I presented yesterday on smart and small HR. The participants were so committed to their field that they showed up at 9:00 on a Sunday morning, just to learn how to better manage their time, utilize the tools available to them, and prioritize. Most of the participants had full payroll, HR, and benefits responsibilities, for companies of around 200 staff. Many also had other responsibilities like billing or front desk. Frankly, their problems are not, to my mind, a training issue so much as an organizational structure and expectations issue. How in the world are these folks supposed to get a seat at the table when they’re setting the table, making the food, and clearing the table? We talked about saying No, managing expectations, prioritizing, and using free help – but honestly – if I left them with hope and tools, I fear it may be a false hope. If organizational leadership wants higher-leverage HR, they have to invest in it. And in that room, no one said a thing to cause me to believe that investment would happen any time soon.  I was honored to work with the participants, and I wish them well.

When I get this Slideshare widget installed,  I’ll share the resources I made as a followup.

About three and a half years ago, I had a daughter. Though my wife is not biologically related to my daughter, in Texas, provided you jump through some slightly shady hoops, same-sex partners can adopt. We got that process started as soon as my daughter was born. Our life became a flurry of lawyers and check writing and social workers and lots of documentation, in addition to the diapers and sleeplessness usually associated with an infant. On June 8 of 2007, we stood in front of a family law judge in San Antonio Texas and my wife became a mom and my daughter suddenly had two parents.

In the next few months, I fell in love with my new family all over again. I was so proud of my partner, who stayed home full time with my child, and of course I was completely enamored of our baby. Since up to that point we’d been kind-of in the background, I was happily shocked by all the love, support, and encouragement shown by my family, friends, neighbors, and strangers at the grocery store.

As so often happens, once our daughter was born, our priorities changed. Before I had her, I was a traveling machine.  I was on the GO, sometimes to two or three cities a week. After she was born, I tried – I really tried. We took her to New York for a work meeting two weeks after she was born, then my breastpump and I got back on the road. It was hard. I was failing at work and failing at home, or at least it felt that way. My wife was more than a little tired of being at home alone with our baby four nights a week, let alone all day every day.

We sat down, talked about what was most important, and agreed it was time to focus on our family. One way we knew to to that was to hit the reset button in all areas of our lives. So I quit a job I loved maybe too much and took a much less demanding job that allowed me to help out a lot more with our daughter.

We decided to celebrate our “reset” by surrounding ourselves with the friends and family who had been so supportive of us. We wanted to make a public commitment to take care of each other and ourselves a little better than we had been, and I wanted to tell my family and friends how excited I was to create my life together with my partner. We got married June 8 of 2008, surrounded by a small group of loving friends and family. My dad read 1st Corinthians, my mom read from The Velveteen Rabbit, my sister was the minister. There was cake. And tears. And gratitude, community, toasts, and some pretty big promises.

Being married takes work. Love is a verb. We create love every day, through our gratitude to one another, listening to each other, and being respectful of one another. By the time we got married, there were no endorphins chasing us to the altar. But we knew we wanted to create a family, and to recreate, support, and renew our family, for the rest of our lives. So we do! Family Day is a big deal around our house. We take cupcakes to school, thank our parents and in-laws for supporting our family both logistically and philosophically, and tell our story.  This is a work blog, and it feels a little risky for me to put my story out here, but we want everyone to know how happy we are, and how we work to create happiness, every day.  We think that’s what family is all about.

I’ve been pressing my noggin up against how to help match up some stellar and unemployed HR folks with some of the companies that might need them, but not know it. Resumes and LinkedIn only tell a company so much, and, let’s face it, HR people are generally MUCH better at selling their old companies than themselves.
In addition to the fact that they may not feel comfortable talking about their own achievements, even in a conventional setting, most HR pros don’t see the value of social media. As Joe Gerstandt said recently about Twitter, “I do not think you can understand it without spending some time there.” We social media-lites spend too much time talking into an echo chamber. We know what lagniappes, synergies, kismets, and just flat opportunities online community participation has given us, but others may not.

What good is this little platform if I don’t use it? I might as well put my hosting fees and you lovely readers to work helping some great folks make a difference in jobs they love. For the next several weeks, I’m going to let the job seekers tell their story. They’ll share a little bit about what they do, what they’re looking to do, and what makes them tick. If you read a profile that interests you, or that might interest someone you know, please do everyone a favor and make the connection.  Let’s show the HR community the power of the internet, and let’s put some great people back to work.

Mary Ellen Slayter and I spoke recently about what small businesses need most. Mary Ellen is the editor for a service called SmartBrief. If you don’t already subscribe to Smartbrief, you really should. All the best, most relevant data, delivered to your inbox daily. (And, of course, interviews with compelling leaders like Steve Boese. And me.)

Thanks Mary Ellen! And Thanks Smartbrief!

Mary Ellen Slayter at Smart Brief asked some folks to think about what we’ve seen and learned in 2009 and to write a brief summary of the last 12 months.

While I sincerely hope 2010′s summary will be brighter, here’s what I’ve seen a lot of this year: deep despair. Good people have lost jobs that they relied on to live an inflated lifestyle, and don’t have the energy, creativity, and just flat wherewithal to move on. They’re struggling, or, worse, they’ve stopped struggling. A friend described herself like this: “The worst part of losing my job is that I really lost who I am, who I guess I was. I loved that person, but I didn’t know it at the time.  I knew how to be CareerGirl and kill my goals every year. And now I don’t think I’ll ever be her again. I just don’t have the energy to figure out what’s next, I just try to get through the day.”

We’re in the thick of it. A lot of people are lost. We’re at the point where many have no hope at all. I’d love to say that it’s always darkest before the dawn, but my guess is that this is the longest night many in this generation have known. Sunrise isn’t for a while yet. My friend isn’t ready to take off her sweatpants and I don’t blame her one bit. As long as she can afford to wallow, I say let her wallow. But at some point the money, the patience, or the ice cream will run out.

Then what?

Then it’s time to stretch, open the door, and see what’s out there. Doesn’t mean the sun has come up, but I do see some people reaching blindly out to one another, and finding new ways of thinking about themselves, community, support, and work. I see parents who are no longer willing to work/commute 60 hours a week, because they’ve learned the value of free time with their kids after they lost their jobs. I see previously reluctant Gen X and Baby Boomers waking up to the power of online communities, and learning how to connect with others they may never meet in real life. I see Generation Y kids who are learning that maybe they won’t get a $60,000 a year job right when they graduate like their parents planned, but they can sure intern somewhere and learn about things they think are cool, and live with their not-so-bad parents for a bit. I see grown adults finally asking themselves what life would be like if they were more than just an extension of their company’s corporate brand, what they’d be willing to give up to live a life that works for them. And I see a lot of people getting away from the lie of the Prince Charming model of employment, that there’s some One Perfect Job/Career that they will love Forever and they’ll live/work together Happily Ever After.

Nobody knows what they’re doing, and that’s a really good thing. But I still sense a real unease, like we’re sure there’s a right way to do it and this isn’t it. Maybe the only problem is that we’re under the assumption that we’re not doing it right. There are no clear goals for CareerGirl to kill, but that doesn’t mean she can’t make up her own, and change them as often as she needs to, to begin designing a life for herself. She just has to get past that there’s not a Form 31B for that.

For those of us who are no longer in despair, let’s let this wandering around last a bit longer. Let’s settle in to inquiry and trying out new things. We’re learning how to live without a map, and without a light to read a map from. These are new skills, new thoughts, and we’ll make mistakes. Hopefully a lot of them. But in the end, we may find ourselves a new way of working, a new mindset around money and material goods, and a new philosophy around who we are and what’s most important, that will lead us to deeper contributions and more fulfilling life experiences in this brief journey called life.

Blogging is not that fun for me. I feel like I’m a late night DJ without a working phone, never sure if anyone is listening at all or even if I’m making any sense.  I much prefer to comment on other people’s blogs or to guest-blog with people who ask good questions and help me think new thoughts.

To that end, Victorio Milian and I have collaborated again, this time on a piece about what HR professionals need to understand about their company financials. I really like working with Victorio – he is creative, thoughtful, and full of new solutions to old problems.  I promise to get back to my original 50 memos soon! (ish)

So, you guys know I’m an HR superstar, right? Typical descriptors: whip smart, breath of fresh air, and of course far too modest.  When I’m approached about moving to a new job, aside from the basics like pay, commute, and growth potential, the number one differentiator for me is that company’s reputation as a great place to work for LGBT employees. As both a lesbian and an HR pro, how you treat LGBT employees gives me a real sense of how dynamic and engaged your company is going to be.  For me to think about helping your company, there better be a long history of both understanding and pushing for diverse work teams, including LGBT staff, or I just won’t bother. I have to be sure that, despite my minority status, I’ll be able to forge the social bonds that a strong HR leader uses to make real change, and I want know that the quality of my work will get noticed ahead of the lady in the picture on my desk.

For example, a few years ago a big sugar company here in Houston interviewed me and immediately offered me a role in HR. After they made the offer, I asked my basic test question, “Do you guys cover domestic partners on your health insurance?” The hiring manager blinked several times and said, “We’ve never had that problem here. I mean – I worked retail before, so there were a lot of those people asking for all sorts of things, but here that hasn’t been an issue. Why?” I explained that I was gay and that I couldn’t accept the job, but that I appreciated the opportunity to learn more about her company. And I left. And told everyone I knew that story. And stopped buying that brand of sugar.

The thing is, I knew fifteen minutes into the interview that I wouldn’t really be a fit at this company – it was old school to the max.  Lots of unnecessary structure, a command-and-control HR and management mindset, and retention due to inertia rather than engagement. The fact that their HR manager apparently saw LGBT employees as a problem just confirmed that this company was not likely to ever to get it: A diverse population of people who are encouraged to bring their whole selves to work will work harder, produce stronger results, and generate higher profits than a bunch of people chosen primarily for the fact that they don’t make you uncomfortable. As an HR practitioner there, it would have been an uphill battle to attract change agents and engaged, smart leaders (gay or straight) to a company that just saw employee diversity as an obstacle, something to be controlled.

My thoughts as an out lesbian executive are focused on how I can best use my experiences to affect change and help build a dynamic, responsive workforce engaged around the company’s mission. I have it easy – I don’t have to lie about who I am, I don’t have to spend my energy strategizing how to get out of social events with coworkers, I can concentrate on my work. For every one of me – out, unapologetic, and confident, there is another person who stays in the closet for fear of losing their jobs or getting stuck at their rung on the career ladder. A recent report by the Human Rights Campaign examines the subtleties of effectiveness, retention, and workplace climate for LGBT employees. In addition to some heartbreaking stories, we get to see how, exactly, being closeted and/or discriminated against affects LGBT employees. The statistics are shocking. One in two LGBT workers hide their identity at work. In a world where nine out of ten employees say conversations about their social lives come up at least once a week, do you want that conversation to engage and deepen work bonds, or alienate employees who are actively hiding their real lives? Worse yet, though most LGBT employees have heard a joke or comment that made them uncomfortable, only 5% feel like it’s a good idea to bring the matter up with HR. Five percent, y’all. We in HR, who are often tasked with leading the way in matters of diversity and sensitivity towards differences, are trusted by five percent of LGBT staff. That sucks.

So what can you, the HR leader, do about it?

First, make sure you explicitly prohibit discrimination based on sexual orientation, and that everyone knows and understands what you mean with that. When that rainmaker salesperson who is constantly testing boundaries lisps and goes limp wristed imitating a peer, shut it down. Second, include domestic partners in your health insurance, and make sure everyone knows that you do. Third, use language to show that you get it – spouse/partner instead of husband/wife, parent one/two instead of father/mother, etc. You might consider working towards fulfilling the criteria to make HRC’s Corporate Equality Index.

Lastly, you personally may need to get with the program. Read the report linked above and think about your workplace. Are you driving away fantastic, engaged, loyal staff because you’re not stepping up when someone says or does ignorant things? Are you inquisitive but cluelessly bigoted, like the lady who asked me recently, “When did you know there was something wrong with you?”  Are you friends, actual friends, not just specimen friends, with any GLBT people? Do you talk about their lives with the same ease that you expect to be able to talk about your own? Do you know and enjoy their families, and do you know what their interests are beyond the homosexual agenda? Have you and your family been to dinner more than once at that friend’s house? Have they been to dinner at your house? More than once? Have you contacted your congressperson to advocate for the passage of the Employment Non-Discrimination Act (ENDA)?

Your company may be missing out. If you would rather work with people who are just like you, and you’re willing to forfeit profits and growth to do that, you’re probably reading the wrong blog anyway. But if you are ready to think through how a diverse and engaged workforce can help your company reach it’s true potential, the HRC report is a great place to start.

About how to be an HR Rockstar (and Get Paid Like One.) It should be fun, but now I have a code in my nose and my left nostril is totally whistling. Nothing very rockstar about that.

Victorio Milian, who is way, way too cool and VERY far out of my league, was kind enough to do an interview with me for his blog, Creative Chaos Consultant.  Check it out.  I’m so glad he gave me this opportunity, but mostly I’m delighted to have made the aquaintance of a new friend.