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 Hiii y’all, The Knicks won, the sun is shining and my coffee is ice cold. What else could I ask for?? After last week basically fried me to a crisp, I’m looking forward to a more calm week. Pls send all the good vibes my way and ty for your never ending support! Did I also sage my computer this AM? Yes and I will not be taking questions. A few things that are bringing me joy: I’m traveling, I’m yapping and I’m hosting! See below for deets: 🍽️ Chicago peeps where you atttt? I’m hosting a dinner and I’d love to see you there! Request a spot and let’s have a great time? 🎧 A fresh pod ep in your ears!! What’s a 1:1 like between me and my direct report? Well this episode is just that! Madison is back on the pod and we talk about the things we’re doing for the first time together and get into some Bravo drama. If you’re ever wondering what goes on in our 1:1s this could clue you in. 📺 HR Therapy THIS WEEK!!! Consider it a mid-year check in on all our biggest challenges. We got the data on what CHROs are saying are the biggest challenges and we’re addressing them LIVE. Join us! Now onto today… should HR really be in charge of fixing everything? Absolutely not. But there are things that fall into our scope. Pls see below for more! Sponsored by SixFifty You know what's coming up on July 1st?? 👀 HR'S ROLE Should HR really handle that? Quick confession: I have watched the "it's handled" Olivia Pope montage more times than I'm willing to admit. You know the one!! Something catastrophic happens, the powerful people panic, and then she walks in and says two words that make the whole problem disappear. It’s handled. And every single time I watch it, I think the same thing: oh. that's me. Because here's the dynamic that you (and I) have def lived: something breaks at your company. A manager goes rogue and offers a promotion that was NOT in the works. Two departments start a cold war. Someone says something deeply unhinged (and somewhat problematic) in a Slack channel. A CEO goes rogue during the comms and says things they shouldn’t have. The list goes on and on. And what happens next? Somebody says "loop in HR." We're the call you make when there’s a crisis brewing. We're the company's Olivia Pope. Trust me, there are worse things to be!! But the problem with being the fixer is that everyone brings you their mess, but nobody asks if it was ever yours to clean up. 🔥 So this week, in our ongoing this is fine spiral, I want to actually ask the question out loud: when everyone wants HR to fix it… should we? Spoiler: sometimes yes. A LOT of times, no. Let's get into it!! What ISN’T our job: When writing this I thought maybe I should make a list of all the things that are not my job that I have somehow done throughout my career in HR. ✨ So without further ado ✨ A non-exhaustive, deeply cathartic list of things that are not, in fact, HR's job:
I’m so sorry if I’ve triggered you, but we’ve all been there. And you’re left wondering am I the problem or is everyone around me absolutely unhinged for thinking this is MY JOB? There are things that are genuinely not our job, the biggest among them, doing other people's jobs for them!!!! Communicating to an employee that they're not performing. Being the permanent bearer of bad news for a decision an exec made in a room you weren't in. You and I both know that some, cough A LOT cough, of the stuff that lands on our desk is not a People problem!!! It's a somebody-doesn't-want-to-do-their-job problem wearing a People problem disguise. 🙃 What IS our job: So if it's not "fix everything everyone hands us," then what is our job? What a loaded question!! I could probably dedicate 10 newsletters to all the things that is HR’s job, maybe even a whole book. Should I write a book? 🙂 But for today’s sake here’s a short non-exhaustive list of 4 things that are def our job. I came up with this list by thinking about the things that have the most impact and are constantly brought up! The short list: 🧱 Building the thing so fewer things break in the first place 🧰 Making managers capable, not doing their jobs for them 🗣️ Being the one person in the building willing to tell leadership the truth 🧭 Routing every problem to the human it actually belongs to Here’s what that looks like: 🧱 Build the thing so fewer things break. The most underrated, and honestly under appreciated, HR work happens before the fire. Clear expectations, real escalation paths, decision-making frameworks, managers who actually know what they're allowed to do. When you spend the time to put things in place to avoid the future crisis, it pays off! That to me is our job - to catch situations before they become full blown escalations. Just remember, no one really appreciates it in the moment, but they will when a situation comes up and you can direct them to the policy you have already crafted. 🧰 Equipping manager. Gallup found that managers account for around 70% of the variance in team engagement. SEVENTY. 🤯 That stat lives in my head rent-free. Which means our highest-leverage / highest impact move isn't taking the hard conversation off a manager's plate, it's actually making them capable of having it. And that alone is an incredible feat and honestly someone’s full time job. You have to remember, HR shouldn’t immediately be the fixer when it comes to manager’s problems. We're the person who trains the manager to be the fixer and hands them the fab coat to wear. To me this work falls squarely in the our job bucket. 🗣️ Tell leadership the truth. This is the one that few put in the job description... We are often the only people in the room who can see the whole org AND are positioned to say "this decision is going to blow up in three months." Being the honest broker, protecting the company and the people, even when those two things are in tension, that's the actual job. Not making leadership comfortable. Making them informed. Truthfully, if you don’t like conflict HR might not be the job for you… because saying the hard thing usually results in some friction and you have to be able to resolve that healthily and not burn yourself out in the process. 🧭 Route the fix to the right owner. Half of HR's evolution is just refusing to accept ownership of things that belong to someone else!! And then being clear, kind, and useful while you do it. "I'm not going to manage your report for you, but here's exactly how to run that conversation, and I'll be in the room." That's not abandoning people, it’s empowering them. How is anyone going to learn if we’re always fixing and doing it for them? The throughline: None of these are us doing the fixing. They're us building the conditions, the people, the policies, the frameworks and the clarity so the fix happens by the person it actually belongs to. Soooo… should we fix it? Here's where I've landed, and you can fight me on it (reply pls, I read them I swear!): The question was never "should HR fix things." Of course we fix things!! The question is whether we're letting the whole company outsource its accountability to us and calling it our job. Because that my friend is the trap!! That's the dumpster fire of the week, every week, forevermore. Like groundhogs day of HR. Over and over and over again. And listen, I get it. Being the fixer feels like power. Saying it's handled feels like power. But if you're the only one who can handle it, you don't have power… what you have is a bad foundation on an already shaky house. That will collapse the moment you don’t have the time or energy to handle something. 📣 Boundaries aren't us doing less. They're us being clear about what is and isn’t our role. So this week, do me a favor? Let’s call this homework if we must… The next time something lands on your desk, ask one question before you pick it up: whose fix is this? Sometimes the answer is "mine." But a lot of the time, it's actually "not yours, but you can make sure the right person is involved." Okay but here's the messy part I didn't get to, sometimes the reason things ends up on HR's desk is that the departments around us don't speak the same language. From Finance, Legal, the Eng team, the C-suite, everyone's saying different words for the same problem, and sometimes HR is the translator. Next week I’m getting into exactly that: how HR became the company's interpreter, and how to actually get fluent in the rooms you keep getting dragged into. It's handled.* (kind of. we're working on it.) Sry I’m off to Olivia Pope less! Sponsored by Wellhub Telling your high performers to just be more resilient in the face of layoffs and economic uncertainty isn't a long-term strategy for wellbeing, BTW! 📢 (HUMAN) RESOURCES
*This one is brought to you by one of my amazing brand partners WORK-LIFE BALANCE
SONG OF THE WEEK 🎧 Back and Forth, Kehlani feat Missy Elliot This gave me 90s vibes and I had to share it with y’all. I’m a relatively new Kehlani fan but I have been looooving her most recent album! Not to mention how outspoken she is about things. I deeply appreciate her advocacy and using her platform to speak on the things that matter. I hope you enjoyed this, please let me know what you think and what other topics you'd love for me to cover. I'm allll ears. Reminder: Take care of yourself and know that I support you. | |||||||||||
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