7 Nov 2019
The following conversation happened this week;
Complete stranger- ‘What do you do?’
Me- ‘Oh, HR’
Complete stranger –‘(hahaha and raises eyebrow… )‘Human Remains’
Me- (With a wry smile and one of my infamous Alice looks…) ‘Ha, not heard that one for a while!’
Why did it annoy me so much and still a few days later I am thinking about it? I guess because I wish I was;
- Less bothered by the negative connection to something I love
- Wittier with my reply
- Frankly, I’m bored of HR getting a bad image
It then made me think a bit more, that person’s experience with a HR team, somewhere in their working lives must have been below par and that annoyed me too!
I absolutely don’t expect everyone to like me, but I would like to think they respect me, the HR team I lead and the standards I set for the People agenda.
If you look back over the evolution of the function and whatever it has been labelled, Personnel, Human Resources, People & Culture, the main underlying foundations should be around understanding people and their needs throughout their life cycle. The HR professional must put on many faces and manage many scenarios throughout their career and I hope that one day the image of ‘Human Remains’ disappears forever.
#challenge #100days #HR #People #image