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Hi, I’m Marina

I’ve led People teams across countries and today I specialise in People Automation, using AI, automation, and practical experiments that turn ideas into impact.

This article is part of my No New Tool Required series, where I share smart, lightweight experiments to free up People team time and generate better insights with the tools we already have.

🔗 Let’s connect on LinkedIn

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💡Why This Matters

People teams love acknowledging birthdays with fun Slack posts and maybe a cute or humorous gif to go with it. It’s exactly these small, human moments in the employee journey that shape how people experience your culture day to day. A birthday shout-out might seem trivial, but together these touchpoints create the lived experience of your organisation.

👏🏻 great… except:

• we do it painstakingly manually, writing every message ourselves (time sink).
• or we lean on the HRIS for a bland automated reminder (no personality, no control).
• or we buy yet another SaaS/Slack bot to reuse data we already have.

🫠 not so great…

The risks:

• You waste time on low-leverage manual work.
• The content feels generic and transactional, with little control over message and tone.
• The HRIS doesn’t let folks opt in or out; it’s everyone or no one.
• There’s no approval flow.

Don’t get me started on paying for a service that uses your data and your tools already (cough paid Birthday Slackbots cough).

The good news is: You don’t need a shiny new tool to fix this. You can start with the systems you already have. I built this with Slack and Google Apps Script (included in every Gmail account!), but you could do something similar with Make, n8n, or even a simplified version with just Slack Workflows.

Here’s what it could look like:

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1KQShowCtWRIPDZ-2httnjh1o6ND8-00A/view?usp=sharing

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But Why Not Just Build An AI Agent?

Because most people don’t actually know what those agents are doing. Starting with an MVP like this makes the flow visible - what happens, when, and why - and keeps you in control. Understand it, and you own it. Own it, and you can improve it.

That’s when it makes sense to tie in AI. First, let’s nail the MVP. Then, we’ll look at 🚀 Ideas on How to Build on This.

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🧭 The Principle: Birthday → People Team Approval → Post to Group

🛠 My Quick Build (Slack App / Google App Script Example)