We were not doing any kind of reporting on anything prior to that. Rippling really allowed us to have more time to do more strategic HR work.
How Liquid Death built an HR system that scales
Liquid Death's former VP of People & Culture shares how she went from recruiting out of Gmail to building a scalable people function across 200+ employees in 30 states — and why switching from a PEO to Rippling was the unlock.
When Alice Young joined Liquid Death as VP of People & Culture, the company had 60 employees, one recruiter managing all hiring out of Gmail, and a PEO that was, as Alice puts it, "keeping the lights on." No reporting. No performance management. No onboarding infrastructure. Just the bare essentials.
The directive from day one: prepare for scale.
In this episode, Alice walks through how Liquid Death — now 200+ employees across 30 states and valued at over $1.4 billion — made the decision to ditch their PEO, ran a rigorous vendor evaluation, and built a people function that actually supports the business.
What you'll learn
How to run a real vendor evaluation: must-haves vs. nice-to-haves for HR, managers, and employees — not just the people team
Why switching mid-year is a nightmare — and the W-2, tax, and audit trail problems that linger long after go-live
How to make the business case when your CEO and CFO need more than "it'll be better" — including the cost-savings angle from exiting a per-employee PEO
What a high-functioning HR team of 4–5 looks like: cross-trained, deeply embedded in the business, and able to cover each other during leave
How unlocking reporting in Rippling changed what HR could bring to leadership conversations — and what Alice still wants to build next
See Rippling in action
See how Rippling can help you manage all of your employee data and operations in one place, no matter your business's size.