Welcome to the bringing the human Back To Human Resources,
podcast, the podcast, all about the delicate balance between
people and business. And quite literally reconnecting
that to my name is Tracy Ruben, and I spent nearly my entire
professional career in HR or stories, opinions and words of
advice with you each week. Hey, everyone.
Like I said, my name is Tracy Ruben.
I am currently a director of HR to global fashion company to
give you a little bit of background on myself.
I have always worked in retail my entire life.
Just when you think you're going to get out of it it sucks.
You back in an honestly I can't complain.
I have been an HR since I started my professional career.
For the most part I had about six to eight months of a
different field. It was really like a customer
service role and I quickly found that HR was a very serious
passion of mine. Among many other passions in as
you get to know me, I think you'll learn that there are so
many things that I like they're also so many things that I don't
like, we'll get into it. HR has taken me for a whirlwind
of a ride. I started out my career really
as an HR Manager in a big box company, which we can talk about
later on and I continued my Journey, 3 years, 4 years later
where I now am with a global fashion company.
And I started as an HR business partner who is overseeing US and
Canada field operations. So for those of you who have no
idea what I'm talkin about field operations, in a retail company
is really referring to all of the stores and all of the people
that make the stores happen. I then was promoted to HR
manager, overseeing a region. And now I'm the director of HR.
I am so thrilled to be starting my own podcast.
It's something that I have dreamed about and procrastinated
about at the same time for years.
At this point, I have terrible imposter syndrome and finally
covid happened. And I was like, wow, I need to
start living out my dreams and not worrying.
So much about everyone else's, opinions and sharing all of the
opinions that I have this. It's me to my next point, which
is really just a disclaimer that all of the views opinions and
thoughts that I share on this episode.
And future episodes are truly a reflection of my own opinions
views and thoughts and not that of my employers.
So let's jump right into it this week.
I want to talk about D stigmatizing, hrhr gets a bad
rap people in HR departments, everything about HR is
stigmatized and I am on a mission to destigmatize it,
whether it's this year last year, for the rest of my career.
This is my mission in life to destigmatize HR.
Mostly before the podcast. I thought I would be doing that
through my own career and establishing really wonderful
relationships and having an impact on my employees.
And my peers are my partners that now that I have a podcast,
I hope that I can A few more people.
I want to share a story. It really comes from my
scrolling endlessly on social media platforms, and yes, I saw
the social dilemma. And yes, it was very compelling
and yes, I still have social media.
Nevertheless, I went to LinkedIn to scroll as I always do and
react to some employees posts. Were very fortunate to have very
participatory employees on the LinkedIn sphere.
And as I was scrolling, I saw a post from someone that I went to
high school with pencil Rodriguez.
This is a shout out to you. You gave me my first ever
content for this podcast and I am truly indebted to you Hansel.
And I went to high school together, he graduated with my
younger sister and he is the principal at core communities
and he posted just last week. If I've learned anything in the
last 12 months, it's that the work of Human Resources is
easily the most overlooked aspect of any business.
And, oh my gosh, I was like, this is exactly true.
And I also knew what I was going to see in the comments section
actually went to the comments section to look for people
riding stigmatized comments, polarizing comments about HR,
and this is exactly what I thought I saw comments.
Like, never really looked at HR like that.
Meaning I didn't think HR could actually be an overlooked part
of the business, which is really the foundation of what I'm
looking to do with this podcast. I also saw comments like That's
because a lot of HR managers don't add value and if I
actually responded and if I ever do respond, I might just link
this podcast because I hope that people who share that same
opinion, which I know there are so many.
Actually take the time to realize how invaluable HR is to
a business. So, Hansel.
Thank you. I couldn't agree.
More HR is overlooked. That HR is stigmatized, which is
why I want to destigmatize it. So.
Where does the stigma come from? I don't know.
I think that businesses for so long have focused on the bottom
line and focus on how they get people to try the bottom line
that people like myself. And my supervisor, and my peers
who really seek to provide valuable resources and support
are seen as inauthentic. And actually I've never worked
with more authentic people in my life and I hope that I can have
some of my peers are more on this podcast so we can talk
about some of the things that we even encounter in our own
careers. Ultimately, what we think of HR,
there's a clear function to human resources and a business.
And it's not just about making sure people are paid, making
sure benefits eligible employees are benefits eligible.
There's so much more to it and I started my career as an HR
Manager. But really what?
I ended up realizing was my deepest passion was being a
business partner and in business Partnerships everything rides on
your relationship. So, when we think of distinct
matizant, HR, I think of it, as how many people how many
professionals weather is retail or another industry.
Can I connect with so that I can destigmatize what it means to
have an HR business, partner, HR Director, HR Manager for an HR
generalist, really? Anyone at any level, the role
that HR partner is to do exactly that partner with a business or
an organization. And so many businesses just like
Hansel said, Overlook Human Resources as a function, there
are a couple reasons for this. It's not quantitatively measured
or not. Everything is measurable from a
return on investment perspective, which are sometimes
costs more money for a business and actually the measurables or
the deliverables are a little bit harder to quantify.
Everything a lot of what we do is qualitative and for a
business, most businesses. I realized I'm generalizing
here, most businesses look at what is X going to do for why,
how is this going to benefit me? As a business owner as a CEO as
a CFO and sometimes HR doesn't fit into that classification in
recent years in most of my career experience, I actually
have seen HR be a celebrated part and function of a business
and that is truly why I think I've developed such a passion
for it but going back to the original Point.
HR doesn't have those measurables that.
Tell someone let's invest HR is kind of like an investment That
You Don't See for 25 years. So you think of your Ross or
your 401k Don't worry, I'm not going to pull too much Finance
on you. That is an investment.
That sure you can see grow and might go down when the stock
market changes. There's a lot of fluctuation,
but in the long run you've invested and your interest can
build on itself 7% each year and that's kind of how I see the HR
function, my guess is that HR is a bit more than a 7% investment.
Maybe one day, we'll quantify what the exact investment is
nevertheless. That's one reason why I think HR
gets overlooked. Another reason is that we are
considered the fun police and might I say, I have a problem
with this because I am not the fun police.
I am the fun and I also recognize that I am not
representative of the whole entire HR Community.
But I will say that. I think this is exactly the
stigma people say oh, oh, oh, HR sent an email HR called is
coming to the store or the business, the office, whatever,
the hospital, whatever industry that it's HR.
I don't ever want to hear someone say oshri.
Want people to say HR is coming. What can they help me with?
And how can I take advantage of this time with someone who is
here to support me and support my business or my team?
And I just need to burst my own bubble here because I have to do
it all the time. Otherwise, I will constantly
live in a sunshine, optimistic positive place where nothing can
go wrong. So, to burst my own bubble, I
have to remind myself that actually there are so many parts
of the business that aren't so pretty result in the Ohr phrase
and that's okay. Ultimately, I think the bottom
line 4D stigmatizing HR is creating the balance between the
positive side of HR as a partnership in functionality of
business. And also recognizing that HR is
a serious Network of people and it serves a serious role for a
business. I recognize that people from
every industry. Hopefully, we'll listen to this
podcast. And some might say, well, this
isn't really applicable to me because HR is one person running
an entire department. We Outsource payroll and
benefits. We have a consultant managing
employee relations issues, and this person just oversees those
functions and that's totally fine.
What it takes to. Destigmatize HR doesn't come
from the HR person. It does come from.
That person. As a consultant, for the person,
overseeing the consultant, or the 30%, Human Resources team,
or the 5% Human Resources team in the entire business.
What I seen in my current employer and I just want to
celebrate this point. Human Resources, is seen as a
function of the business that drives the bottom line and
supports. The drivers of the bottom line
is I'm going to break that down. When I say drives the bottom
line, our function inherently is seen.
And I really believe this. Like I said, these are all my
own opinions. They don't represent my
employers. I really believe that my company
values HR at the court, not just because of the way, our business
model works, but because our values are people Centric and so
businesses have an opportunity there, what does people-centric
mean all the tech companies are using other people soundtrack?
We have meals and snacks in the breakroom like at all times.
And the kitchen cold people Centric is just another way of
saying we care about you and HR is fundamentally underlining the
Way, we operate our business. Secondly, what I truly believe.
My employer does well, is create a conversation around how our
people and specifically I'm in retail.
So our field team, they generate the money for our business.
They are the front lines of everything we do whether it's
before or after or during the day are the ones generating and
driving. And maintaining the bottom line
and HR is seen, as a, as a critical element in further
driving that not, every company values HR at the core like that,
I will argue. And I invite you to argue this
point against or with me. That a company that puts HR and
people at the center of every single thing they do, doesn't
matter. The industry is going to be the
business that remains Progressive that keeps top
talent at the Forefront of their operations and remains a
successful entity in the marketplace.
People run businesses, small businesses, large businesses
Fortune 500, like I mentioned at the beginning of this episode
has started my career at a big box.
I worked at Target. I was Target, Tracy, I had to
Target Tracy Twitter. I was really active but I'm kind
of getting embarrassed even just talking about it but I told
myself as podcast was exactly what it's going to be and that's
going to be honest and transparent and free of Judgment
at least in my own mind. It's fine Target Tracy and even
at that level three hundred people in just one store.
People wear everything you going to Target as a customer.
You walk through the aisles. You tell yourself, you're just
getting a pack of gum, you lie to yourself, you end up with
$150. How do you end up with $150 in
your car? You have potentially 300
employees working in the front of the scenes on the stage
helping you and behind the scenes.
And let me tell you, it takes a village, these stories I can
share at a later time. Target, did it perfectly
everything was team, everything was celebrated, all the good
stuff, celebrated rewarded, recognize, and everything had a
structure around people. And I don't think I realized
that until I left Target, because there was so much that I
loved about it. That I borrowed and brought with
me to my current company, which really focuses on doing the same
thing and really being truly people-centric.
So, again, Target celebrated everything.
For example, there was a best team card.
So leaders on duty for the Pete, the non-retail people leaders,
on duty are basically the managers Who Run The Show for
their shift and everyone including the HR.
People like me have LOD or leader on duty shifts and during
the leader on duty shifts. Expected to write best team
cards and deliver them meeting like present them hand them to
the employee, recognizing them, for something, they did Target a
Fortune 500 company found time in their business to make people
matter. Every second at the time that I
was at Target, the stock price was around $66, a share.
I think I promise I'm not going to get too fancy, but I just
have to mention that there's a clear delineation between people
and Prophets. Right now as of October 20th,
2020 the year that can't end soon enough.
Target stock is $164.87 a share. I recognize that this could be
related to a number of things. But I left Target but see, it's
2020. So I left Target about three
years ago at all. I needed to do hair was thinking
about the 10-year that I have a migraine, clearly that out.
Three years ago Target still always has been very stable.
Business model, very stable company.
It's always convinced people to go in for one thing and leave
with 20 but ultimately what I'm trying to get out here is that
targets business model is 100% focused on people.
Naysayers will say that Target is like any other company.
That's only focused on profit. Of course, that's how companies
stay alive and employ thousands of people a year but they
figured out that profit and people are connected.
And so ultimately, all of this is to say that my firm belief is
that the more people Centric The company, the better, the HR
function, the better the HR professionals, so clearly you
have to have the right people enroll to drive these profitable
margins companies that put people first, get ahead first,
they end up on top and good for them because people are what
drive a business getting back to the original point.
The mission that I'm going to have branded across my face.
D, stigmatizing HR if even just one person listen to this
podcast would be great but I was really trying to say is if even
one person hopefully there will be many listening to this
podcast, goes back and takes away something around valuing.
HR value in a charm or looking at the business and prioritizing
the people. Then I have taken one step
toward de-stigmatizing HR. So I encourage everyone, or if
this is just my mom or my sister listening, go back, share this
podcast and start a discussion. We had to talk about how we can
value people more, because if we don't value HR, we might, as
well say, we don't value the people that HR supports and
we're including all that. I'm a professional professional,
but I'm still an employee. So if the functions that I bring
to a company, don't benefit an employee gets what.
They don't benefit me either. There is a clear symbiotic
relationship to having strong HR talent and driving a strong
business. So I want to touch on another
stigma that floats around HR And this is really a credit to my
grandmother and my fiance and to everyone who doesn't totally
understand what I do. Which I feel I can be a topic on
its own. I don't just fire people.
There's more to us than that. There's more to HR people than
just firing and my grandma always says.
So what are you doing? Is fire people and even though
she doesn't sound like that and maybe one day we'll have her on
because I think that could be really fun.
She was an educator and she has a very specific depends on so
many things kind of similar to me.
She always says, what are you? Do you fire people.
And that is like, 1% of what an HR function actually overseas.
And even though I'm not so great at talking about what I do,
because I get my fiance my grandma.
Even my parents asked me this all the time you spend your day
on And I really try to come up with an answer and sometimes
they go back to my job description, I'm like, okay,
yeah I do all this is so much more than the firing Department.
We're not the fun police were not the firing Department.
Certainly, there are parts of our roles in our jobs that
require us to take some of the phone away or to terminate
people. We hope that those terminations
are based on decisions that those individuals are making and
not based on company decisions. That's all.
Even though there isn't usually a best-case scenario and
determination you hope that it's a reflection of something that
can be learned something that's consistently held to a certain
standard. That is a separate topic for
another time. But that is absolutely the third
and probably most significant underlying stigma at least from
the outside looking in employee. Say that HR is coming because
they think someone is getting fired.
I have traveled to Canada to California to Florida.
I've been very lucky to work for an employer that sees the value
in HR, being present in the organization.
And for me, specifically in the field again, non-retail people
the field equals the money. Basically and when I when it,
when it's shared, then I am headed to one of these locations
for anything other than like a planned training or conference.
For example, there's the question of Tracy's coming is
everything, okay? Even though I have wonderfully
established relationships with employees and partners in the
field. But ultimately, I think this
comes from what my grandma asks. What are you do you fire people?
I'm glad that's not the only function of my job and I'm sure
we'll get to this on another episode but terminations are
exhausting. They are impactful and
ultimately like your ending songs employment, even if it's
because of something that was in their control.
One should always consider the impact on the individual.
I have, to be honest, I was about to go on a tangent there.
I had to stop myself because I'm going to save it for another
episode because I think it's clear that we can talk about
terminations forever but when I think about the impact on the
individuals that is ultimately what we're driving home in this
episode. And forever.
Bringing the human Back To Human Resources.
Anything dealing with people should be celebrated, it should
be revered. It should be prioritized.
And so how do we do, you stick, matai's, HR, And remind
ourselves that that page. Since for human, we're talkin
about people and their lives and their livelihood.
I'm going to stop at there for today.
As you can tell, you're very passionate and very inspired.
I also has heated. Nevertheless, I want to take the
rest of the time to talk about a question that was asked of me I
won't share from home but this is a part of the podcast that I
want to regularly add and that is like spice section questions
a lot from my friends. My family members their friends.
About just general like HR questions and one of the
questions that I got recently was Around a situation where
their manager didn't communicate to them, that they would be
taking on additional work in an outside function.
So let's say I'm actually very specifically their core function
is related to the general public and they had an added function,
that's really a voluntary type of function added to their
plate. So, in digging in, I wanted to
try and understand why this became an HR issue.
She said, well, you know, it was just, I just got an email about
it and like, now I'm doing this. And what does that mean for my
workload? And every question that you can
imagine when someone has added workload, when they don't have
enough bandwidth, All of those questions.
Come up. What happens to what I'm
reviewed on? How is this going to impact my
long-term goals, and achievements?
How, how is this? Okay?
And she said, Lake Providence, her perspective, what should I
do? And I said, well, I don't know,
is an HR issue, and I said that, because really, when we think of
an HR issue, that means HR is getting involved.
But the situation here is that the employee and the manager
have an issue. I think of a few things, when I
hear the term HR issue, and in this case, this is really more.
So a person looking for, advice on how to dress their manager.
So, if you're in HR, professional in this moment, you
would want to give some advice. Maybe some tips if you're an
employee, keep in mind HR is not always going to get involved and
you have to think of the employee.
What is my objective? Do I want my HR professional to
get involved? Am I looking for advice in this
moment? I think that the person who
reached out to me was really looking for valet Jason that
they did the right thing. And what they did was, they went
to their manager, they keep them feedback in.
Those are all of the right first steps in my opinion.
Once you get a charm evolve to eat, can't really go back.
I mean, HR can make a situation bigger potentially than what it
actually is. And so if you're an employee, I
encourage you to consider what is my objective.
And if you're an HR professional, think about
sharing that. What is your objective?
What is it that you are looking to gain out of my involvement?
Or do you just need advice? I should we roll play?
What it is that you're looking to address or how you're looking
to address that? I find that role playing is
often extremely helpful especially in a situation like
this relates back to the D stigmatizing of HR.
Is that HR often is seen as the department, that handles
complaints and the department that neutralizes situations in
which two major functions of the HR capacity.
However, not the complaint department where the solutions
Department cuz I like to say. So the solutions oriented which
this person really was, she was like, I reached out to my
manager already. I spoke with him about how this
made me feel and I also sought additional information and
reiterated that I'm a team player.
Couldn't have said it better myself to the person who I'm
referring to. Great job.
You handled it beautifully. The other part of the beast in
the passing of HR that I mentioned before, is that we are
seeing as this only middle-ground, and that's
somewhat true, we always will maintain neutrality, objectivity
and all of those things. But HR is entitled to take a
stance to whether it's with the business or we should say the
manager, and we have to also support the person may
individual. Some naturally we're going to be
in this mediating type of role. But it's not a Charles job to
say. Okay, let's talk about it
together. It's not necessary you as the
employee, go to your manager and you work it out and the best
seats are Partners in. My opinion are the ones who
create and Elevate and Establish the relationship, a strong
relationship between a manager and an employee.
So if I were this person's HR partner, I would not get
involved in the sense, that I wouldn't be the mediating
person, unless that's what the employee and the manager,
requesting otherwise I can dilute the relationship between
the manager in the employee. And I think one of the most
important things to do as an HR professional is strengthened or
establish. If it's not already established,
the relationship between a manager and employee and
understanding our support is. Best served is the key.
I think to destigmatize in the relationship in action versus
and speech like I'm doing this entire 30 minutes and finally
we'll work toward creating a people-centric business
organization that is less focused on K Charles coming and
more focused on how can we support our people?
How can we make this a people-centric place?
How can I revalue use represent and support the people that
represented support us? Thank you.
So, so much for listening to the first ever.
Bringing the humans Back To Human Resources podcast, episode
very first episode. Very first, ever podcast more to
come if you're interested in asking, for advice during a
specific topic on a future podcast.
For just connecting with me. Some follow me on Instagram at
HR. Tracy, that's a jar.
Tracii love to hear from you. Also, please don't forget to
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