To Be HR, You Have to Do HR for Yourself

To be HR, you have to do HR for yourself.

I will always believe in this principle. It’s so core and critical to my life’s philosophy that, when I wasn’t practicing the programs and policies of HR in my daily experience, I left my job.

My principle doesn’t just apply to individual practitioners and leaders. It applies to recruiters, sourcers, vendors, and technologists. If you’re not practicing the best principles of human resources in your own life and company, you have no business being in the business of HR.

The business of human resources if five-fold: we encourage entrepreneurship and innovation while managing risk; we champion and promote continuous learning for the enterprise; we are community managers, which means we oversee the terms and conditions in which people interact with one another; we are compensation stewards and manage the practices that go up and down the ladder of power; and we are wellbeing agents who are guardians of the overall employee experience.

That’s your new paradigm for HR, by the way, and, while it’s not revolutionary, it starts with making sure that you do HR for you.

• If you can’t take risks at work or feel like you’re stuck in a dead-end job with little opportunity for growth, you’re not doing HR. You’re wasting your days and the time of other employees around you.

• If you work in a disrespectful environment where pay equity is a joke and prestige is hoarded at the top — and you’ve tried and failed to make a difference — I’m sorry, but you’re failing in HR.

• And imagine how your employees feel if you are depleted, exhausted or financially insecure.

Do you want to be an HR professional? Do you want to sell HR technology? You must do HR for yourself, your team, and the employees around you.

There is no other way.

*Tomorrow I’ll write about what to do if you’re not doing HR for yourself.