This first week of the new year we are featuring some of our top posts at Women of HR. Enjoy!

Tim Sackett doesn’t think we need a website called Women of HR.

Maybe he is right.

• We have the Equal Pay Act of 1963,
• the Civil Rights Act of 1964,
• Title IX,
• and the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act.

We’re not any closer to seeing the Paycheck Fairness Act come to life, but some say the gender gap in compensation is sorta closing.

Women comprise the majority of HR professionals. We own the function of HR even if we only represent a fraction of HR professionals who are responsible for a budget and have organizational authority to make decisions.

What more could we want?

According to Sackett, HR women don’t need special accommodations and we don’t need a calendar. We’re a majority. We should shut up and appreciate our status.

Except no one here at Women of HR is asking for an accommodation.

I don’t hear my colleagues requesting special treatment or a helping hand. We’re not asking for favors. No one wants something for nothing. We are a self-identified group of women who’ve joined together to talk about Human Resources, leadership, recruiting, and training.

That’s still legal in America, especially since we include men.

What I like about Women of HR is that it’s a unique example of technology, community, and conversation. This site includes HR professionals who are at the beginning of their careers and seasoned HR veterans who are thinking about their second acts. There are women from the recruiting community speaking to women from the technology community. And there are women who love Human Resources and women who hate HR coming together in single space to advance the profession.

Call it Women of HR or call it something else, but it’s unique and kind of revolutionary.

I think it’s also revolutionary that we didn’t crucify Sackett when he suggested that Women of HR wasn’t needed. If this website does anything, it shows that shortsighted opinions on gender and power will be carefully and respectfully considered by the majority. There were no shrill voices. There were no false cries of sensationalism or stereotypically aggressive responses.

There was nothing but good old-fashioned inclusion and debate.

Who says we don’t need that in Human Resources?

I like to tell my HR friends that they are feminists. They believe in equality between men and women. They believe in fairness. They teach classes on diversity and inclusion, they work for equitable compensation systems, and they believe in protecting women — and really, everyone — against discrimination.

They are all feminists.

I often hear, “Laurie, I’m not a feminist. I am not political. I don’t believe in labels.”

So let me take a step back.

We love labels in HR. We classify jobs, we label performance, and we love acronyms. If there’s a project task force that needs a name, we’re on it. And if there is someone at work who is using a name unfairly or inaccurately, we correct him or her.

So I’m here to tell you that you are a feminist. Human Resources, with its history in unions and health care and money, is inherently feminist. We are the gatekeepers of justice, of fairness, and of worker safety. While we are advocates of profitability, we are also the conscious of senior management. We have a reputation of saying no to everything, but all know that’s not true. We say no to stupid people who don’t think the rules apply to them.

You can still like men. You don’t have to be a radical activist. And I certainly hope you don’t burn your bra. But you are a feminist and you should be be proud of it.

When you claim the name, you define it on your terms. And who better to be a picture of feminism than you?

Have you been to a Human Resources conference, lately?

Chances are you’ve heard from business leaders and executives who want to help you to overcome adversity, reach for your dreams, or follow your passion. These speakers offer amazing advice, share anecdotes from the workplace, and leave you feeling renewed & refreshed after a healthy dose of common sense advice.

Unfortunately, most of the keynoters are men. And this is our fault, ladies. As event planners across the country will tell you, there are never enough women to keynote a Human Resources conference — or any conference.

Listen, I know that speaking at a conference is complicated.

• Exhaustion is the status quo. Although you have something interesting to say, you are too exhausted after working a 9-5 job to come home and create a PowerPoint presentation full of new & clever ideas about Human Resources.
• It’s tough to ‘practice’ speaking. Improving your skills means volunteering to speak for free at local HR events, chamber of commerce meetings, and religious organization in order to improve your content, your message, and your delivery. Free doesn’t pay the bills.
• It’s all about who you know. Like anything in life, you need to network the heck out of your universe to speak at HR events. It feels unrealistic to visit  conferences as a paid attendee, make connections with event planners, and volunteer to lead concurrent sessions (for free) in order to secure a more lucrative and visible speaking slot in the future.

Who has time for that kind of nonsense?

Well, plenty of men do it. Constantly. They take a day off work and leave their families behind. They travel to places like St. Cloud or Cuyahoga Falls and they rock a concurrent session on ‘emerging trends in FMLA compliance’. They make mistakes. They learn from their flubs. And then they get on a plane and come home.

These men understand that the more they speak, the better they get. They have personal development plans. Speaking is an investment in the future. And while they travel quite a bit, it is no big deal. Their wives, partners, and children understand the sacrifice.

So the next time you hear a speaker at a conference and think that you could do a better job, go for it. Get on the conference’s website and find the event planner’s name. Meet her. (It’s most likely a woman who is dying for female speakers, by the way.) Then get to work on creating your slide deck, asking your colleagues for advice, and practicing your presentation to the local Rotary Club so you can solicit feedback on your delivery.

If you don’t submit a proposal, some other dude will.

It’s time for a change.

It is easy to forget that women face unique hazards, both large and small, in the workforce. Unfortunately, there is no simple solution to risk. There are things that Human Resources can and can’t do to protect women from injuries at work.

The National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH) reports that women suffer from job-related stress, musculoskeletal injuries, violence, and other hazards of the modern workplace at rates higher than those for male workers. Other findings?

• Gender-specific work stress factors, such as sex discrimination and balancing work and family demands, may have an effect on women workers above and beyond the impact of general job stressors such as job overload and skill under-utilization.
• Women may receive less on-the-job safety mentoring than men from supervisors and co-workers. This can create a potentially dangerous cycle in which tradeswomen are asked to do jobs for which they are not properly trained, then are injured when they do them or are seen as incompetent when they are unable to do them.

In my experience, many Human Resources professionals defer the bread and butter safety issues to line managers and special safety committees. This has always bothered me because HR practitioners write job-classification documents, create job postings, and provide input on key hiring decisions. When we position ourselves as experts in talent, we should demonstrate an equal amount of concern for the personal safety and security of our employees. Whether it’s safety training for our female correspondents or ergonomic adjustments for our pregnant customer service representatives, HR can make a difference. And although HR should never own the sole responsibility of ‘safety at work’, I believe that safety — much like culture, wellness, and technology — can be a key differentiator for Human Resources departments.

More importantly, preventing physical injuries to women is a lofty and important goal for Human Resources. I hope it’s one that you will consider when writing your strategic Human Resources plan and goals for the upcoming year.

Photo credit iStockphoto

Tim Sackett doesn’t think we need a website called Women of HR.

Maybe he is right.

• We have the Equal Pay Act of 1963,
• the Civil Rights Act of 1964,
• Title IX,
• and the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act.

We’re not any closer to seeing the Paycheck Fairness Act come to life, but some say the gender gap in compensation is sorta closing. 

Women comprise the majority of HR professionals. We own the function of HR even if we only represent a fraction of HR professionals who are responsible for a budget and have organizational authority to make decisions. 

What more could we want? 

According to Sackett, HR women don’t need special accommodations and we don’t need a calendar. We’re a majority. We should shut up and appreciate our status. 

Except no one here at Women of HR is asking for an accommodation. 

I don’t hear my colleagues requesting special treatment or a helping hand. We’re not asking for favors. No one wants something for nothing. We are a self-identified group of women who’ve joined together to talk about Human Resources, leadership, recruiting, and training. 

That’s still legal in America, especially since we include men. 

What I like about Women of HR is that it’s a unique example of technology, community, and conversation. This site includes HR professionals who are at the beginning of their careers and seasoned HR veterans who are thinking about their second acts. There are women from the recruiting community speaking to women from the technology community. And there are women who love Human Resources and women who hate HR coming together in single space to advance the profession. 

Call it Women of HR or call it something else, but it’s unique and kind of revolutionary. 

I think it’s also revolutionary that we didn’t crucify Sackett when he suggested that Women of HR wasn’t needed. If this website does anything, it shows that shortsighted opinions on gender and power will be carefully and respectfully considered by the majority. There were no shrill voices. There were no false cries of sensationalism or stereotypically aggressive responses. 

There was nothing but good old-fashioned inclusion and debate. 

Who says we don’t need that in Human Resources?

I am celebrating my eight-year anniversary with my husband on November 2nd.

I am about to tell you a secret I haven’t told many people.

• I took his last name because of my company’s payroll system.

At the time, my employer outsourced payroll to ADP. I wanted to hyphenate my last name, but the payroll system only allowed for fifteen characters. With a hyphen, I was coming out at sixteen characters.

I asked my fiancé, “Do you think I should keep my last name?”

He said, “I don’t care.”

He meant it. He didn’t care. We had been together for five years, we owned a home, and the Bears were on TV on the night I tried to discuss it. My impending name change was the last thing on his mind.

Like any good HR professional, I took a survey around the office. The results were mixed and (surprisingly) gender neutral. My maiden name was clumsy. My husband’s last name was long. There were no good options beyond marrying Brad Pitt.

So I asked myself, “Why would I keep my original last name?”

• Continuity
• Personal Branding
• Feminist Ideals

Then I asked myself, “Why would I take my husband’s last name?”

• Creating a bond to a new family
• Revitalized personal branding
• Madonna-esque reinvention

I finally asked myself, “Why would I hyphenate?”

I had no good reasons. The stupid name was too long with a hyphen.

In the end, ADP won. There was no way I wanted an error on my paycheck, my benefits, and my W2 forms.

I took my husband’s last name, and I’m no less of a feminist because of it.

I am just a Human Resources dork.

Photo credit iStock Photo.com

I’m just like every other woman on the planet. I struggle with my body size.

Fat. Thin. Meaty. Lean. I’ve been every size on the scale, every shape on the planet, and I never felt good about the way I looked. There were times in my life where I struggled with my shape, and I did stupid things to manage my appearance. By stupid, I mean stupid. From Weight Watchers to extreme dieting (and I mean extreme), I always told myself that I had cracked the code and found an innovative way to be thinner and more successful.

I was just naive.

*

At one point, I was heavy and despondent. I received a voucher for a $50 Visa gift card in the mail. The catch? I had to sign up for my company’s wellness program.

What the heck, I thought.

- My cholesterol was high,
- my triglycerides were borderline high,
- and I was eating fast food on a daily basis. Sometimes multiple times/day.

In an attempt to overhaul my life, I might as well get something out of it. I could spend $50 at the Coach store on a new purse.

A nurse from the wellness program called. We talked about my goals. The conversation wasn’t about wellness, though. It was all about numbers. Plan my meals, lose weight, eat x amount of calories, exercise several times/week, blah blah blah.

I said, “I don’t know how to do any of this.”

The nurse said, “We can break this down into smaller steps.”

Fine. Smaller steps.

Two weeks later, I hadn’t done a single thing. When I checked in with the nurse, we had a conversation about my failure. She never told me that my lifelong problem with food was bigger than a wellness program. She never suggested that the BMI scale is an outdated and outmoded method of measuring health. She never recommended the EAP to help me deal with the extreme anxiety and depression in my life.

Instead, we talked about wearing a pedometer. I could take the stairs at work and park my car in the back of the parking lot to burn extra calories.

*

We have to start somewhere with wellness, but health is bigger than a number.

Most of us work more than 40 hours week. We live life on a consumer-driven treadmill. High-fructose corn syrup and sugar are the quick and dirty ways we consume calories and fuel our bodies with energy. Some of us have biological and genetic reasons why we struggle with food, which are exacerbated by a national food policy that subsidizes sugar, fatty meats, and encourages us to eat refined carbs and corn.

I know something now that I didn’t know then: there is no wellness program under the sun that can do battle with the cultural, political, and biological reasons as to why most of us are fat.

*

I dropped out of my company’s wellness program soon after I started.

In retrospect, I should have told the nurse where to shove that pedometer.

And for the record, I spent my $50 gift certificate at Applebees. It wasn’t pretty, but it was delicious.

Photo credit iStock Photo