ALL APOLOGIES

BEFORE WE PROCEED any further, I have to come clean about something. I am a music freak!! I have music playing in every environment I can and for as much of the day as I can. During the 1990s MTV aired an incredible series called "MTV Unplugged." This series featured acts that were a mix of classic rock legends and artists who were popular at the time. One of my favorite episodes featured Nirvana. The band was at the height of its popularity and hearing its usually raucous and loud music stripped down made me fall for the band even more. One song the group performed was "All Apologies," and it was haunting.

Hearing Kurt Cobain sing with such pain and angst just drew me into the song. I felt the deep emotions he was trying to communicate, and it made me think of ... HR!!

If people outside of human resources described our field, they would say that we were magnificent apologists. We apologize for who we are and what we do way too often. It sounds a lot like this conversation overheard at a networking event:

"Hi, how are you?"

"Fine and you?"

"I'm good. I'm Steve and you are?"

"Melanie."

"Nice to meet you, Melanie. Where do you work, and what do you do?"

"I work for a local manufacturer, and I'm one of their salespeople. And you?"

"I work in the restaurant industry, and I'm in human resources."

"Oh, sorry."

"It's okay. I like being in HR."

"Really? Most HR people I know don't say that."

Encouraging, isn't it? You're out trying to establish professional connections, and others view your profession as something that needs an apology. When did we allow this to happen? Which HR professionals thought that taking this approach would make their position strong either personally or professionally? I don't know if there's a "person zero" responsible for this apology movement, but more HR people have adopted this stance than have tried to dispel it.

HR is tough. There is no denying it. When you look at the breadth of the field of human resources, it's daunting. When a person is tasked with being knowledgeable in employee relations, recruiting, compensation, benefits, employment law, federal and state regulations, training, organizational development, etc., all at the same time, one can see how the job could be overwhelming. I know these tasks describe HR practitioners who are generalists, but even specialists have very broad roles that touch these same areas in some aspect on a regular basis. Where we have lost perspective is that ALL fields in business are tough.

If you asked someone in marketing to break down his or her field, you'd see that it's also filled with diversity, complexity, and depth. The difference in other fields and ours is that we have taken the stance of being a martyr who experiences untold levels of suffering to meet the common good of the people. There is one differentiator in human resources that not all other business roles have, and that is the direct interaction with people. The odd thing about this differentiator is that the people who are most often vocal and frustrated with employees in organizations work in HR!!

If this describes you, then please take this advice. If employees are a pain point or source of frustration for you professionally, then get out of human resources. It isn't the career for you.

Quit trying to tough it out because you are this administrative superstar who can make systems hum. Administration is an important facet of HR, but it is not the reason we exist. Without people we are nothing. Please note that this isn't the call for you to put the "H" back into HR. That is a popular sentiment that you'll hear speakers share during presentations or as the theme of an HR blog. It's become a catch phrase without context and a shallow self-help statement to make us feel better. Whenever I hear someone throw this out, my quick retort is "The 'H' in HR? You mean 'Hell'??"

It throws people, and I don't mean it, just as they don't actually mean what they say either. Working with people has to be more than a feel-good catch phrase. The reality that we are intimately intertwined with people is exciting, not frustrating.

It's time for you to own who you are as an HR professional. There is value in what you do for your organization and for the people who work there. Human resources brings life to a company. With that being the case, why would you ever apologize for being a part of this field?

Much of what we do hinges on two things — our perspective and our approach. So, before we move forward and dive deep into how HR can really exist for you in a fresh, vibrant, and relevant way, you need to stop being an apologist. Step back, look at what you do, and OWN it!! HR rocks on so many levels, and it needs to be expressed through you and not in spite of you.

30 DAYS ... OR ELSE

MY HR CAREER started like most in recruiting. It's a great place to get your feet wet because you're learning the front end of the employee cycle. It's also a bit daunting because you're in the middle of making sure that the hiring managers get their positions filled on a timely basis and that the candidates have a good experience as they're being considered. I worked for a large Fortune 100 company that was extremely traditional and conservative in all of its business practices. This ran so deep that there was even an internal dictionary of acronyms to be used in all interoffice communication that was an inch thick!!

Given that it was my first HR role, I did whatever was asked of me, and I took on each opportunity with fervor. It was a bit uncomfortable for me to be in a highly specialized role because I was more comfortable having a broader scope. I was learning what it was like to work and also exploring what mattered to me personally within a human resource job. I didn't know what it meant to be an HR generalist or that this type of position even existed. I was ignorant of the power of culture in an organization because companies weren't talking about, or concerned with, culture The focus of organizations was that work was to get done, and that was it. I wasn't aware of the broader HR community or that other people around the world practiced HR.

You shouldn't be surprised by this. My first HR role was before the Internet...