I Walk the Line

HR - A Day in the Life

Anyone who works in human resources at some point has been approached with the question of, "What's it like to work in HR?" For me, and the sake of conversation if I did not have 3 days to commit to my answer, I would typically give some canned response like this:

People are the only unpredictable variable in business, so you get something new every day. It keeps you on your toes and the variety of what you get to deal with keeps the job interesting.

Human beings can be incredibly unpredictable, but we are also creatures of habit. In recruiting, or talent acquisition as we call it these days, we have a saying. "The best predictor of future behavior is past behavior." While people certainly have the capacity for change, we are taught to create Behaviorally Anchored Rating Scales (or BARS) for our interview questions which score responses across a spectrum. The questions we design are intended to probe into past behaviors in order to determine how a candidate has previously handled some challenge in their work history to shine a light on how they might respond to a task within our organization. We then record their answers using the STAR method.

What was the:

S ituation you were faced with and the

T ask at hand. What

A ction did you take and

R esult - how did that turn out for you

Business Meets Psychology

The best predictor of future behavior is past behavior. I hold my Master of Human Resources and Industrial Relations (MHRIR). That's a mouthful. When I got into graduate school at the University of Illinois many of my classmates who had also done their undergraduate studies elsewhere had either a business degree like me or several years of experience in HR, but the feeder program at Illinois for that particular Master's degree was their school of industrial psychology, not their business college. At the time I found that really interesting. While I was getting accounting, marketing, and business law hammered into my brain the person sitting next to me had been studying Freud. When you break it down that's a good lens in which to view HR. It's business principles meet human motivation. How can we harness these sometimes unpredictable creatures to generate wealth?

I think it's important to remember the roots of how human resources became a function. There's an inverse relationship between the rise of HR and the decline of unions in this country. As the human resources function emerged the need for unionization waned as that system was designed to advocate for the masses collectively so they would have more reasonable working conditions and a bigger slice of the pie they were baking. Human resources departments largely usurped the role of the union.

A lot of professionals I know in HR suffer from what I like to call Martyr Syndrome. They engage in a lot of self-righteous thinking about how they are sacrificing themselves for the greater good by advocating for employees. I have been guilty of it. If you spend enough time prioritizing the needs of others before your own, you can start to believe this myth. There are a lot of HR people out there who live in a black and white world when it comes to their decision making like two sides of a coin. I think the perception out there is all human resources practitioners fall into this bucket, and in my experience most do. What do you do in a situation that has never come up which has no clear black and white policy to reference? Write a new one?

Then there are those of us comfortable living inside the grey area. At some point in your HR career, you get asked to go there. Some are able to come to terms with playing in that space, but many never do. I had a mentor tell me early on in my career that HR people have to be beyond reproach. We are the model for the organization all others are measured against, or corporate cops policing the behavior of the herd. I didn't believe that then, and most certainly do not now. HR folk are humans just like every other person inside of a company. We get faced with compromising decisions on a daily basis. We make mistakes. Tell me if this sounds familiar?

The Reality

· If you have worked in employee relations long enough you have been asked to enforce a policy you did not believe in. You have been asked by another manager to exit an employee on some policy you knew was not consistently enforced for top performers or someone that the manager was friendly with.

· If you have worked in benefits or total rewards you have seen a massive health insurance increase and had to pass through a disproportionately high amount to employees that kept you up at night and you had to put a smile on your face while spinning positive messaging.

· If you have spent a lot of time in recruiting you have submitted a rockstar candidate you knew checked every box and was a slam dunk hire. When the manager did not like them for some vague reason you had nagging suspicions about some unethical reason behind their decision. If you work in high volume recruiting that may be a weekly occurrence.

· You have likely cringed as some senior leader routinely espoused their religious or political beliefs and alienated a lot of staff even after trying to talk to them about how they were approaching this topic in an open forum.

· Perhaps you got called a democrat while advocating for your workforce on some subject. I have been there more than once.

· If you led an HR function during the start of the pandemic you had to be the tip of the spear for some very ugly business decisions during lockdown, which gave way to being under a microscope for understaffing during the great resignation, and then you saw a lot of your colleagues become expendable in the recessionary environment we are in today. Recruiters, trainers, HR generalists, or other cost center roles are often viewed as luxuries and are the first to go in cost cutting season when pressure is on to protect the bottom line.

What is it like to build your career in human resources? It's not for the meek. Every single HR person walking has that line they are not willing to cross when asked. You have the black and white crowd, and those capable of working inside the grey, but somewhere you either have already or eventually will be forced to draw that line in the sand you absolutely will not cross for your employer. It is that balance we strike between doing what we think is right vs. remembering who cuts your check. For those of us in the grey zone, it is that point at which we are asked to leave our grey. It may not be a single decision, but rather, an aggregation of them adding up like death by a million paper cuts. Those dilemmas can be like nibbles at your conscience you take personally until eventually you start to feel like your martyr days are behind you. Your moral compass may need to be recalibrated by choosing to leave. For some of you your line was already crossed and you are already looking for that next gig.

You can also try taking a stand. How that shakes out will depend on the size of the issue for your employer or leader. Burnout in the HR profession is real right now. I read an article recently that said around 2/3 of people seeking a new HR position are interested in exploring roles outside of the field which is down from nearly 70% in 2022.

Where is your line? If this content resonated with you reach out through my website to discuss how I can help you navigate your career or subscribe to my newsletter.