Making time to invest in ourselves

The Head of Customer Service of London Underground once told me about the nightmare of delays at rush hour. Each tube train carries around a thousand passengers and run every two to three minutes. So, even a slight delay means that, very quickly, you are looking at a backlog of thousands of unhappy passengers. I’ve always felt that there are parallels with trying to take time out of our HR day job to invest in ourselves!

Front-line HR roles often feature endless, back-to-back, operational meetings and numerous daily requests for help from managers or employees. If we are ‘selfish’ enough to carve out any ‘me-time’, to network or enhance our skills, then the backlog we face on returning to the day job will often dissuade us from even thinking about doing it. But there are some real downsides to only putting our energies and talents into the stuff that’s getting thrown at us every day.

We lose our ‘strategic muscles’

Whilst being able to juggle numerous demands and responding quickly to the issues of the day is of course valuable, if that’s all we’re doing, we’ll start to lose our ability to think strategically. The HRDs amongst us will often worry about how our teams are insufficiently ‘future-focused’. But what are we doing to create the space for them to exercise and build those strategic muscles? As with any activity, we need to practice if we’re to be any good at it. We can’t keep our teams continually working on their ‘reaction shots’ and then expect them to be brilliant at thinking strategically at our annual HR conference.

I would often get back to my desk after back-to-back meetings all day and think, ‘Now I need to have some BIG thoughts about the future’. But would end up choosing to go home and eat chocolate in front of the TV instead. We need to create not just the space for creative and strategic thinking, but to encourage it at a time when we have the mental energy too. We can help to build these strategic, creative or future-focused muscles by:

• Considering what we might actually stop doing. What are the activities that are not really adding value or could just as easily be done by line managers instead?
• Creating space at the start of each of our team meetings to consider some fresh way of thinking about HR or discussing how we might begin to address a longer-term challenge.
• Holding sessions with our team where we review what we have learned in the past month and what we could have done differently. Then nominating someone within the team to bring back a range of different approaches to the next meeting.

Of course, it’s always preferable to have someone else to blame for a lack of investment in ourselves. ‘I would love to be more strategic, but there’s just no time.’ And it might be true that we don’t have the time (or budget) to go on lengthy training programmes. But there are so many ways for us to invest in ourselves – without incurring lots of cost – or having the face the backlog on our return.

Make it bitesize

Arguably, going on a long training programme is the least effective way of equipping us with the skills and mindsets we’ll need in HR. Aside from the expense, we’ll forget around 75% of what we’ve learned within a week – not because we’re stupid, but because that’s just how the human brain works. If we’re not using it immediately, we’ll filter out the stuff that’s not useful. That’s one of the key reasons that bite-size or micro-learning is so popular. We can all find five minutes to watch a video or read an article. And if we do this regularly, we’ll develop a habit of learning that will build that strategic muscle.

Make it social

Many of us learn best through social interaction. Finding a few colleagues (either within or outside of your organisation) who are interested in learning together can be a really effective – and more enjoyable way of building your expertise. HR teams are setting up peer-to-peer learning sessions regularly for their managers and leaders. But what about doing it for ourselves? Choose a topic and simply ask your colleagues to come with their ideas and maybe one piece of external insight – to help the discussion. Again, keep it short, but make it frequent.

Make it happen

I sometimes wonder whether our disinclination to invest in ourselves is actually nothing to do with lack of time or expense and is more to do with a sense that it’s an indulgence that we don’t deserve. All of the highly influential leaders and managers I have worked with over the years were really comfortable with making time to develop themselves. Senior execs who always carved out time to go that networking lunch or who were comfortable delegating so they could attend that development programme. They seemed to have no problem with either creating the time or demanding the budget to invest in their own development. Because they believed they were worth it, and they knew that they would be able to contribute even greater value if they were curious and could bring outside intelligence back into the organisation. No-one is going to care about our development – or our career – as much as we should. Let’s have the confidence to make it happen. Let’s believe we are important enough to deserve it.

At Disruptive HR, we understand that every HR professional’s journey is unique. That’s why we offer a range of training options designed to support your growth. Ready to take the next step? Explore what we offer.