The Short Pour - Visible HR

[00:00:00] Hey, Whinos! Welcome to The Short Pour. Alright, today I want to talk to you guys about something that's driving me crazy. I love HR Reddit threads and I am constantly on there checking them out, trying to see what's up. Julie and I are always using it to source new topics to talk to you about. But there's something that's really, really been bothering me lately and it's how many employees are out there that

[00:00:27] don't actually know what HR does or they think that we're only showing up when something bad happens. So if HR walks in, everybody else scatters like ants in a picnic. So I want to talk to you, Julie and I want to talk to you all today about how to make yourself more visible, how to make yourself more

[00:00:53] present, why it's important and some of the benefits. Yeah, it's not a good thing if employees don't know who you are. Like if they couldn't actually pick an HR person out of a lineup, that's not a good thing. Okay, we are supposed to be human resources, which I know some of us are introverts

[00:01:17] and we like to hide out in our offices, but we are supposed to be there for our employees. So we want them to feel comfortable coming to us. And that can be really difficult for people if they don't even know what we look like. All right. Why are we talking about this? Why do you want to be present? Why do you want people to know who you are? First and foremost, it builds trust. I think that's where I

[00:01:42] would want to start. It builds trust. If they see you, if they know that you are part of the team, if they know that you have their back, if you're just showing up for the little things, you're going to show up for the big things. The other thing is that it can actually, if you are there, if you're present, if you're actively involved, you can actually discover those things that are going to,

[00:02:09] that may seem little right now, but end up blowing up big and maybe becoming legal issues. So those are a couple of the whys I think this is important. Julie, you have any reasons that you might want to share? Well, I think trust is the biggest one, of course, because you want to, and we'll talk about this, but one of the things that we're going to advise is that you should be proactive. So you should get to know people before there's an issue. We always say that about getting

[00:02:36] to know your managers and your leaders before there's an issue. You should get to know your employees before there's an issue. But again, there are so many people who for very valid reasons have a bad view of HR because they have had bad experiences. They worked at other companies where HR was 100% for the company and not for employees at all. And HR has changed a lot, but in some companies,

[00:03:04] it hasn't. And so you're fighting against that. And so you really have to make an effort to combat whatever these employees prior experiences with HR are so that you can start to change the way they view it. So again, when they need to, they're going to feel comfortable coming to you. Right? If not,

[00:03:28] we're talking low employee morale, just, just for one, our favorite that we've talked about a lot this year, disengagement, your employees are going to become disengaged. You're going to have an increase in those legal issues and increase in turnover and your employer brand is going to be damaged. So when you go out there to find new employees and you're like, Oh, Hey, I work for this wonderful company.

[00:03:53] They're going to go, Uh huh. Yeah, sure. I have heard stories about you, HR. I've been on Glassdoor. Uh huh. Exactly. Exactly. So there are lots of really, really cool things that you can do. And it starts with, all right, are you ready for this big, this is like a mic drop movement. Get out of your

[00:04:17] office. You're not supposed to just spend eight hours in there all day long. Not, not from my knowledge. So yes, there are boundaries. You do not want to be the last one to leave the holiday party. If you're in HR. Okay. But you should go to holiday party and you should be there for the first two hours before people lose their minds that have had too much to drink and then get the H out of there.

[00:04:43] Because you don't want to know anything that happens after that point. Just saying. I'm being real here. We said we'd keep it real. Totally. I'm being real. Totally real. You need to show up. You need to be there. And then, you know, just enough to say hello to everybody. Hopefully you learn a few small details about each person and you can say, Hi, your kids. Hi, your dogs. How are your little kitty cats? Whatever the sitch might be. You know,

[00:05:09] you want to show that you took the time to not only learn something about those employees, but remember that something about those employees and chit chat with them. So yes, I'm sorry introverts. I got to learn to be social. What? Hey, wait. That's the other thing we've been talking about this whole season is building community, right? So get out there, build. This is a different type of community. This isn't the type of community that you're sharing with, right? We don't want to share things outside of that HR

[00:05:39] community, but this is a different way to build community. It's a way to make your employees feel our words valued, heard, respected. Speak up in the meetings that you go to. Share the HR updates. Talk to them about the why. One of the biggest things I hear is, Oh, that's why HR does that? Oh my gosh. It's a law, right? We're not trying to make people's lives harder. We're not trying to

[00:06:07] make, uh, uh, we're not trying to micromanage or take their jobs. We're actually there to help. And if you're not out there getting involved, like Julie said on, on a fun level, then when it comes to these more difficult issues, when you're partnering on projects, when you're, when you're asking for feedback, when you're providing feedback, you are not going to be trusted and you are going to face the

[00:06:36] consequences. Yeah. And again, you know, you're dealing with whatever HR's history in the company has been, and also HR's history with any particular employee. So you, the good news is you get to define what your history as an HR person is going to be. And you can mold that to fit your personality. So, you know, this will be a topic for probably a long pour because we don't have time to get into it,

[00:07:04] but you know, there's a lot of, uh, and again, I always blame my profession as lawyers that we taught HR people that they had to be robots and they couldn't show emotions or be human or any of those things. And I think that's totally wrong advice and you need to show that you're human and you feel things and you can show empathy to your employees. Um, and that's what is going to allow you to connect with employees, which is going to allow you to build that trust and it's going to make

[00:07:34] them feel comfortable coming to you if they have a question or concern about anything. But one of the ways that you do that is as Trish said, by getting out of your office, not just going to help, uh, company functions like holiday parties, but during the day, leave your office, go take a walk around, talk to people, just make some small talk. You don't have to stand there for 45 minutes. You don't have

[00:07:58] to stay, you know, but just walk around, talk to whoever's about, introduce yourself. If you see somebody you haven't seen before and you don't know who they are, introduce yourself. It's that easy. Truly. It truly is. And I'm going to throw out one last one that I think we're going to get a lot of pushback on, but I have found that it can be incredibly beneficial and that is holding office hours. Now that seems silly because we always talk about having an open door policy, but this is

[00:08:28] different. This is, Hey, I am going to be available from this time to this time. I'm not saying you have to do it every day or every week. It could be every other week. It could be once a month, but just having that opportunity for people to come in and talk to you, ask you questions, to learn about the why explain issues. Maybe like I'm confused about this, whatever it is, it gives them that open space where they know it's okay for them to come talk to you.

[00:08:57] Get out there, be involved, be human. I love that. I love that. And I would add to that. Don't be, don't forget about your people who are not in the office. So if you have remote or hybrid workers, or you have people at other locations, it takes more effort, but set up teams calls or zoom calls

[00:09:22] or whatever, have zoom office hours or teams office hours where, you know, maybe one day it's for in person and maybe one day it's for virtual, but make sure that people know how to contact you and that they can contact you at any time. If you don't want surprise visitors, totally understandable. He likes that. If somebody shows up at my door. I don't want surprise visitors. No. And you know,

[00:09:48] at my house, if somebody shows up, I'm Heidi, even if it's somebody I know, like, no, and I'm an extrovert, so I get it. But if you say like, Hey, I am always available by, um, you know, email or phone, just text me first to make sure that I'm not in a meeting. You know, I will text you back and we find a time to meet, but just make sure that people know how to contact you because the last thing you

[00:10:13] want is somebody is in a crisis or they're, um, they finally worked up the courage to come talk to you. And then they're like crap. What was her name? What was his name? What's their, how do I reach them? Forget it. So the ultimate, ultimate takeaway is this be present, get yourself out there,

[00:10:41] make sure your employees know who you are and what you are about. Ultimately that will help with the little issues of course, but it's the big issues where they're going to come to you. They're going to trust you. They're going to know who you are as a person. And that is going to allow them a level of trust that is so different than just walking in and seeing this human that you've never seen before,

[00:11:07] except for maybe during the interview process or the beginning of the hiring process or something like that. Um, Julie, any final thoughts before we leave for today? This is a longer short pour. Um, I would just say emphasize the human and human resources and be human. So on that note, uh, again, subscribe wherever you get your podcasts, follow us on all the socials and until next time. Cheers. Cheers everybody.