You already know that I advocate embedding an HR business partner on your IT team. I didn't always feel this way. When I was a fledgling IT manager, I saw HR as an obstacle, a group of people who didn't get it. I'd ask questions like, “Why can't I just hire all my friends, give everyone on my team a large raise, and fire poor performers like they do on TV?” After all, who has time to give their employees honest feedback, performance reviews, and career coaching? We have “real” work to do.
My contentious relationship with HR didn't improve until I saw a better way modeled by my mentors. When Greg Rake took over the supply chain at Pier 1 Imports, he invited me to dinner with his leadership team. As I took my seat, I noticed something strange. Sitting among the supply chain team were HR business partners from across the country. The HR and supply chain leaders laughed, talked, and solved problems. This group of people worked together as a team. Greg was running a global organization with nearly 1,000 people, and he understood that people were the lifeblood of his organization. Running a supply chain wasn't just about ships, trucks, warehouses, and boxes. It was about leadership, culture, and performance management.
Around the same time, Pier 1 hired Sharon Leite, now CEO at The Vitamin Shoppe, as the EVP of store operations. Sharon partnered with HR at the highest levels from day one, embedding people practices into everything she did. Sharon introduced formal talent assessment and career development processes. Sharon spent countless hours reviewing and discussing the performance and potential of every store manager in the company.
Sharon brought field employees into the corporate office as part of their development. Sharon also sent corporate employees to work in the field, ensuring that they developed a 360 view of how our business operated. Making moves like this requires long-term thinking because, initially, productivity declines.
There was a point when one of these moves disrupted a project I was leading. A key resource was being rotated out to the field. When I tried to delay the transfer, Sharon was steadfast. She said the continued development of our people was more important than a single project. She supported the project while still moving forward with the change. How did it end up? The project was completed on time, and the employee became a vice president.
Partnering closely with HR was the unique advantage Greg and Sharon used to run successful organizations. It wasn't just the company that benefited: the care spent developing talent has been a career godsend for the people fortunate enough to work within their organizations.
When you partner with HR, it's crucial not only to work with the chief people officer (CPO) and your HR business partner; you should work directly with individual HR specialists as well.
There's a general understanding that chief marketing officer (CMO) is one of the most challenging jobs in any company. The reason? Everyone believes they're a marketing expert. Colors, fonts, tone, medium: we all have strong opinions on how they could be better. Want to guess what single role is even more difficult and more thankless than marketing? It's the director of compensation (comp). Comp directors and managers have the dreaded responsibility without authority.
It is the responsibility of the compensation director to ensure the company is paying people according to its strategy, that titles and salaries are fair across the organization, and that incoming employees aren't blowing up the pay scale for the incumbents. They have to do this without direct authority over these decisions. The most important competency for a compensation director is influence.
If you're like I was, you may not even know who your compensation director is; or you override their recommendations. Stop doing this. A good comp director is like a good parent. Do your homework, brush your teeth, go to bed on time. None of these are fun, but they pay off in the long run. If you quit second-guessing your compensation experts, it will benefit you, your company, and your employees.
Employee relations (ER) specialists are the people you deal with when something is amiss. Depending on your HR department's size and structure, this could be your HR business partner or a different specialist who focuses on this discipline.
We are human, and we all do stupid things. It could be an honest mistake made out of ignorance (employee didn't know the rules), a lapse in judgment (alcohol is often involved), or malicious behavior. Inappropriate behavior can also be rooted in mental illness, substance abuse, grief, or trauma.
After an incident occurs, it's the role of your ER partner to work through the cause, the impact, and the actions required. ER experts deal with large and small issues. From Jessie’s lunch stinks up the kitchen to Jessie embezzled $50,000 from the charity fund, your ER specialist will help you navigate the rough waters. ER specialists must understand your company's policies and the applicable local, state, and federal laws. ER specialists work hand-in-hand with the legal department. When the CPO, the chief counsel, and an ER specialist show up at your office door, you're probably in for a rough day.
Many years ago, a young man came to me and offered to work for free. Let's call him Tom. We were implementing a popular finance system, and Tom wanted to become an expert on that system. We made a win-win deal: he would work 30 hours per week, unpaid, writing reports in this new system. If you read Malcolm Gladwell's The Tipping Point, you know it takes 10,000 hours to become an expert at something. Tom knew that he'd get much further working for free and developing a skill than sitting at home applying for jobs.
I treated Tom like any other contract employee. He was issued a contractor badge and a contractor cubicle and assigned to a manager. Nobody except Tom and I knew that his hourly bill rate was $0. I agreed that when Tom found a paying job, he could leave his free job without notice.
A few months went by, and someone on the team resigned. Tom was doing a fantastic job, and we decided to hire him as a full-time employee. This was the point when all hell broke loose. I show up in HR with an open job req and a person ready to fill it. The HR person looked at me sideways and asked, “Where did this guy come from?” I was so proud; I bragged, “He's been working here for three months—for free!”
The problem? There are laws against this kind of thing. You can't just have free employees. I argued and argued with my HR business partner. It harmed nobody. Tom asked for this arrangement. Tom benefitted from this arrangement. Finally, in my frustration, I appealed to the CPO. After hearing my plight, she looked at me and said, “Why are you complaining to me? I don't make the laws. Write your congressperson.”
This was the big “aha” moment. HR is not the bad guy. HR is the protector. Whether hiring Tom for free was good for Tom or not, it was probably against the law. We asked Tom to submit a detailed timesheet for every hour worked, and we paid him based on the market rate. Tom felt bad, and at first he refused the money. He wanted to stand by our arrangement. We insisted, and Tom got a big check and a job. I had a painful budget miss that month, a slap on the wrist, and a whole lot of education. It all worked out fine; once HR helped me clean up my mistake.
In this example, I wasn't sneaky or malicious. I was ignorant of the rules and the consequences. What if Tom got hurt on the job? There was no contract in place to protect him or the company. The lesson here is not that you need to know every law and nuance. The lesson is to involve your HR business partner from the beginning. Any HR business partner would know that hiring Tom for free was a bad idea, and a 10-minute discussion would have prevented a lot of heartaches.
Do you have a copy of your latest employee engagement survey? Let me guess: you have an opportunity to improve learning and development. IT professionals know they need to keep learning to be successful. A career in IT is a lifelong commitment to education. I fancied myself quite proficient in the legacy programming language, COBOL, back in 1990. Today, I'm not even qualified for an entry-level programming job.
Are you thinking about promoting a technical superstar to a supervisory role or having a business analyst run a project? I always advocate for internal promotions and lateral moves that provide career development opportunities for employees. To ensure that these moves are successful, you need to provide adequate training. The best way to get this done is to establish a partnership with the learning and development (L&D) experts in your HR department. They have the resources and knowledge you need. Even if it's technical training you're looking for, don't go off on your own. An L&D expert will help you craft a plan, find the right content, and make sure your development program aligns with the company's strategic direction for talent development.
Usually hidden behind a locked door, payroll and benefits experts are important business partners to get to know. The more you understand your benefits programs, the better conversations you can have with current and prospective employees. If an employee needs a leave of absence or special accommodation, work with your HR business partner and your benefits team to find the best solution. When you get the chance, be sure to thank these people. Executive compensation is complex, often requiring a disproportionate amount of time to calculate and process. Be cognizant that someone is putting in extra time and attention to ensure that you are being paid properly while they are making a fraction of what you make.
I've dedicated several chapters of this book to organizational design. It's important to get this right; you need to work with an expert. The good news is that these experts probably already work at your company. Even if there's nobody in HR with an organizational design title, this is a competency for many HR professionals. Your CPO can point you to the best person. It may even be the CPO who will work directly with you on crafting your org.
Regardless of the state of the economy, top talent is always scarce. Locating and attracting top talent to your company is the difference between having a mediocre team and an outstanding team. Make it your goal to improve your team when somebody leaves. Don't just backfill at the same experience level and compensation of the person who departed. Each new opening is an opportunity to balance the needs of the team. If you have low turnover, your teams are probably overweighted with highly experienced people. When an experienced employee departs, consider replacing them with an entry-level person. Having experience diversity on a team will create an opportunity for someone to coach, infuse new ideas, and lower the overall cost of the team.
Back when data centers were still a thing, we hired an intern on our server team. This kid was very excited when we asked him to rack a server: it was a big deal to him, and he approached the task with vim. Our veterans, who had racked hundreds of servers in their careers, considered this mindless grunt work.
When it's time to hire, don't just throw a job requisition over the fence to the talent acquisition team and then call every week asking where the candidates are. Before you post a job, determine what you need, update the job description, and work with compensation on the pay range. Then sit down with the recruiter and devise a plan to find the best candidates for the role.
Ask your talent acquisition department to source your contract staff. Talent is talent. Don't go it alone just because it's a contractor instead of an employee.
HR professionals have dedicated their careers to becoming experts on people. When you realize people are your key to success, you'll understand that HR is your most important business partner.