Bringing the Human back to Human Resources with Traci Chernoff

It’s no secret that employees spend the majority of their life working. A nine to five for five days a week is draining, and it’s unrealistic for us to expect employees to shut off their personalities when they feel like a human-machine. That’s why it’s important to establish a more people-centric strategy to empower workforce members. Today’s guest, Traci Chernoff, is an expert in people, strategy, and innovation. In this episode, she will share a few things about what we can do to help restore humanity in the Human Resource Department. Let’s hear some golden nuggets from this professional. --- Listen to the podcast here: Bringing the Human Back in Human Resources with Traci Chernoff Welcome to Action's Antidotes, your antidote to the mindset that keeps you settling for less. Have you ever had a job where you felt less than human, you felt like nothing more than a cog in a machine, and had trouble finding your purpose, or why you're really there? My guest today, Traci Chernoff, is an HR executive, really involved in a lot of initiatives around the future of work, as well as the host of the podcast, Bringing the Human Back in Human Resources. --- Traci, welcome to the program. Thank you. Thank you so much for having me. Definitely. The first thing I want to ask you -- given that I suspect that a lot of my listeners have had this experience, or maybe even currently having this experience in their place of employment. We're living in a time when a lot of people are reconsidering -- whether you call it the great resignation, the great reshuffle, whatever you want to call it -- their relationship with their work. What does the phrase "bringing the human back in human resources" mean to you? It's a great question. To me, what's so interesting about this is that the human was already in human resources. It's the reason why it's the title of the department or it's the phrase that we use when it comes to this industry. When it comes to really why I always talk about bringing the human back, it's that we lost our way. For me, the way that I grew up, so to speak, in HR is that it was clear that there were some really, really strong foundations in the industry and in the practice. My takeaway was that there wasn't really enough of a focus on the people behind the problems or the people behind the solutions. One of the reasons why I started the podcast, Bringing the Human Back to Human Resources, was because I wanted to make a call to action that we had to take a look at the way that we were operating and the way that we were addressing these problems, and solve for them through a people-centric approach. I always say that people are at the center of everything that we do. It's the reason why our businesses today -- there's not one business I'm aware of, at least, that can operate without a human being. That's really what it means to me. Oh man. I'm picturing some weird, dystopian, future movie with a robot business and everything's just robots. There's still going to have to be someone to help that robot. There's still going to be someone fixing the robot. There's not going to be a robot fixing a robot, because then, who's going to fix that robot? Yeah, exactly. There was a movie when I was younger. Will Smith was in it. It took place in the year 2030. iRobot. That was about robots building robots. Yeah, but look, you couldn't have a movie without Will Smith. See? Exactly right. Or the writers, or any other people. Let's start with a little context about the history of human resources. You talk about the human always being there, but then human resources losing its way at some point. How did that whole process, for people who don't quite know what happened in the 20th century, play out? Yeah. It's a good question. First of all, my understanding of HR is very modern, because I started my career when it wasn't called personnel. The HR department, so to speak, in a business, was first the personnel department, or maybe the payroll department, the benefits department. As businesses shifted, there are more demands, especially in the United States. Laws became more litigious, actually, just in general, the legal compliance around having a business that requires people to work in it and work for it. There are so many legal considerations there. From my perspective, that's when things started to shift from personnel into HR. There was this centralizing of the people's side of the business. Payroll and benefits didn't just sit with the payroll department. Now, it's sitting with human resources, because human resources is a centralizing of the resources for the human beings in the business. All of these stigmas around HR, like HR is not super helpful, HR only cares about the 9-to-5 and doing what they have to do day in day out. That perspective of that plug-in place and not really considering the human being that they're helping, it comes from somewhere. It comes from that transition from my perspective. When you go from a functional department to a people-facing department, it's a very specific shift that requires a lot of change management. The organizations that, in my opinion, did a really good job shifting gears are now people operations for example. They're really looking at how Human Resources is exactly that. It's a resource for the people in the business. To add on to that, HR has now taken on even more of a strategic role, which is really where I've typically played a role in the organizations that I've worked for. HR business partners, for example, directors, those titles that I've held -- those are people in HR positions who are actually perfectly positioned -- I don't want to say wedged -- between the business and the people in terms of protecting their interests, which is where some of these stigmas around HR being two-faced or only telling you what you wanted to hear to your face. Those stigmas come from this feeling that we are protecting the business, and we're also protecting the people, and how can we do both. The thing is, you can do both. Service providers in general -- we haven't been trained how to price and how to sell.Share on X When we don't know what we're doing, we avoid it. We're experts, so we know what we're doing, and we're providing our service. All those other things feel like a distraction to us. What ends up happening then is we avoid it. We set our pricing when we start our company. We just don't worry about it anymore, because it feels like conflict to have to change it, because then, you have to deal with objections. You have to answer questions. All of those things keep us stuck and go back to that glass-ceiling idea that we're almost creating it in our own companies without realizing it. It's the same thing with selling. My clients, in general, would much rather be delivering their service than bringing in new clients. When I can help them see sales in a different way, I really help them see their whole company in a different way. That reduces their stress. They're more receptive to working on things that make them uncomfortable, like pricing and sales. You've talked before about uncomfortable conversations. I think a lot of people do tend to avoid uncomfortable conversations. It results in strained relationships, passive-aggressive behavior, all these other things. What role does embracing uncomfortable conversations and understanding their true context play in reducing the stress and increasing the revenue in a business? When you are less direct, there can be a lot of misunderstandings. Just because you say it, doesn't mean the listener gets it. We make that mistake every day. We, as humans, make that mistake every day. We think, "Well, we said it. We don't need to say it again. Certainly, I was clear enough. Certainly, the other person gets it." That is almost never the case. We make all these assumptions about communication. When you are very direct, very transparent, you have what I call key points, so you know what you want to communicate, and you repeat that, because people are not good listeners. They're so distracted. They're not tuning in to you. As a business owner, that can be really frustrating. However, you have the opportunity to improve your communication and your listening skills through using tools. For example, I recommend, in the sales method, that you use something called a needs analysis. That is asking strategic questions of your prospect. When you do that and, of course, you're listening to the answers, you're also reflecting back and double-checking to make sure they got it, to make sure you got it, that you understood what the point they were trying to make. All of those communications methods are critical as you are building your business. That reminds me of whenever people will listen to something and then repeat back what they just said, and make sure they understand the context of it. It says, "What I'm hearing from you is that this is what's going on, this is how it's affecting your business, and this is what you're looking for." Is that a way people can get more comfortable with the idea of being direct? Whatever fear comes around when someone's afraid to be direct, so they beat around the bush. They'd be like, "Well, it'd be nice if we had something different," as opposed to saying directly, "No, this is what I want." That's called active listening, what you just described, of reflecting back. There is a whole method built around active listening. Again, it's part of what I teach, because, to your exact point, that is the foundational aspect for everything else -- that level of communication. Yes, there are uncomfortable conversations. Absolutely. Sometimes, you'll have them with a prospect, or with a client,...