Culture is a term that is often used in the context of organizations and workplaces. It's often described as the shared values, beliefs, and behaviors that define an organization and guide how people interact with each other. However, at its core, culture is simply defined as "who you become when you enter the workplace."

As an HR professional, it's important to understand the impact that culture can have on your organization. A positive and supportive culture can lead to increased productivity, engagement, and retention of employees. Conversely, a negative or toxic culture can lead to decreased morale, turnover, and even legal issues.

HR plays a crucial role in supporting and fostering a positive culture within an organization. Here are some ways HR can do so:

1. Define and communicate the desired culture: HR can work with leadership to define the values, beliefs, and behaviors that are important to the organization. This can then be communicated to employees through various channels, such as company meetings, newsletters, and training sessions.
2. Hire for cultural fit: During the recruitment process, HR should look for candidates who align with the desired culture of the organization. This goes beyond just skills and qualifications; it also involves assessing whether the candidate's values and behaviors match those of the organization.
3. Provide ongoing training and development: HR can provide training and development opportunities to help employees understand and embody the desired culture. This can include workshops on teamwork, communication, and leadership, as well as diversity and inclusion training.
4. Recognize and reward positive behavior: HR can implement recognition and reward programs that acknowledge employees who exemplify the desired culture. This can include things like bonuses, promotions, and public recognition.
5. Address toxic behavior: When toxic behavior is observed or reported, HR should take swift action to address it. This can involve disciplinary action, training, or even termination if necessary.

​
In conclusion, culture is an integral part of any organization, and HR plays a critical role in supporting and fostering a positive culture. By defining and communicating the desired culture, hiring for cultural fit, providing ongoing training and development, recognizing and rewarding positive behavior, and addressing toxic behavior, HR can help ensure that the workplace is a supportive and productive environment for all employees.

Naivety is an often-misunderstood term. Many people equate it with ignorance or unrealistic expectations. However, in an upcoming interview on the Rebel Human Resources podcast, author Josh Berry explained why naivety is an important and powerful tool in our toolbox.

Berry explained that the root of the word "naive" comes from the Latin "nativus," which means "native" or "natural." It originally referred to someone who was "natural" or "unspoiled" by civilization. However, the word's meaning has changed over time due to colonialism and the idea of "civilizing" other cultures. Berry argues that we should return to the original meaning of the word and embrace naivety as a way of approaching problems with fresh eyes.

Berry's research suggests that naivety is a powerful tool in the world of human resources and leadership. So much of the work in these fields is not explained through rational thought, but rather by taking things as they come, being open-minded, and starting from a point of trying to understand what's going on. Naivety can help leaders and HR professionals approach problems with a beginner's mindset, which can lead to innovative solutions and new perspectives.

I would also suggest that the idea of "best practices" is often BS because every organization and every person is so drastically different. Instead of trying to find a one-size-fits-all solution, leaders should embrace naivety and ask themselves what their assumptions of human behavior are. They should write policies for the 95% of people who won't abuse the system, not the 5% who will.

Ultimately, embracing naivety is about shifting the way we think about things. Instead of blindly following the way things have always been done, we should question the root of our processes and policies. Why do we have a 40-hour workweek? Do we need it? Does it have to be Monday through Friday? By asking these questions and embracing naivety, we can break out of the status quo and find new and better ways of doing things.
​
In conclusion, naivety is an important tool for leaders and HR professionals to embrace. It can help us approach problems with fresh eyes and a beginner's mindset, leading to innovative solutions and new perspectives. Instead of blindly following best practices, we should question the root of our processes and policies and embrace change. By doing so, we can break out of the status quo and find new and better ways of doing things.

In the dynamic realm of Human Resources, where the well-being of employees is at the forefront, it is crucial to recognize the significant impact of mental health. Just as music has the power to evoke emotions and create a sense of unity, HR professionals play a pivotal role in fostering a harmonious work environment. In this blog post, we will explore the intersection of mental health and HR, delving into the importance of organizational culture, authenticity, and the need for self-care in this field.

1. What does HR do? As the custodians of employee well-being, HR professionals are responsible for a range of tasks, including recruitment, training, performance management, and conflict resolution. They are the driving force behind building a positive work culture that supports the mental health of employees. 
2. Culture and Music both evoke emotions. Just as music can inspire and uplift our spirits, organizational culture plays a vital role in influencing employee emotions. By fostering an inclusive and supportive environment, HR professionals can create a space where individuals feel valued, heard, and motivated to bring their authentic selves to work.
3. What is Your Reputation? How does that feel? An organization's reputation can significantly impact employee mental health. HR professionals must strive to cultivate a positive reputation by prioritizing transparency, trust, and open communication. When employees feel proud to be associated with their organization, it can enhance their overall well-being and job satisfaction.
4. What Genre are you trying to play? Just as musicians choose a genre to express themselves, HR professionals should align their strategies with the values and goals of their organization. By identifying the unique "genre" of their workplace, HR can create programs and initiatives that resonate with employees and contribute to a harmonious work environment.
5. What Frequency are your Notes? HR professionals must be attuned to the frequency of employee experiences. While challenges and difficult moments may arise, it is essential to balance them with moments of joy, celebration, and support. Nurturing a positive workplace culture involves acknowledging pain and fostering resilience through empathy, compassion, and the celebration of achievements.
6. Consider Your Audience: Who are you as an artist? Understanding the diverse needs and perspectives of employees is crucial. HR professionals should be empathetic, attentive listeners who strive to create an inclusive and equitable work environment that caters to the unique requirements of each individual.
7. Who's In Your Band? You can't play it all. Collaboration is key. HR professionals cannot single-handedly address all mental health concerns within an organization. They need to build a support network, involving leaders, managers, and colleagues, to collectively foster a culture of well-being.
8. HR "Jam Session": Friends at Work Building meaningful relationships at work contributes to job satisfaction and mental well-being. HR professionals should encourage the formation of genuine connections between employees, promoting a sense of camaraderie and support that extends beyond professional duties.
9. Impact of Context Switching: Constantly switching between tasks and digital apps can lead to decreased productivity and increased stress. HR professionals must be mindful of providing employees with the tools and support necessary to manage their workload effectively, reducing context switching and enabling focused work.
10. Stage Fright: Being on stage all day is scary. HR professionals are constantly in the spotlight, dealing with sensitive issues, mediating conflicts, and supporting employees. Striving for social performance can be emotionally draining. Authenticity and transparency become essential in order to sustain mental well-being and build trust within the organization.
11. HR Fatigue: Play your own music. The pressures of HR work can be overwhelming, leading to fatigue and burnout. HR professionals

Here is a link to a recent webinar highlighting this topic.  Check it out!  

In today's fast-paced world, it's easy to lose sight of the importance of human connection. With the rise of remote work and digital communication, we're more connected than ever before, but often feel more disconnected than ever. Kyle Roed, on a recent podcast, shared his personal experience of seeing the power of healthy relationships in the lives of those who live longest. He also discussed how the lack of authentic connection in the workplace is a major challenge for organizations today.

Many organizations are now focused on creating a thriving culture that fosters connection among employees. But where do you start? According to Kyle, it's important to create intentional opportunities for connection. This means carving out time in the workday for team members to connect with each other, building trust through vulnerability, and creating a sense of belonging. Here are a few ways to do this:
​

1. Foster a culture of trust: Trust is the foundation of any healthy relationship. To create a culture of trust, leaders need to be vulnerable and open with their team members. This means sharing their own experiences, being transparent about their own failures, and listening actively to their team members' concerns.
2. Make time for connection: In today's busy work environment, it's easy to get caught up in the day-to-day tasks and forget about the importance of connecting with others. Leaders need to create intentional opportunities for team members to connect with each other. This could mean scheduling regular team-building activities, creating a virtual watercooler space, or simply encouraging team members to take a few minutes to chat with each other before or after meetings.
3. Encourage belonging: Feeling like you belong is a key component of building authentic connections. Leaders need to create an inclusive environment where everyone feels valued and respected. This means actively promoting diversity and inclusion initiatives and encouraging team members to share their unique perspectives and experiences.

In conclusion, creating authentic connections in the workplace is crucial for building a thriving culture and improving employee well-being. By fostering a culture of trust, making time for connection, and encouraging belonging, leaders can create an environment where team members feel valued, supported, and connected.

In this performance from December 2022's Disrupt HR, Kyle Roed draws an interesting parallel between HR and music. Just like how musicians evoke emotions through their music, HR professionals also evoke emotions through their actions. The question is, what kind of emotion are you evoking?

Roed suggests that HR professionals need to find their genre, just like how musicians need to find theirs. Just as there are only a few chords needed to play most popular music, there are only a few key areas in HR, such as managing performance, building culture, engagement, inclusion, people analytics, and driving business results through others. The difference is how these areas are played out, just like how the chords are played differently in different genres of music.

It's also important for HR professionals to find their bandmates, or the right people to work with. Just like how drummers are the hardest to find in a band, finding the right people to work with in HR can be a challenge. But once you find your band, you need to learn how to deal with stage fright and perform authentically. You can't fake it, or you'll eventually burn out.

Roed emphasizes the importance of being true to yourself and playing your own music. Just as how playing the wrong genre can lead to the Sunday scaries, playing the wrong HR genre can lead to a reputation issue. You need to find the genre that works for you and be true to yourself, even when it hurts.
Finally, Roed encourages HR professionals to close out on a badass power chord, leaving a lasting mark. If you want to make a difference in HR, you need to be your authentic self and evoke the right emotions. By finding your genre and playing your own music, you can make a lasting impact in the world of HR.

In conclusion, HR professionals need to find their genre and play their own music. Just as how musicians evoke emotions through their music, HR professionals evoke emotions through their actions. By being authentic and true to themselves, they can make a lasting impact in the world of HR. So, find your genre, find your bandmates, and close out on a badass power chord. Rebel on, HR rebels!

In this podcast episode, Kyle Roed draws an interesting parallel between HR and music. Just like how musicians evoke emotions through their music, HR professionals also evoke emotions through their actions. The question is, what kind of emotion are you evoking?

Roed suggests that HR professionals need to find their genre, just like how musicians need to find theirs. Just as there are only a few chords needed to play most popular music, there are only a few key areas in HR, such as managing performance, building culture, engagement, inclusion, people analytics, and driving business results through others. The difference is how these areas are played out, just like how the chords are played differently in different genres of music.

It's also important for HR professionals to find their bandmates, or the right people to work with. Just like how drummers are the hardest to find in a band, finding the right people to work with in HR can be a challenge. But once you find your band, you need to learn how to deal with stage fright and perform authentically. You can't fake it, or you'll eventually burn out.

Roed emphasizes the importance of being true to yourself and playing your own music. Just as how playing the wrong genre can lead to the Sunday scaries, playing the wrong HR genre can lead to a reputation issue. You need to find the genre that works for you and be true to yourself, even when it hurts.
Finally, Roed encourages HR professionals to close out on a badass power chord, leaving a lasting mark. If you want to make a difference in HR, you need to be your authentic self and evoke the right emotions. By finding your genre and playing your own music, you can make a lasting impact in the world of HR.
​
In conclusion, HR professionals need to find their genre and play their own music. Just as how musicians evoke emotions through their music, HR professionals evoke emotions through their actions. By being authentic and true to themselves, they can make a lasting impact in the world of HR. So, find your genre, find your bandmates, and close out on a badass power chord. Rebel on, HR rebels!

Let's talk about some of HR people's favorite things: rules.

HR gets a bad rap for being the policy police, and sometimes rightfully so. Why do we love rules so much? Does it make us feel safe at night? Does it make us feel like we're actually doing something?

Some rules are just plain stupid. Let's talk about some stupid rules.

In Colorado for instance, you are not allowed to catapult anything, you are allowed to own a catapult, but you better not try to discharge it. Also flaming arrows are illegal.

In Connecticut, pickles must bounce by rule of law. You cannot sell a pickle unless it bounces. Connecticut's Food and Drug Commissioner proclaimed that a real pickle "should bounce" when dropped from the height of one foot, which is state law.

Part of the joy of human resources is dealing with situations where somebody thinks that a rule should be put into place. Whether that's a rule related to attendance, a rule related to cell phone, or a rule related to a pickle.

My guidance here is that rules are important sometimes, but we should actively search out stupid rules. We should make every effort to get rid of them at all costs.

One of my favorite tactics when somebody comes to me and says we have to have a policy for this, we need a rule for that. If I don't have a clear cut policy with 17 different steps, and a flowchart that describes exactly what we're doing and every scenario within the situation, my favorite response is:  "I would be happy to look into creating a policy for you. But what policy Are we going to get rid of because I'm not adding any more policies into our handbook."

A handbook in itself can be relatively archaic and complex thing. How many people actually take the time during orientation, to allow people to read through an entire Handbook, fully understand, and then sign that Acknowledgement Form at the end of it. It just doesn't happen. If it does happen, that sounds like a terrible orientation experience.

The goal should not be to make more rules or apply more bureaucracy to systems.

Human Resources should be focused on building culture and building systems and structures that build trust.  We should allow people to understand that they should not be setting off catapults at work.

As we all know, they should be able to drop a pickle from a one foot height and have it bounce.

That's almost as silly as the sixth iteration of the attendance policy that still did not work.

Millennials.

Millennials are lazy.

Millennials are stupid.

Millennials are idiots.

Millennials are the worst.

Millennials are entitled.

Millennials are screwed.

These are all things you will find when you type "Millennials Are" into a Google search bar.

A millennial is someone who was born between 1980 and 1996. If you do a little bit of math, how old are the millennials right now? That's right, Millennials are turning 40 this year.

I have a confession to make. I am a millennial. I was born in 1983. I grew up before the age of the internet. I had a black and white TV with rabbit ears. Every once in a while I could get the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles on Saturday mornings.

When I went to high school, the internet was starting to come around. And in college, some crazy thing called Facebook had just started. I am a lazy, stupid entitled millennial.

Except for one thing.

I've been working since I graduated college, I haven't left a job before being there for at least five years. I've got three kids. I've got a mortgage, and I just paid off my student loans this year.

So why do we always hear about millennials in the workplace? For me, the answer is simple. We like to clump people into groups. Then we like to blame groups that are not like us for things when they don't go right. Unfortunately, it's human nature. If we group things together, it's easy for us to categorize. That's how our brains work.

However, this becomes very destructive in a workplace environment. If I blame all of my organization struggles and problems on one specific group of people, there's a word for that: discrimination.

So why is it okay in the US workplace to discriminate people who are younger than me, but not older than me? Under the EEOC, it is technically legal to discriminate somebody on the basis of age as long as they're younger than 40 years old. So guess what? millennials have job protection in 2020. But that doesn't make any sense. Why does age matter at all?

The organizations that have embraced the Millennial generation are the ones that are winning right now. Apple, Google, Facebook, Microsoft, guess where that talent pool is coming from? Millennials, which also happen to be the largest group within the workforce right now.

Millennials were raised in a very different time than the generations prior. We didn't need to ask a figure of authority in college to find out an answer. We could Google it. We didn't have to rely on a newspaper. We had it readily available on any search engine that we wanted.

We've lived through multiple recessions now. And one of the most formative things when we were growing up, was 9-11. However, I would argue that this is very similar to all the other generations that came before.  Baby boomers, Gen X, the greatest generation, they've all seen their fair share of struggles and challenges. They also saw formative transformational events happen within their society. They weathered recessions, just like millennials, they had to work hard, just like millennials, they had things to overcome and barriers to knock down just like millennials.

At the end of the day, all of the generations have more in common than they have in difference. We have to be aware that despite the year that we were born, we all face similar challenges and struggles at work.

As HR professionals, it's our job to ensure that we have inclusive environments that allow people to succeed, regardless of the arbitrary year that they happen to be born in.

And let's understand that when we whine about the word "Millennial", we're basically just complaining about "kids these days", which every generation has complained about.

Halloween costumes are great. You get to pretend to be somebody that you're not. 

You can be a famous character. Maybe you like to dress up as somebody spooky, or like me, maybe you get roped into dressing up like one of the Adam's Family, so your wife is happy with your costume contest chances... 

Or the time my wife made me dress up as "Aunt Lydia" from the Handmaid's tale.
​
It's all great.

One of the challenges in human resources is that we constantly face is the fact that we have to put on a mask or a costume in order to do our job at times. A lot of times people perceive us as the company representative, or the principal's office, and in order to do their jobs, many HR professionals have to compartmentalize the work that they do.

There's a lot of stress in our jobs. A lot of times, we have to make decisions that are very, very challenging. Sometimes, it doesn't feel like there are a lot of winners at the end of the day. In order to compartmentalize, a lot of us put on a mask or a costume when they walk into work. I can't tell you how many times I've had a conversation with an HR professional who comments that they feel like they can't be themselves at work, or that HR is simply the job that they do.

But the HR work they do doesn't reflect the choices or the decisions that they make within their personal lives. So my question for an HR professional out there who feels like they have to put on a façade, or a costume or a mask, when they walk into work is this:  WHY?

If your employees don't feel like you are authentic, human, understanding, and empathetic, they won't come to you.  You won't be a resource for them. You'll just be another person in a role that makes decisions about their livelihood, that has a huge impact on them.

A lot of times I hear the argument that HR is supposed to be on the side of the people, or I hear HR is supposed to be a representative of the business. HR is supposed to be a part of the business strategy to improve culture, improve the people, and support the business and all of its success.

That means that if an employee brings a complaint to HR, HR helps support that employee and the business to come to a win win solution. It's not about which side are you on, it's about the perspectives you support.

HR's job should be to review these things in an empathetic and humanistic way. That means you can't be wearing a costume or a mask in the workplace. You can't compartmentalize human resources in your real life. It's all intertwined. Eventually, if you put on a mask or a costume at work, every single day that you go to work, you're going to burn out, you're going to crash and burn and it won't be fun. You'll either end up leaving the profession because you just can't handle it. Or you're going to be a really terrible HR practitioner.

We ask our employees to be authentic, we ask our employees to bring concerns to us. Human Resources needs to have that outlet as well.

Get connected with other professionals, either within your company or outside of your company. Learn about how to be appropriate and authentic, but also reflect your role. Ask yourself when you walk into work. Are you being true to yourself? Are you being authentic? Is your headspace in the right place so that you can hear somebody's concerns and have empathy for them?

You need to understand the concerns of the business and some of the decisions that are really challenging for a business to make.  Then you need to support and help an employee understand and then connect those two things together. Help an employee understand the logic of a business decision. Help a business understand an employee's concern in an empathetic way, and then work to address and build trust and respect within your organization and within your team.

The best way to build trust is two words, competency and character. The only way to have competency is to practice and learn and get better. And the only way to have character is to be authentic and real.

And in the spirit of Halloween. It never hurts to have a jar of candy in your office.