Because HR can fake it too

December 2^nd, Birmingham is the place to be. BSHRM and the Alabama SHRM Council are bringing David Ulrich to the Cahaba Grand Conference Center.

Not familiar with Ulrich, what rock are you hiding under? Here’s a blurb from the BSHRM site:

Dave Ulrich is a Professor of Business at the University of Michigan and a partner at the RBL Group, a consulting firm focused on helping organizations and leaders deliver value. He studies how organizations build capabilities of speed, learning, collaboration, accountability, talent, and leadership through leveraging human resources. He has helped generate award winning databases that assess alignment between strategies, human resource practices and HR competencies. He has been ranked the #1 Management Educator & Guru by BusinessWeek, selected by Fast Company as one of the 10 most innovative and creative leaders, and named the most influential person in HR by HR Magazine for three years.

The event is titled “”Transforming HR in 21st Century Organizations: What HR Competencies are Required for Success.” It’s all day event brought to us by some great local sponsors.

Interested in coming? Head over to the BSHRM site and get registered! I’ll be there, stop by and say hi!

I’m in St Louis, again, this week meeting our new Payroll Administrator and taking over some corporate responsibilities through year end. My flight was bumping, it’s raining and cold and I’m a little sad because my wonderful husband is at home and I’m not.

Lance Haun, the smartest guy in the room, says in order to be a blogger you must, at minimum, post once a week.  I don’t have a thoughtful post in me tonight.

With that in mind I’m going to leave you to ponder over a comment that was left on my Why HR post. HRobot says “My wife is trying so hard to get into HR in her company – and to no avail. I’m actually on a panel next week to discuss this very topic with undergraduates at my alma mater, and I’m having trouble coming up with more than 2 or 3 suggestions on how to “get into HR”……. pursuing a Master’s degree in HR seems to be the best option we have right now”.

How does one with A. no experience but a desire to be in HR and/or B. a higher education degree or PHR/SPHR certification with little or no experience break into HR?

Discuss amongst yourself.

HRevolution, I can sum it up in one word; bifurcate, oh wait, not that word, awesome was the word I was looking for.

Fifty HR people in one hotel discussing blogging, the future of HR, and whether or not HR is dead; wow. Most of the people had never met each other in real life yet it was like old friends getting together again. The conversations you see on Twitter and in the comment sections of blogs were taking place across dinner tables, in hallways, and across conference room tables.  We laughed, we drank, we cussed, and we talked about tough subjects. Would I do it again? You bet your ass I would, in a heartbeat.

I’m still trying to decompress and make sense of everything that was discussed but the one thing I know for sure, HR has a bright future if these 50 people all get on the same bandwagon.

My favorite discussion was the last, The Future of HR, facilitated by Mark Stelzner; particularly the discussion on separating HR into transaction and transformational.  I don’t know if it’s possible. For one thing, one person HR departments would have a hard time separating themselves into two people. For some companies it’s just not feasible to have two HR people, that one person does everything.

The debate of transaction vs. transformational is one we could all discuss at length, or at least I could.  HR people, even the one person departments, can be both; I did it for many years.  I certainly would have enjoyed the work more had I been able to focus on the transformational work more than the transactional work.  But not everyone in HR is cut out for or wants to do transformational work. Some people are content doing payroll and handling the 401k census and ERISA audits.  I don’t think those people were at HRevolution though.

I don’t remember who said it, please forgive me, but I wholeheartedly agree. If you are unhappy where you are, if you have tried to make change and tried to show the strategic benefit but have had no luck, leave. There are CEO’s and CFO’s out there that see HR as a strategic partner. There are HR people in executive leadership that have a place at the table and their teams are viewed as strategic partners. I know because I’m fortunate enough to work for one of those companies and I see firsthand the way HR moves the strategic plan forward and how we fit into the wheel that is our company.

HR is more than payroll, HR is more than benefits, HR is more than a party planner. We are thought leaders, we are business people, we are key players.

Transactional HR and Transformational HR; I guess the word bifurcate was oddly appropriate. Something to think on after more rest and decompression.

Be sure to check out Trish’s blog on November 18th for the compilation of HRevolution posts.

“Is it a rebellion?” asked Louis XVI of the count who informed him of the fall of the Bastille.

“No, sire,” came the reply. “It is a revolution.”

HR isn’t rebelling like some pissed off six year old who didn’t get his toy at Target, we’re revolting. Revolting against the bad rap HR has gotten.

This weekend is HRevolution in Louisville KY; it’s the first HR unconference. It’s. Going. To. Rock. ‘nuf said.

So, while you are reading this, I’m on the road from Birmingham to Louisville. ETA 3pm, EST. I’m looking forward to bunking with my conference spouse, the always wonderful, Shauna Moerke.

If you’re interested in learning more about HRev, follow the Twitter hashtag #HRevolution.

If you’re attending, I’ll see you there! If you aren’t, my sincerest apologies for you are going to miss a great event.

Viva la revolucion!

I’m fascinated by why. Yes, was one of those kids that drove her mom crazy by asking why the sky is blue, why the grass is green, why I have to go to bed at 8pm.

One of my new favorite why questions is ‘Why HR?’ or rather ‘How did you get to where you are in HR?’

I asked my boss over dinner the other night and wasn’t surprised by her answer.  She attended an EEO hearing via her former line of work and thought “I can do that”. She went back college, got her masters, and with an HR gig here and an HR gig there, welcome to present day.

I know others that knew from the start, HR was their thing; others sort of fell into it through other departments.  I was one of those that fell into HR.  As much as I love what I do now, when I started down what has become my career path, the last thing I wanted to do was HR. I was so against it that I almost missed out on the opportunity to take the road not taken.

It wasn’t that I was afraid of the work or the people, I just didn’t want what I perceived as the burden of knowing everything about the employees I worked with every day.   As things like that go, you either hate or you love it and clearly I loved it, otherwise we’d be talking about loan policies or the Bank Secrecy Act. #CreditUnionsRule!

Present day, I love my job and my work.  That’s why I’m in HR, because I enjoy it.  There are so many facets of HR that to be a true Generalist, to know and have worked all the possible avenues (if that’s even possible), would take fifteen forevers.   The amount of learning never stops growing.  Yes you can fill up on FMLA, FLSA, OSHA, etc until your head a splodes.  But as technology changes, so does the profession and that brings on new applications and new avenues to explore.  It’s not boring.

So that’s the answer to ‘Why HR?’ and even to some extent, ‘How I got here.’

Why are you in HR?