Shauna Moerke is…

In HR we get to do some crazy things. Odd things, fun things, uncomfortable things, sad things; things that can both destroy and restore your faith in humanity. They are things that being new to HR you could have never anticipated having to do, and no school would have been able to prepare you for.

But it’s all part of the life of an HR professional, right? We wear our crazy experiences like badges of honor and proudly share them, at least amongst other HR professionals, like veterans trading war stories. ” Oh, you had a candidate hit on you during an interview? Guess what this one candidate did during a panel interview with our C-Suite…”

Now, I consider most of my “experiences” to be mild compared to some of my peers, but sometimes I think back on some of the odd situations I’ve had in my career and wonder what I would have thought if years ago you had told me this is what I had to look forward to:

- Helped an employee hack into their social media account, that they even forgot they had, in order to take down something inappropriate that they had posted.
- Creating training for a software program I did not have access to and did not use.
- Buying, washing, and then distributing dozens of apples as part of a wellness initiative.
- Counseling a manager that wanted to fire an employee for an unsubstantiated rumor because he was afraid what other employees might think if they heard it too.
- Dealing with an HR colleagues snide comments toward me due to not sharing her religion.
- Having a manager lie to my face and then having my boss blame me for the manager lying to me.
- Had a candidate literally (Yes, I am using that correctly) speak for 20 minutes straight despite repeated attempts to interrupt her, even speaking over me when I tried to interject or stop her.
- Having to explain to an employee that stealing a soda was still stealing and a terminable offense. They were escorted out still not getting it.

And those are just some of the examples I can remember/feel comfortable sharing. But the thing that all good HR pros share is resiliency. After all, if the first time you have to talk to an employee about their inappropriate use of the copy machine doesn’t make you quit HR altogether, you’ll find yourself recounting the tale over cocktails one night at an HR conference with the only other people who can truly understand your pain.

Welcome to our community, we’re glad you are here.

We are back again with another oldie but goodie post from the archives. Let me transport you all the way back to May of 2010.

Look, I get it. HR can seem quite mysterious. We have closed door meetings, acronyms, keep to ourselves, and the motivation behind a lot of what we do isn’t readily apparent. It’s the nature of the work. We can’t talk about what we do or we would violate confidentiality and when employees only see us during the bad times, why would they think anything we did was positive? Not to mention that many people assume our work is just common sense, so why do they even need us in the first place? There must be some kind of conspiracy going on, right? But let me just make one thing clear: HR is NOT a cult.

An artists rendering of a secret HR meeting

We don’t have special rings or embroidered robes. No secret club houses or pawns in the government helping us control the world from the shadows. Hell, we don’t even have a secret handshake. Now, I know I go on and on (and on) about being a minion and alluding to the eternal battle between good and evil. But in all seriousness, HR is not some secret club that only takes care of it’s members. You don’t need to know any special code words or secret information for us to help you. And we most certainly aren’t spending our days plotting against you or cheerfully adding names to our blacklists. We aren’t out to get you.

Ok, most of us don't

But I do understand why people don’t trust HR. It comes from their feelings of helplessness, frustration, confusion, and fear. And it’s not just the layoffs or disciplinary meetings. People are out of work and are afraid they can’t get anything else. To them, HR seems like a wall; the wall between them and their livelihood. Is it any wonder then that people think they need to somehow break this “HR Code” in order to get anywhere with us? That they are only one secret handshake away from learning the inner workings of how we “really” operate? It’s a skewed perception of HR (to put it mildly) but for them it becomes their reality.

Dude, if only things were so simple. If all people needed was a secret password I would not still be unemployed. I mean, I can’t be more in with this HR crowd, I have letters after my name and everything. If HR was a cult you know I’d be at those meetings chanting mindlessly with the best of them. So what is to be done? For one, HR needs to be better about not only being more accessible to employees and candidates, they need to be better at communicating as clearly and completely as they can. And as for you, conspiracy fan, let go of this self-destructive thinking. realize that you need to stop chasing shadows, and focus more on what you need to do and less on who is trying to keep you down.

Originally posted on this site on May 3, 2010.

I’m gonna let you in on a well known secret about HR: HR loves coming up with and enforcing processes. We get practically giddy over it. Recruitment, benefits, compliance; you name it and we have a process for it. Really.

Naw, I can’t lie to you. Let me assure you that no, HR does not sit around all day trying to come up with processes on how to do everything. It’s as much a waste of our time as it is of yours. We would much rather be getting things done. Unfortunately, sometimes well thought out and documented processes are both necessary and important. Safety, security, emergencies; anytime when a lack of a plan can lead to harm to a person or risk to the company you should have a clearly defined process in place.

But if a clearly defined and documented plan, as nice as that is, is all you have then it is bound to break down, often at the worst time possible. In order for a process to actually have a meaningful impact it needs to be more than a page in your employee handbook.

Effective Processes are:
- Communicated clearly to all impacted parties. They need to know what to do and when.
- Trained and run through routinely to ensure that all impacted parties know how to do what is expected.
- Have buy in from all impacted parties. They not only need to understand the why of the process, they need to internalize it as well so they accept their responsibility for adhering to the process.

And in spite of all that preparation, things can still go wrong. No one’s perfect and neither is a process. People get complacent and process become outdated and forgotten. That’s why how you recover from a process break down is just as important as how you put it together in the first place.

When processes break down:
- Accept the situation and don’t start playing the blame game. Recovery is not about finding fault, it’s about moving forward to prevent it from happening again.
- Examine where the break down in the process occurred, which could be in more than one area, and determine what needs to be changed, re-trained on, or if the process simply is no longer working and something new needs to be created.
- Solicit feedback from multiple sources and build in opportunities to re-visit the policy again in the future to make sure it is still a workable plan.

Most importantly of all, don’t focus on enforcing processes blindly across your company. Empower your people to make good decisions by being transparent about issues such as safety and security. An empowered employee is an engaged employee, and also one better prepared to step up during a time of crisis. HR should never be the lone advocate any more than they should be the policy police.

A good process is like a brownie recipe. It takes the right ingredients, put together in the right way, at the right time. Yes, sometimes you forget to add an ingredient and end up with a mess. But at doesn’t stop you from trying again. After all, who can say no to all that gooey, chocolately, goodness… Damn it, being on a healthy diet is hard! I better start reminding myself why I care about my health before my diet has a break down.

Flow Chart image from cracked.com and brownies from skinnymom.com

I’ve decided to start re-posting some past posts from this blog because after 5 years there is a lot of content that my newer readers may have missed. And if you haven’t read it before it’s new to you, right? This has nothing at all with me wanting to get more content on the site but being too lazy busy to do it. Not a thingy dingy, I assure you.

Easily the most intimidating aspect of job hunting, there are a lot of rational and irrational things to be afraid of when it comes to interviews. There you are, about to meet with people whose opinion of you directly impacts your future and financial stability. Is it any big surprise that interviews make you feel tense, stressed, worried, and fearful? I mean, think of all the things that can go wrong?

- You get lost.
- You are late.
- You forget the name of the person you are meeting with (Happened to me).
- You forget your resume/documents/portfolio.
- It’s raining and you trip and fall into a puddle (Also happened to me, luckily after the interview though).
- You completely blank on an easy question.
- Zombies break into the room and there isn’t a shotgun or cricket bat in sight (Well, maybe not this one but you never know).
- You say something stupid or they don’t laugh at your jokes.
- You get sick.
- You forget to turn your cell phone off.
- You have a “wardrobe malfunction”.

And so on and so forth. Are you hyperventilating yet? Deep breaths. Deep. Breaths. It’s okay. Interviews may be fear inducing but there is a lot you can learn from your fears. If your fears are rational, such as you are afraid you’ll get lost, you can easily overcome them through preparation and planning. Practice your interview skills with someone, do a practice drive to the company to make sure you know the way, pick out your outfit the night before, etc. Feel better? Of course you do. The important thing is to not let your fears overcome or paralyze you. Use those twinges of fear as the push behind taking the steps needed to ensure your success instead of letting fear hold you back. Soon, you won’t face interviews with fear, you’ll face them with confidence. And that will make all the difference.

But what about the zombies? All I can say is, you better be vigilant. Zombie attacks can and do happen unexpectedly. Personally, I recommend reading The Zombie Survival Guide. You will never enter a building or room again without first assessing it’s defensibility against a zombie horde. Like I said, preparation is everything.

Originally posted on this blog April 29, 2010.