[S4E16] Pleasure Is My Business

Here's an experiment for you. Take passionate experts in human resource technology. Invite cross industry experts from inside and outside HR. Mix in what's happening in people analytics today. Give them the technology to connect, hit record for their discussions into a beaker. Mix thoroughly. And voila, you get the HR Data Labs podcast, where we explore the impact of data and analytics to your business. We may get passionate and even irreverent, that count on each episode challenging and enhancing your understanding of the way people data can be used to solve real world problems. Now, here's your host, David Turetsky.

[S4E16] Pleasure Is My Business

Yeah, so David, you know, if we look at the role of the modern chief people officer, and kind of simplified it's about bridging talent strategy and business strategy, right? So, you know, when we look at how to best do that, let's think about culture, improving turnover, creating a sense of belonging, you know, what does that culture look like? And so there's a couple pieces here. Culture is the, it's the cumulative sum of how everyone in the organization shows up every day. That's, that's culture. You know, and I think there's some misconceptions often what culture is or how to drive culture, it's not what HR says it is. It's not what the CEO says it is, or, or wants it to be necessarily. It's, again, the cumulative sum of the entire organization, how they operate, and how they show up to work every day. So what we're seeing is, is a real shift in workplace culture in expectations of the labor pool. And, you know, there's a couple tenants here that I think are very relevant. One is generational. So, you know, when I talk, when I go through onboarding and training with our corporate personnel, our services people, you know, and I talked about our philosophy of support, for example, around unlimited PTO, that unlimited PTO does not mean no PTO, or very limited where you know, there's this odd psychological, professional sociological mechanism that has been prevalent in a number of organizations work, you know, unlimited PTO really means not very much PTO, there's this odd kind of badge of honor, that comes forth that says, Oh, I haven't taken any PTO. So I'm the best employee in the organization.

I just think that there's always going to be a piece of people who look at unlimited PTO and worry about, you know, to your point, they worry about what am I going to miss? How are things going to happen without me and that's why they keep looking at their phone while they're on vacation. And I know, your point isn't that unlimited PTO is is, we're not talking about unlimited PTO, we're talking about being able to set up a culture that would support something like that. And the CPO tries to make change around that, but it takes setting the right business culture or taking the right or borrowing the right pieces of the business culture to be able to enable that. Right.

Yeah, that's a great question. And I think one way to sum that up a little bit is, you know, I think we've seen a stark shift over the last, say, 40 years. And it was about 40 years ago, when, you know, the term HR business partner was first coined, and, you know, that really marked the beginning or the genesis of a shift in human resources overall, you know, I mean, it became this, it went from this very transactional, I nine, W four, keep our employer out of the courtroom type of thing.

And I think what's important is being able to have managers who can celebrate the differences, and leverage HR for helping kind of create the right equilibrium points, and the right connections, so that we can achieve business success. And we leverage HR in order not to be the culture champions, but to be the glue that makes sure that cultures are being celebrated, not feared or not being discriminated against. And while we're talking right now about generational intersectionality, and generational differences, I mean, that same conversation can happen across different backgrounds, right in different cultures. And so it becomes a Rubik's cube of being a being complex that the business leader and the manager need to be able to become really good partners in making sure that all of that difference can be celebrated, not feared, not not squashed, not not harmonized, I guess as a way of saying it. And being able to be successful, like you were mentioning language, right? Obviously, generational language is completely different. Let's just put it that way. But the same thing happened when I joined the workforce back in 1989. Right, I came in to a very still 1980s 1970s, thought, school of thought around management and HR. And as we started getting into the 90s, things started to change a little bit. And we were those young kids coming into the workforce. And so this is a cyclical issue. But it seems like now I'm the old guy. And now I have to be able to conform and make sure that I'm not, that I'm taking the best, to your point, I'm taking the best of everyone's selves, and celebrating them, and making sure that we can all work together effectively for business outcome, right? 041b061a72