Burnout, Benefits & the Board: West Monroe's Chief People Officer Tanya Moore (LIVE @ Transform 2026)
WATCH: Recorded live at Transform 2026, this episode features a candid sit-down between host Adam Poser and Tanya Moore, Chief People Officer at West Monroe — a business and technology consulting firm known for its differentiated culture, client NPS scores, and the fact that nearly 75% of its employees hold equity in the company. Tanya brings a remarkable depth of experience to the conversation: 20 years at IBM leading career and skills transformation on a global scale, followed by a CPO role at a design and engineering firm, and now three years at West Monroe where she's been systematically modernizing the company's people function from the ground up. She walked into an organization with no succession planning, no workforce planning, and a recruiting function built almost entirely on human effort with minimal automation — and she's been rebuilding it all with speed, intention, and a clear eye on candidate and manager experience. The conversation covers the full arc of the employee journey: what Tanya looked for as a senior-level candidate going through 18 interviews, how West Monroe's half employee-owned model shapes its total rewards philosophy, how the company is tackling burnout with more personalized mental health support, and how AI tools like BrightHire are transforming interview feedback loops without removing the human touch. Tanya also shares her refreshingly optimistic take on AI — likening it to the early days of the internet — and delivers one of the most quotable lines of the conference: "F around and find out." For HR leaders, people ops professionals, and anyone navigating a senior career move, this episode is packed with hard-won wisdom from someone who has sat on both sides of the interview table at the highest levels. Connect with Tanya: https://www.linkedin.com/in/tanyaemoore/
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TANYA E. MOORE
As Chief People Officer, Tanya drives initiatives that empower West Monroe’s employees and foster a high-performing, supportive culture. Tanya partners with leadership to develop the next generation of leaders, ensuring our people are fulfilled and our employee experience remains a key differentiator. Before joining West Monroe in 2023, Tanya was Chief People Officer at M.C. Dean and spent two decades with IBM, where she led award-winning programs that shaped the company’s transformation. She holds an MBA in organizational development from the College of William and Mary. Outside of work, she serves on several advisory boards, including The Conference Board’s CHRO Council, the William and Mary Consulting Board of Directors, and the She-Suite Board of Advisors. She is also a sought-after speaker on topics such as workforce transformation, the evolving role of HR, and leveraging AI to advance people and organizational transformation.
Key Takeaways
1. Senior Candidates Should Run a Due Diligence Process, Not Just an Interview
Tanya's 18-interview process wasn't excessive — it was intelligence gathering. She was evaluating CEO relationship dynamics, board influence, team readiness, and organizational appetite for change. Candidates at any level should approach interviews as a two-way assessment.
2. Know What You're Actually Looking For Before You Start
As Tanya put it: smart, kind, humble people. Work she enjoys. Some fun. The clearer you are about your non-negotiables before you start a job search, the better your decision-making will be when offers come in.
3. Employee Ownership Changes the Employment Relationship
With 74% of West Monroe employees holding equity in the company, the ownership mindset isn't a metaphor — it's structural. This is a genuine differentiator in total rewards and shapes how employees engage with the business and with clients.
4. Benefits Signal Culture, Not Just Compensation
Tanya's view: the specific benefits matter less than what they reveal about a company's values. Organizations that invest in comprehensive, thoughtful benefits are signaling that they see employees as whole people — and that signal is what candidates are actually responding to.
5. COVID Permanently Raised the Floor on Benefits Expectations
The pandemic gave people permission to stop and ask what actually matters. Flexibility, mental health support, and personalized benefits have moved from nice-to-have to expected — and companies that haven't caught up are losing candidates to those that have.
6. Open Roles Are a Hidden Employee Retention Risk
Every unfilled position means someone else on the team is absorbing that work. The longer a role stays open, the more likely you are to lose another employee as a result. Time to fill is a culture and retention metric, not just a talent acquisition metric.
7. AI in Recruiting Should Eliminate Low-Value Steps, Not Human Connection
West Monroe's approach to AI was surgical: identify every step in the recruiting process where technology could add value, and use it there — so recruiters can spend more time on the high- touch, high-judgment work that actually moves candidates. Automated scheduling and AI- assisted interview feedback are the easy wins.
8. Feedback Loops Are the Biggest Bottleneck in Consulting Firm Hiring
Getting busy managers to interview isn't the hard part — it's getting their structured feedback afterward. Tools like BrightHire that record interviews (with consent) and auto-generate notes and scoring against the job description are solving a real, expensive problem.
9. Burnout Needs Programmatic Solutions, Not Just Resources
Pointing employees to an EAP or mental health benefit isn't enough when burnout is systemic. West Monroe is exploring more customized, structured support for employees who are struggling — moving from reactive to proactive people care.
10. AI Is the Internet — Embrace It or Fall Behind
Tanya's optimism about AI isn't naive — it's grounded in historical perspective. Just as nobody predicted what the internet would become, nobody fully knows where AI is going. Her advice: use it, test it, let it make you smarter. "F around and find out."
00:00 – Introduction Adam introduces Tanya Moore, CPO at West Monroe, and sets up a conversation about benefits, candidate experience, and the modern people function.
01:30 – Meet West Monroe & Tanya Tanya describes West Monroe's differentiators — quality, speed to value, client NPS — and traces her career from 20 years at IBM to her current CPO role.
04:00 – Being the Candidate: 18 Interviews Tanya shares what it was like to go through 18 interviews as a senior exec, why she didn't quit, and what she was actually evaluating along the way.
07:00 – What Senior Candidates Should Really Ask The questions Tanya asked that most candidates don't: CEO relationship dynamics, board influence and hands-on vs. hands-off style, team readiness, and what really happens when things go wrong.
10:00 – Modernizing People Ops at West Monroe, walking into an org with no succession planning and no workforce planning, and the systematic approach Tanya took to rebuild people functions from the ground up.
13:00 – Redesigning the Candidate Experience How West Monroe overhauled its recruiting workflows after adopting Greenhouse, dramatically improving time to hire, reducing cost, and elevating both candidate and manager experience.
16:00 – Time to Fill as an Employee Retention Metric Why open roles aren't just a talent problem — they're a burnout and satisfaction risk for the employees left picking up the slack.
18:30 – Employee Ownership as a Total Rewards Differentiator How West Monroe's half employee-owned model and 74% equity participation rate changes how people show up — and how it's positioned as a benefit in the recruiting process.
21:00 – Benefits Beyond the Basics From childcare and dog walking to expanded mental health support, Tanya breaks down what West Monroe offers and why COVID permanently shifted candidate expectations around benefits.
24:00 – Flex Benefits & the Future of Personalization Tanya's vision for benefits that let employees choose what matters to them — gym memberships, yoga, wellness stipends — rather than a one-size-fits-all package.
26:30 – Tackling Burnout Proactively West Monroe's evolving approach to burnout: moving beyond standard mental health appointments toward more customized, programmatic support for employees who need it most.
29:00 – AI in Recruiting: Where It's Actually Working From automated interview scheduling to BrightHire's AI-powered feedback tools, Tanya walks through specific efficiency gains that are giving recruiters more time for high-value human work.
32:00 – Getting Feedback from Busy Hiring Managers The real bottleneck in consulting firm recruiting isn't getting managers to show up — it's getting their feedback afterward. How BrightHire is solving that.
34:30 – An Optimist's Take on AI & the Future of Work Tanya closes with her big-picture view on AI — likening it to the early internet — and her direct advice to anyone still on the fence: "F around and find out."
