No More Nice HR
At my last company, the pesky one that refused to make a BLM statement, reprimanded the only Latina for speaking out against injustice in America and offering EAP to employees despite her White counterparts sending the same email, that one company that is now all over the news for one of the biggest security breaches in modern history…well that company hired a new Chief People Officer while I still worked for them.
And that new CPO came into my office one day after having an offsite with “HR leadership” (another blog post for another time, but all HR is leadership, so let’s stop making class systems within HR) to tell me that I had scored the highest on the 9-Box Plot exercise.
At this point in my relationship with this CPO, we were not on good terms. Her flattery meant nothing to me and I had grown tired of her inexperience and arrogance. Plainly, she was the wrong person for the job and she was unteachable. I have no time for unteachable HR professionals.
She went on to say, “Since you’re such a crucial part of this department, and you scored so high, I could think of no one better to help me come up with ideas on how to make the HR department more fun. I want us to be known as the fun department.”
My brain switched over to conflict management mode immediately.
Breathing slowly, without moving a muscle, I looked her directly in the eyes and replied, “Human Resources is not fun, nor should our reputation be such. We are not nice, or fun. We are fair.”
Without missing a beat this very calculating CPO responded, “Well Kayla, I want us to be fun. I want to put games here on the first floor and a popcorn machine so employees want to come to us. HR is fun, we are fun.”
I leaned forward, unafraid and full of conviction. “I am not a fun HR professional, Kathleen, and yet every employee on campus and in multiple countries sprint to me with a problem. I am fair, friendly, and excruciatingly dependable. I am compassionate, deeply human, and remarkably equitable. That is why I am your highest performing with the highest potential on that 9-Box plot. If you want someone to dilute this department with fun, ask Marketing for assistance.”
You could say that was the beginning of the end. Kathleen’s relentless retaliation after my bold responses and her fierce jealousy coupled with a lack of true leadership experience led to a crumbling HR department and my easy resignation letter.
This idea of fun or nice HR, however, is not a new one, and it is a dangerous one.
Perhaps it is because we have been charged with employee engagement, employee events, onboarding hype, recognition, and many other areas where “fun” and “nice” activities are associated with our departments, but nice HR is not the hallmark of industry.
Nice HR allows personal relationships to cloud ethical decisions; it allows the desire to be liked to override our requirement to be just.
Nice HR struggles to decide if you should terminate employees that were caught on tape participating in the January 6, 2021 insurrection at the United States Capitol.
Nice HR didn’t know what to do with employees in 2020 that displayed racist and white supremacist tendencies because those employees liked us, joked with us and showed us pictures of their families.
Nice HR doesn’t stand up to SHRM and its violence against BIPOC and LGTBQ+ communities, lack of support for HR Warriors, and absolute damaging hypocrisy.
Listen to me, friends - every white supremacist that stormed the United States Capitol was someone’s employee. Think about that for a second.
Our industry holds enormous power in the future of nations, and we give that power up by being nice.
And what do we have to show for giving up that power? Friends at work? Not even. We have nothing to show for trading in our influence, and it has got to stop.
So in 2021 I’m saying clearly - no more nice HR.
Instead, let us be just.
Just HR faces insurgencies with courage, terminates substantiated participants calmly and stops caring about the relationships we are severing in the process.
Just HR trades in nice to be: empathetic, kind, expert listener, proactive mover, relentless truth-seeker, damn good investigator, grief bearer, workforce advocate, reason chaser, data lover, human focused.
We must stop reciting that we are in unprecedented times and instead start acknowledging that we are in the exact times HR is supposed to be in to influence worldwide reform.
No more nice HR, friends. Do the damn thing.