Heartbroken HR

I found myself replaying this video over and over again, tears streaming down my face right in the middle of a global pandemic and protests for the black community. The Haka, commonly performed by different Māori tribes as a war dance, was being performed at the funeral of 17 year old Jarom Hadley Nathaniel Rihari. Jarom’s brother, the young man unable to make it through The Haka, screamed at me from my computer screen.

A traditional war dance, performed while in mourning, in front of everyone, barely making it through. I found myself relating. And replaying. Over and over and over.

From the first death of an employee due to Corona Virus to the moment I walked out of a company because they refused to say Black Lives Matter, it’s become evident to me that Human Resources has been performing a war dance while in mourning in front of everyone, and we’re barely making it through.

HR has been the strategy on the battlefield for decades, whether the business has engaged with that strategy or not.

The wars on poverty, on racism, on health care, and so many others, Human Resources professionals have performed The Haka and charged the enemy of innovation while mourning the lives lost because of “the way we’ve always done it”.

Since February 2020 the war has waged harder, the battlefield bloodier, and the losses greater. As Corona Virus swept the globe you could audibly hear the hearts of Human Resources professionals break as they performed The Haka while plunging into work from home resources, video meeting exhaustion and virtual boardroom fights against layoffs.

We heard other hearts break as so many of our comrades now found themselves out of work.

The Haka continued for months, however, each new wave of death tolls and CDC guidelines and childcare struggles ground down the pieces of the brokenhearted HR.

And then we heard about Ahmaud Arbery, a black man running in a Georgia neighborhood who was hunted, shot, and killed in broad daylight by racists white men.

Ahmaud was lynched in America in February 2020.

And collectively we halted The Haka.

We retraced our steps and tried to see where we missed the lynching in the chaos of our Corona Virus wartime strategy and with a collective dismay we realized we had not - Ahmaud’s murder had been covered up.

So HR blazed The Haka ever louder. In mourning and anger we added another layer to the battlefield. We Ran With Maud and listened to our black employees and cried rightful tears about murderous bias and we yelled The Haka at the tops of our lungs with hearts broken even further.

And then George Floyd. And Breonna Taylor. And so many more.

So many more lynchings that the global streets once empty from a pandemic were forced to fill because of a greater genocide in America against the black community was finally being talked about.

They were someone’s daughter, son, brother, sister, spouse.

Employee.

Human.

And The Haka grew quiet just for a moment again because what do you say when your heartbreak is at a maximum, but it doesn’t even touch the heartbreak of the black community?

When the ones you’ve loved with bulletproof love are being suffocated with knees and killed with rubber bullets while exercising their right to protest? When the American administration calls the lifeblood of your company thugs and incites violence towards the most precious resource you have?

How do you fight a battlefield that’s been beneath your feet for centuries, one you’ve been standing on and you’ve been covered in the blood of millions of African American employees and you finally realize you have so much more to do? So much more.

You listen deeply to the black community, and you start The Haka over.

With mourning and a battle cry The Haka continued in the shattered hearts of Human Resources professionals as we educated ourselves and our staff about being anti-racist.

We learned how to shut up better, how to speak up at the right time better, how to protest better.

We quit jobs that were afraid to say Black Lives Matter. We decided BLM wasn’t a moment but a movement.

We decided a diversity officer wasn’t the scapegoat for our diversity issues anymore and we committed to holding ground for the most suffocated people group in the world.

We got it wrong, and apologized. We leaned in harder, took the responsibility on ourselves to be educated instead of asking the black community to educate us, and The Haka grew louder. The mourning, the fight, the battle cry, it grew louder.

And in America, you heard the hearts of HR shatter another time as the administration removed LGBTQ rights. With protests still in the streets and Corona Virus cases still on the rise and work from home exhaustion still wrecking our bloodshot eyes, The Haka stopped one more time in 2020.

Yet this time, it’s different. I look around the battlefield Human Resources is standing on…a makeshift graveyard and battlefield all in one. I look around and I see the most heart broken group of professionals, some employed and some not.

Our professional attire was lost months ago. Our attention to detail less important than our attention to discretion. Our emails so much less barbed because of petty office politics and so much more saturated in compassion.

And one by one I see The Haka start over again. The loud battle cries for the oppressed painfully synonymous with cries of mourning for the murdered.

Heartbroken, but determined. Determined to create better workforces for the black community, the LGBTQ community, the post-pandemic lifestyle.

Heartbroken, but warriors.