manager and team
- Any standout feedback or suggestions

Here’s the feedback:

- Name: {{10.`1`}}
- Team: {{10.`2`}}
- Role: {{10.`3`}}
- Manager: {{10.`4`}}
- What helped them get up to speed: {{10.`7`}}
- What slowed them down: {{10.`8`}}
- Manager shoutout: {{10.`9`}}
- Manager/team improvement: {{10.`11`}}
- Tooling or access feedback: {{10.`13`}}
- General improvement: {{10.`15`}}
- What went well: {{10.`16`}}
- Overall Rating: {{10.`5`}}
- Final thoughts: {{10.`18`}}

Google Sheets > Update Row

Write the ChatGPT-generated summary back into the original survey row.

• Use the Row ID from the Watch module

• Map the summary output to a new column called something like AI Summary

Now your data is enriched and usable.

Search for your info: Google Sheets > Search Rows

• Here, we’re linking the feedback back to the original “New Joiner” row, usually via an email or ID match.

  • Select your “New Joiners” sheet

  • Search for the email address from the survey row

  • This sets you up to update their record in a later step

Add your Iterator

• If your search found multiple matches (e.g., same email used more than once), this breaks them into individual records so you can handle them one at a time.

  • Connect it to the output of the Search module

  • No config needed beyond that — it auto-iterates through each row returned

Router

Now we fork the flow.

🛣️ Path 1: Update the “New Joiner” sheet to mark that feedback has been reviewed
🛣️ Path 2: Collect summaries into a digest and email it to HR

• Add a Router module

• Drag out two branches

• Label each path clearly: "Update Sheet" and "Email HR"

Path 1 – Update Joiner Sheet

Google Sheets > Update Row

Mark that feedback has been reviewed for that joiner.

• Select the “New Joiners” sheet

• Match by Row ID from the Iterator

• Update a column like “Feedback Reviewed” to Yes

This is great for audit trails or future automation.

Path 2 – Email the People Team

Tools > Text Aggregator

Let’s say five people submit feedback today. You don’t want five emails — you want one digest.

That’s what this module does: it bundles all summaries into a single block of text.

• Set the separator to --- or something that fits your tone

• Feed it all the AI summaries from this run

• Output will be a clean digest

Email > Send Email

Now we send that digest to your HRBP, Head of People, or a shared inbox.

• Set recipient email (static or dynamic)

• Subject: Onboarding Digest – {{Current Date}}

• Body:

Here’s this months onboarding feedback digest:

{{Aggregated Text}}

To view individual responses, check the “Feedback” Google Sheet.

Was this easy?

No… but after using Chatgpt to help me I got there in a couple of hours. The above guide should help you achieve it in minutes!

Now You’ve Got an Always-On Feedback Loop 🔥

This combo of AI + automation means your People team:

• Never forgets to collect onboarding feedback

• Gets smart summaries, not just raw data

• Can track and trend what’s working and what’s not

You’re turning something most teams do once a quarter into a daily habit — without lifting a finger.

What’s Next?

You could easily extend this flow by:

• Sending summaries to hiring managers too

• Tagging each response with themes (via GPT)

• Auto-generating tickets for improvement ideas

• Creating dashboards by team or cohort

🤯 PS - I created all of the above in under (several) hours….

I want to help as many folks in the space build their skills as much as possible over the next year, so if you want to 10x your skills, with 4 hour long live practical sessions and 4 30 minute videos going far deeper than my newsletter, this is for you!

You can find the detailed syllabus below, sign up today as spaces limited to 20 people…

💡 Quick Win of the Week

My one-stop-shop for building modern AI policies with a checklist to follow for HR.

Whether you're in the UK 🇬🇧, US 🇺🇸, or EU 🇪🇺 (😭), this Notion resource includes:

✅ A practical, detailed checklist for implementing AI in HR
✅ Three full internal AI use policies (UK, US, EU) in plain English
✅ A side-by-side comparison so you can see what changes country by country
✅ Designed to be copy/pasted straight into your Notion or policy wiki

It’s designed to help you balance experimentation with sensible guardrails.

Because we want to encourage learning and efficiency, not risky shadow AI setups.

📎 HERE’S THE LINK: https://peopleleaders.notion.site/One-stop-shop-AI-policy-creation-1ca1569da3448053a10bf6bccc4c0016?pvs=4 

🧠 Product Updates and Useful Things

Joinfraction - actually just launched it to the world - 94 signups… 🚀

Premise:

1. Fractional folks want to do projects, not BD

2. Companies want to find vetted fractional folks with a great track record

Joinfraction.com will be the place for them to connect…

We vet, show their strengths and you hire. Well, thats the plan…

Next up - building profiles and speaking to VC platform and founders about their needs…

📰 News That Matters for HR

I’m actually just posting a couple things I find interesting this week, as none of you click my news articles 🤪

👋 Let's Connect!

Finding this valuable? There's more where this came from!

✨ Share this newsletter with your HR network

🔗 Connect with me on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mattbradburn/ 

💌 Have questions? Just hit reply!

Remember: AI in HR doesn't have to be complicated. Let's figure it out together, one practical step at a time.