re:work

This is a season of shifts and shake-ups. 

This is a season that has moved many of us from the tactical execution of our given roles to a strategic interrogation of how those roles actually serve the organization, and to what degree we’re empowered to fully execute that service.

We are re-thinking the nature of work, re-imagining its footprint, re-plotting its reporting structures. 

We haven’t stopped caring about our P&L sheets, or quality control measures, or process improvement plans, or product releases, but we’re figuring out how to do them all differently.

Whether a we’re a small business or we work for a Fortune 500, many of us are newly-minted entrepreneurs, juggling home, health, and work, seeking purpose in what we do, and discovering a “just-get-it-done” mentality we may not have felt in years.

And so now, right now, is the perfect time to interrupt unhelpful narratives about organizational hierarchies and about which departments matter more than others. 

In a season of disruption, all the parts matter, and everyone gets to re-interpret how they mentally position themselves and others within the organizational hierarchy.

And, I think this has specific bearing right now for HR. 

For too long, in too many companies, HR has had to prove its right to exist, and has had to fight against organizational eye-rolling as the only “non-revenue generating cost center in the company.” 

If you’re lucky enough to work in an HR department for a company and not feel this quiet disdain, count yourself lucky. I’ve spent far too much time with HR professionals from a huge array of industries not to be convinced that the HR field suffers from younger-sibling-syndrome. They’re the little brother or sister that has to be allowed to play with the others and their friends, since there’s nothing else for them to do, but no one is thrilled about it.

It’s forced inclusion, which never feels inclusive, and which never fully leverages the strengths of anyone involved.

So, what do you do? As an HR professional, how do you defend your field, remind your organization of the value you offer, and move your department from condescended to all the way to mission-critical? 

There are some strategic actions you can take to gain ownership of this narrative, and to re-write it in a way that serves you and and every person in the organization.

Claim your brand. 

Don’t just be the stick-to-the-policy people. Cast vision for something broader and more compelling. It’s not just your job to regulate and award sick leave. Tactically, that’s important, for everyone. And everyone appreciates it when they need it.

Don’t stop doing that.

But it’s also essential to zoom up and ask big questions, like why sick leave matters, and what the contribution to the entire workforce is as a result. And, for that matter, why that result matters in light of the broader organizational goals.

If you cannot connect your tactical mission to the organizational vision, you’ll always be asked (implicitly or explicitly) to apologize for your presence.

This goes for every policy and initiative you put into place. If there’s not a clean, clear line to mission and vision, you’re asking a lot when you ask anyone to care. Additionally, don’t create what you don’t care to enforce. A huge part of re-writing the brand narrative around HR is likely going to be a stepping away from a policy-first mentality. Very few people entered the HR field with visions of editing dress code policies, but somehow many of them ended up there. It’s the tyranny of the urgent and accessible. It's understandable.

However, staking your claim as mission-critical to the organization, every day and in every way, is going to require you to quiet the urgent in order to pursue the essential.

What is essential to your company, that you play a role in, and how can you tell that story? How can you play a larger, more strategic role in that story? How can you tell that story even better?

Consider working with a branding agency to help you capture who and why you are, and start shaping your company communications and interactions around strategy, not just tactics. This isn’t an advocation that you lie about what you do. It’s an invitation to explore why you do what you do, to stop doing what doesn’t fit within that why, and to capture the essence of that why in every story you tell within your organization.

It's an issue of why, which is what we build stories around.

Typically, and erroneously, when people think of branding, they think of logos; effective brand strategists think of stories.

For more help on what this could look like, connect with a brand coach and explore how you might begin to claim your own brand as HR. I can’t recommend Brave Little Beast highly enough for this work. You can see a little about their personalized coaching series, Beast School, here. They’ll walk you through compelling curricula that will leave you feeling engaged and empowered in what you do, and in what you can accomplish.

Call-out your tribe. 

It might be productive to ask yourself who (and how) you are in partnership with. Who’s got your back, personally or departmentally, across the organization? Who speaks up for you and your ideas when you’re not in the room?

The fact is, effective leaders are most often the hubs of dynamic relational networks.

Impactful leaders, the ones who create meaningful and lasting change, connect themselves to others. Inviting leaders, the ones who create space that others want to step into, who can cast vision that excites others, connect themselves to others.

Gone, mostly, are the days of the Lone Ranger leader, the “I’ve-got-this-so-step-aside” leaders. Perhaps there’s a time and a place for that, but overwhelmingly we see that collaboration drives better, longer lasting results.

And collaboration demands connection.

So, the question is, are you a hub? Do you create and utilize connectivity? In what ways could you and your HR team create compelling partnerships with other departments? Can you identity their pain points? Can you help address them? Truly, no department is better equipped than HR to become the relational leadership hub of an organization.

Don’t just update the employee handbook; upgrade your department’s reputation as real-time problem-solvers and people-connectors. Don’t allow the only time you connect with the director of ops or the line manager to be when you’re responding to an issue. Connect often, outside of things that are problems on your plate. Ask them about their work. Become an expert question-asker. Figure out what’s a problem on their plate, and then go back and strategize how to solve it together with them.

It feels like HR can have the reputation of swooping in and out, leaving employees dazed and confused - holding an updated policy, maybe, but unclear about why that policy was changed, and how it benefits them. Invest in relationships on the front-end, front-loading good intent and authentic interest, and you’ll reap that reward through buy-in and enrollment when you do roll out a new policy. And, truly, you can be a part of designing the framework for how these relationships get space.

Take the lead on connecting other team members who you think will support each other’s work.

Take the lead on connecting with department leaders, asking questions about their pain points during this season of shift, and exploring how you can help.

Take the lead on connecting with executive leadership, offering strategic advice for creating people-first communications in a time where many are scared, anxious, and confused.

Take the lead on connecting with front-line team members, assuring them of your presence, and offering a safe and stable place to discuss this new season of work-life.

In short, take the lead on connecting. You’ll never, ever regret building trust-filled relationships up and down the organization, and you’ll experience renewed efficacy and excitement as you serve as the relational hub for your company. For more information on what this could look like, feel free to get in touch with me through my website here.

Crunch your numbers. 

You might need some explicit evidence, for others or for yourself, about your value-add (in terms of financial ROI) to the organization. Work on figuring that out. When people say that HR is a “cost-center,” they mean the department does not explicitly generate revenue.

That’s a partial truth that is both unhelpful to HR, and toxic to the organization.

It’s true that most HR departments don’t produce products they sell externally (although they likely could - can you imagine your team putting together an online course on HR best-practices for your industry?), they do provide the scaffolding necessary for every other department to have and do the things they need to have and do to produce sales.

This isn’t trite; it’s true.

A good HR team actively supports the entire body of the organization, providing skeletal support by connecting people and creating culture, bringing lifelines of oxygen by creating mental health, wellness, sick leave policies, and more, and a skin of wrap-around support that holds everything together. There’s real value here, and some creative minds on your team, and maybe across the company, can help you start assigning some numbers to it.

It doesn’t serve anyone to perpetuate the narrative that HR only costs.

It doesn’t cost. Human Resources creates.

So, help your company move away from a deficit-model of HR, and into an asset one by compiling some numbers that feel meaningful. Do you assist in the recruiting effort, preventing your company from hiring another recruiter? What did you make the company by doing that? Do policies you created assist the company in retaining talent? What did you make the company by reducing turnover costs? Are the employees engaged in their work? Are you a part of that? Gallup recently noted a rise in the percentage of self-identified disengaged workers - it’s now 85% of the workforce. Is your disengagement number lower than that? What are you making the company by supporting a better-than-average engaged workforce? Have you worked on diversity and inclusion strategies and seen results? What have you made the company by diversifying thought patterns across the organization, bringing new skills and experiences into it, and creating more innovative impacts as a result?

Crunch, calculate, and quantify. For some help on how to get started on this, you can read this, this, this, this, or one of the many other helpful articles on the ROI of HR.

Curate your culture. 

Right now, culture is king. Everyone is talking about how to create and sustain organizational cultures that welcome, include, and produce. And, there’s no department better equipped than HR to lead this charge. If you’re not seeing yourself and your HR team this way, that’s part of the issue. Your organization at large won’t see you as you don’t see yourself.

Peter Drucker’s famous quote that “Culture eats strategy for breakfast” isn’t wrong. An empowered and empowering culture can make up for myriad other deficits in a company. However, that idea, taken at face value, is only partially true.

In fact, culture is a strategy, to the extent that good ones don’t typically happen by accident.

Talking about culture doesn't create it. We do.

Culture is the sum of all the perceived and real signals that a person believes they need to send and receive in order to belong to a group. We signal belonging all the time, in every group we’re a part of. Ever felt pressure to say something smart around a certain group of people? Signaling. Ever worn a sports jersey while watching a game at a friend’s house? Signaling. Ever complained to one co-worker about another? Signaling. Ever mowed your lawn when you didn’t really want to, simply because others were out doing it, too? Signaling.

The way we worship, play, speak, work - all of these are rife with signals about who we are and why we belong there. Employees in your company are engaged in the same system, and it behooves you to work to understand what signals they believe they need to be sending, and why those signal seem to matter organizationally. This is why simply buying a pool table for the employee lounge doesn’t automatically create an awesome work culture. If employees don’t believe that having fun is valued, or that playful connection with colleagues is an organizational value, or if they believe that their busyness signals their value, they won’t even use the pool table, much less benefit from it.

The thing isn’t what matters; the value behind the thing does.

What values are you championing at your organization, and how do employees send and receive signals that align with those values? This is strategy. You have to put the thought-leadership and the relational effort into figuring this out. What gets created by that strategy is culture.

Toxic cultures develop by default. Healthy cultures develop by design.

That’s not meant to be overly pessimistic about human nature. It seems to be true, though, that when people aren’t guided by a vision and value-system that includes and empowers them, the result is the anemia and apathy of people who no longer believe in what they are doing. And, when they signal those feelings to one another, toxic culture gets created.

So, take the reins and guide your teams into better culture by actively curating culture. You can expand into this in any number of ways. I work with teams to help them think through where they are and how to move forward, often focusing specifically on cultures of inclusion and equity. SightShift is a coaching and development firm that takes leaders on personal growth journeys to support them in leading their teams into more holistic and productive cultures. Tenfold is a brand and space design firm that works tell the story of your company’s history, mission, and vision in the spaces where people do that work. A boutique advertising firm like Fechtor Advertising can reinvigorate your external storytelling and shift the way employees think and feel about the company from the outside in.

And on and on and on.

Culture doesn’t eat strategy for breakfast. Strategy is breakfast, and culture’s the energy you get for the rest of the day from it.

Chase equity. 

There is a tremendous amount of momentum around the diversity and inclusion conversation in corporate America right now, but not a lot of actual progress in correcting substantial disparities and inequities. The companies of the future will be a part of correcting this, not only in terms of diversifying their recruiting channels, but also in terms of more fully investing themselves in community-oriented justice.

It simply has to happen, and I believe the market will start to correct for and award this.

For far too long companies have tried hiring “more diverse” people from a “broken pipeline,” while bringing almost none (at least across the corporate landscape) of their massive resources to bear on the actual problems. These are tough, historically-situated issues, like housing inequity created by legislated segregation and underhanded redlining. They won’t get fixed overnight, but they can be corrected.

Disparities in educative opportunities, health care access, fresh food, and more are all related to zip code. Those 5 digits are more predictive of your life outcomes than any other number assigned to you. That’s a tragic injustice, and one that was created on purpose. We can fix it. And the companies of the future will try.

Your HR department can lead that charge. Your team can be the group leading the way into the future of ethical corporate institutions. What does that look like right now? You’ll have to figure that out given some of your specifics, but it certainly looks like doing something. Engage with equity leaders in your community. Learn about the issues your city is facing as it relates to inequities and marginalized populations. Explore the public education system in your town, and determine who’s not getting the scaffolding they need to succeed. Work with food banks, shelters, nonprofits and social enterprises to support their work, rather than trying to reinvent your own wheel.

Engage the employees of your company in this work, casting vision to meet community needs through the corporate efforts of the team.

Then, take some of this learning and melt it into company policies and procedures. For example, don’t just tweak a recruiting policy to hire more “diverse” people by attending a hiring fair at an HBCU or by instituting sign language friendly interviews. Do that, but also address some of the break-downs of opportunity for people outside of your organization, long before they need to interact with you.

A great place to start would be the public school leaders in your city, YWCA leadership if there’s a local chapter, your city’s department of neighborhoods, and not-for-profits that are engaged in the work of creating opportunity for all.

Don’t bemoan the broken pipeline. Fix it.

This is the long-play, and the one most connected to equity. Trying to fix the symptoms of inequality within the walls of your company is good; working to strategically correct systemic inequities in your city is better.

Chase better.

Conclusion

Every season of shifting is an opportunity for learning and re-positioning ourselves. Take control of your HR narrative in this time, and you'll be reaping the benefits for long after.

I'd love to keep thinking this through with you. Find me here.