Rethinking HR from Scratch: How One Company Built a Truly Agile People System

A conversation with Stephan Scholten and Cesario Ramos on transparent salaries, self-organized teams, peer-driven assessment, and what it really takes to design an HR function around people rather than processes.

Most organizations claim to put people first. Their HR systems tell a different story. In this episode of the Scrum.org Community Podcast, host Dave West speaks with Stephan Scholten, Director of People and Organization at Visma Roxit and Cesario Ramos, creator of Creating Agile Organizations, about what happens when you actually redesign HR from the ground up with agile principles at its core.

Stephan and Cesario discuss the radical steps Visma Roxit has taken: eliminating team leaders in favor of self-organization, opening up salary structures for collective input, and running peer-driven assessment processes that give employees genuine ownership over how their roles and compensation are defined. They explore the Theory X versus Theory Y tension that surfaces in nearly every organization attempting this kind of change, the slow and deliberate trust-building required before transparency can work, and how the arrival of AI fits into a system already designed around human interdependence and collective performance.

Whether you are an HR professional, an agile coach, or a leader looking for a real-world example of empowerment done seriously, this conversation offers both inspiration and practical starting points.

You can learn more about this story in the whitepaper titled Designing HR for Agile Organizations.