One of the model’s chief proponents explains why ‘product thinking’ is gaining traction now – and how other HR leaders can use it to reshape their function.

David Ulrich’s HR operating model – centres of excellence, business partners and shared services – has dominated the field since the 1990s, proving effective for organisations of all shapes and sizes.

But the framework requires some tweaking – and in some instances, a complete rethink –       as operational complexity increases, younger worker cohorts rise through the ranks and AI takes over some tasks.

Amidst this upheaval, HR is being asked to affirm its value creation by demonstrating ROI, not just activity. As a result, some HR leaders are seeking ways to adapt or evolve the Ulrich model to meet today’s conditions.

‘Product thinking’ is one avenue being explored. Some organisations have already adopted the central premise – of treating services like products – in their customer experience departments. 

Now, some CHROs are asking: if we want employee experiences to be seamless, intuitive and value-adding, should HR offerings be designed as products, too?

‘HR as a product’ in practice

As Chief People Officer of the U.S.-headquartered financial technology giant Fidelity National Information Services (FIS), Bob Toohey provides for a workforce of more than 50,000 staff. 

Toohey began experimenting with product thinking in his previous role as Chief Human Resources Officer at insurer Allstate. He joined FIS in 2024 and began using the framework there, too.

“Think about how a business runs. You build something, you sell it and you service it. We should be doing the same thing in HR,” he says.

According to this approach, HR offerings such as feedback surveys or compliance training are products with customers rather than services with queues.

Each product has a defined user group, purpose (usually to meet a customer need or solve a problem) and success measures.

“The idea is to think of what you’re trying to solve for the customer and then work backwards to determine the product you want to give them,” says Toohey.

Importantly, Toohey uses the same basic structure as Ulrich to organise his department and to design, test and deploy products.

“Traditionally, with centres of excellence, you had a compensation group, a training group, a recruiting group and so on,” he says. “I treat those groups like product organisations. They should build products and launch them with a go-to-market strategy.”

The business partners, meanwhile, take on the job of ‘selling’ products to customers. 

“Typically, business partners have been the people who faced the employees,” says Toohey. “Now, they become our sales team.”

From activity to outcomes

Toohey believes the possibilities and pressures of work in 2026 make product thinking exceptionally timely.

As AI develops, many of the functions traditionally performed manually by HR will become automated.

At the same time, majority-Millennial workforces are demanding more from their employers, and the C-suite is looking to balance fairness, ethics and ROI.

All this is ratcheting up the pressure on HR to prove it is still an indispensable function.

“Soon, the standard things that you need to do in HR will be taken care of by technology,” says Toohey. 

“HR will instead be asked: ‘Are you helping your leaders drive your organisation’s growth? Are you enabling the business?’”

“Think about how a business runs. You build something, you sell it and you service it. We should be doing the same thing in HR.” – Bob Toohey, Chief People Officer, Fidelity National Information Services

For HR to remain relevant and value-adding, a fundamental mindset shift may be required – one that ditches volume-based metrics (e.g. requests closed, programs delivered) and re-defines value in terms of adoption, employee satisfaction and business impact.

Toohey uses the example of compliance training at FIS to demonstrate how re-designing an HR offering as a product can enhance value.

Instead of mandating all employees take a standard 20-minute compliance test, Toohey’s department allowed workers to take a three-minute ‘opt-out’ test first.

“If you took the opt-out test and scored full marks, you didn’t need to take the longer test.     

“We arrived at that by thinking about what customers did and didn’t want, instead of just checking the compliance box for HR,” he says.

“We still got the same outcome, but customer satisfaction was enhanced, because the knowledgeable ones could skip the full test.”

Tips to put this model into action  

Toohey offers the following four-point plan to his colleagues considering adopting HR as a product:

• Re-design your systems to enable your products. “For each product, there’s a build phase, a launch phase, an optimise phase and a service phase. Your department’s systems should support that journey.”
• Bring people in. “Leverage the expertise within your organisation. If your company develops real-world products, grab somebody from the product team and have them advise you about what design thinking looks like.”
• Invest in data and analytics. “To illustrate outcomes like satisfaction and engagement, you need good data. Data is the key to demonstrating ROI.”   
• Become a product-thinking evangelist. “You are creating a different paradigm, and so you need to win hearts and minds. You may encounter resistance.”

The time is now

Traditionally, HR departments have adopted a slow and deliberate pace – but Toohey believes a more agile and responsive mindset is needed in this age of disruption.

“Look at training,” he says, by way of example. “It used to be: get the curriculum, write the course and six months later deliver the training. But that doesn’t work any more. Within six months, the training is outdated.”

Product thinking offers a different approach – one that values clarity of purpose above absolute outcomes. In practice, this can mean rolling out a product before it is ‘finished’. 

By thinking of products as ‘works in progress’, HR is better able to keep pace with an ever-evolving landscape. The data and feedback gathered from users of these ‘minimum viable products’ – or MVPs – can improve future iterations. 

For Toohey and his team, it has meant deploying “learning snippets” to employees via enterprise software such as Microsoft Teams rather than developing larger training modules – a move that has been warmly received. 

“Be willing to tell your customers that you’re on the journey together,” says Toohey. “Ask for feedback. Not a lot of workers hear that from their HR departments.”

Toohey concedes that the paradigm shift required for organisations – particularly large or long-established ones – to embrace product thinking in HR can be “confounding” for executives.

But he argues that winning over CEOs and boards is achievable if practical examples can be shared.

“I don’t think we, collectively, as HR have done a good job of demonstrating our value in the past,” he says.  “But product thinking gives us a framework and a language to say: ‘This product helped our customer in this way’ or ‘This product delivered productivity benefits by solving this problem.’”

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