WORK

Not an “HR Person”

About ten years ago I was at dinner at an ASA Women in Industry event. My table was filled with women from every corner of the business from sales to operations to finance to ownership. The conversation went where those conversations always go, and we ended up on margin.

I jumped in, the way you do at dinner.

Someone stopped and said she had never met an HR person who talked about the business.

I like to think I said, “I'm not an HR person, I'm a business leader who specializes in people.” Knowing me, I probably just thought it and kept eating!

The comment stuck with me anyway. Not because it was nice. It was a compliment I guess, but it also told me something about the room. These were people who run companies. Between them they'd probably worked with dozens of HR leaders over the years. And a person with HR in her title holding her own in a conversation about margin was still a surprise.

That surprise is doing a lot of work in your company right now, and you probably can't see it.

It set the expectation before your HR leader ever walked into your office. When you hired that person, some part of you was hiring compliance and culture and the hard employee conversations, because that's the version of the job you'd seen. So that's the job you gave them. And every conversation you've had with them since has been shaped by what you assumed they could handle.

You may already have someone capable of far more than you're asking for.

And you need that person now in a way you didn't five years ago. AI is landing in your company whether you've approved it or not. Your most experienced people are retiring and taking knowledge with them that nobody ever wrote down. You're still trying to fill frontline roles that used to fill themselves. Every one of those is a people problem with a number attached to it, and none of them gets solved by a reactive “HR person”.

I've met a lot of HR leaders who understand the business cold. Who know what gross margin is doing and why. Who can tell you which branch is bleeding and what it's costing you every month it continues. Almost none of them have ever been asked. They spend their weeks on the work you handed them, which is the work you thought the job was, and everything else they know just sits there.

That's not a failure on their part. It's not really one on yours either. Nobody goes looking for something they've never seen.

But you can't unsee it. That's what happened at the table that night. Somebody worked out over dinner that the two things she'd always kept in separate columns, the people and the business, were the same thing.

They always were.

COMMUNITY

In July 2024, I created a list for HR leaders looking for resources beyond SHRM. It took off in ways I could not have imagined! It existed in a community-created google doc, but I always wanted to have it in a bit of a nicer format.

So this year, when I redid my website, I built a searchable database within it for these resources, which I will update quarterly.

And though many of the resources are conferences, events and podcasts, over 40 of them are communities. You can find more info here:

(Pic is from 2019, which is the first year I think I truly found my HR community, ironically at the SHRM annual conference where I spoke and networked and served as an influencer for the event. A huge shoutout to Jon Thurmond and Wendy Dailey, of the late, great HR Social Hour Podcast and Twitter chat, for being the gold standard of bringing the HR community together!)

COFFEE

Despite what it may seem like, I generally have only two coffees a day. One in the morning, and one in the afternoon. I’ve been working for myself for a few years, and I’m usually working from home if I’m not onsite with a client.

But I spent the vast majority of my career working in an office.

While I loved to get out of my office and walk for coffee in the afternoon, it wasn’t always possible with meeting schedules. So I’d pick up a coffee on the way in, and often bring my own cold brew from home, or one of these cute little cans from Blue Bottle.

I don’t really drink cold brew anymore, so this was a fun picture from years ago to stumble across!

And if you are ever on a zoom call with me, you can probably spot that sign in my background!

And a little bit more.......

In October, I'll be again teaching a course for UNH as part of their HR Certification Program, on AI in HR. This is an AI literacy course, created for those who are still new, though everyone will find something interesting in it. I'll also be co-facilitating the second cohort of an AI fluency program with Drew Fortin at Lever Talent. This was really fun to do, and is meant for people a little further on in their journey.

Still in October, I'll be closing out the HRLF event with a keynote that's not on AI, but we're doing something really unique and cool (and secret) that is AI-based, at the very end of the event.

And then, the following week, I'll be co-presenting at a Paylocity event at Gillette Stadium with Brian Bouchard of Sheehan Phinney, "Just Because You Can, Doesn't Mean You Should", all about AI.

I have a few more pretty cool things coming up that I will share with you as soon as I can! But if you can’t wait and want more info, just reply to this email! In the meantime, check out my website for information on my book, what I do, and more.

Have a great week! See you soon.

Tracie