Put the human into HR

The Simple Art of Connection is the key to community wellness.  Balance Minder's Leanne Simpson tribe talks Debbie Dreaver – Values & Career Confidence Coach (Debbie Dreaver HR)

The Value in good connection between Workers and Employers

Leanne Simpson is the CEO/Principal Trainer for Balance Minder.  She works with  professionals struggling with chronic pain to create a personalised wellness plans, embrace mindful movement & believe in their ability again, so they can confidently live their life without pain controlling them.

Her program Time Out Tai Chi was a finalist in the Australian Fitness 2020 Community Activation Award.

Her passion is to encourage all Australians to join the movement for better health and wellbeing.

Tribe Talk is about discovering what is out there in the community, so we can all find where we belong, feel joy, share our good times and have somewhere safe to ask for help when needed.

for more information on the speakers in this podcast, please visit our  BLOG POST

Please visit our website for more information and to get a copy of the Time Out Tai Chi Welcoming Jing illustrated children's book.
www.BalanceMinder.com.au

Transcript

Leanne Simpson:              Welcome to Tribe Talk. I'm Leanne Simpson and I'm from Balance Minder, and it's wonderful for you to be here today. Tribe Talk is about learning about connection and how it cultivates and is the key to wellness in our community. I've talked to community leaders from all around our area about what they do to connect with people and how they can make their world a little bit better by connection.

Leanne Simpson:              Our guest today is Debbie Dreaver. She's a talent specialist from Debbie Dreaver HR, and I've got her coming to chat to us today about the connection between worker and employer. She did a really great presentation for the Smart Hub Rockhampton about putting the human back into human resources. When I saw that post and I was thinking, "Oh, yeah, we got HR thinking about paperwork, paperwork, paperwork, we forgot it was about the actual people." Debbie, welcome to Tribe Talk and thank you for your time.

Debbie Dreaver:               Thanks very much for having me today, Leanne.

Leanne Simpson:              Let's talk about, why is it important to put the human back into HR?

Debbie Dreaver:               I suppose firstly, when we're talking about relationships or the connection between employer and employee, we're actually about employment. Really quickly, employment's much more than a piece of paper, as you've said. It's more than a contract, it's more than an agreement, even. Even though basically the law considers employment as an agreement between the two parties, where one person does the work and then they get paid for it. It's really all about the relationships and that's where connection comes into play. The connection between the worker and the employee.

Debbie Dreaver:               The reason I think it's so important is that if you look at your human resources, which is typically how we term HR, and I'm talking about HR from whatever role you have within that. Whatever you have with responsibility of people, okay, you're dealing with human resources. HR also stands for human relationships, and by having connection with our employees and through relationships, it can actually help build performance for the business. That's why I think it's very important.

Leanne Simpson:              I think that sometimes employers get worried about getting too connected to their employees, because they think that to be a good boss, you need to have that distance between us. That there has to be that distance there, that you can actually tell people what to do.

Debbie Dreaver:               Certainly not. I mean, yes, we still have to maintain professionalism, and yes you have to keep those roles of employer and employee. But if you do it in a professional way, you can still maintain a good connection. There's a lot of different strategies that business can implement to ensure that there is professional connection. Through a range of different things that can be done, from even before starting people in the workplace. There's all different things that you can actually do for connection.

Leanne Simpson:              I know that you talk a lot about valuing yourself, you say value you. You have an online course about valuing you and you're also talking about people valuing each other and valuing their talents. Is that a good way of an employer connecting with the employee? Is recognizing their talents and valuing them and letting them know that they value them?

Debbie Dreaver:               Absolutely. I guess if you go back to the building blocks of when you're thinking about I've got a job that needs to be done, so who's going to do it? If you have a clear idea of what you need to have done, so that when you go to the market and you're looking for someone to fit that role, you've just want everything out in the open. It's all transparent. That there's clear expectations. When you do start someone there's no, "Oh, I didn't realize you wanted me to do X, Y, Z I'm going to leave." It's definitely from every different stage of the employment cycle with an employer.

Leanne Simpson:              I really liked was, when you gave that example about when the market, when there is a high demand people versus when they're not. To talking about the different employment levels. Would you clarify that a little bit?

Debbie Dreaver:               I had actually talked a little bit about the current environment and how everything's, the world's gone crazy, I suppose. Typically, well historically, people will tend to leave. But in this current climate, there might be people working for you now. And if you're an employee, maybe this is even you, maybe you're thinking these things. You think, "Oh, it's a bit uncertain. I really don't enjoy my job but I'm too scared to leave." And from an employer perspective, you might have people working for you that may not have a long term goal of staying with your organization. If they're really good, really great employees and what I term as quality talent, well you need to do everything you can to make sure you reduce the risk of losing those good people. So when things pick up, they're ready to go, and you're not out in the marketplace screaming out for good people and starting from square one, I suppose.

Leanne Simpson:              Yeah. By making that connection between them now, finding out what they need and what they value and make sure that you're on the same page. Rather than reacting when all of a sudden they walk in the door and say, "Hey, I'm giving you my two weeks notice." And you being completely stunned because you thought they were happy because they actually were doing their job. You thought they were happy because some people think that only employees do their job badly if they're not happy. They don't realize there's a lot of employees that really pride themselves on doing a good job but still can be unhappy.

Debbie Dreaver:               And that's that connection thing. If you look up connection, it's all about a relationship where a person is linked or associated. In this case, we're talking about employment. A person to another person or to a business. Now if we think about our people, and if they feel connected to their workplace and their employer, it can actually drive performance. If they're not feeling connected, they might be not performing at their best. They might be a fantastic worker. They've got every qualification and heaps of experience to actually do the job. But if they aren't feeling connected, they might choose not to do a good job. Whereas on the flip side, if you've got someone who's really engaged and it really feels like they've got a meaning to their job, it's purposeful, there's autonomy. Meaning that they can make some decisions or they're not being micromanaged and have someone sitting over their shoulders all the time. Also there's opportunity for growth and that they can also make an impact on whatever it is they're doing.

Debbie Dreaver:               You could be even working on a factory floor, process working. But if the person is feeling like they're making impact to the overall goals of the organization, they're going to feel connected. That's actually a little thing called magic. And I read about that quite recently. Meaning, autonomy, growth, impact and connectedness drives people feel connected. It drives engagement, which means they're going to perform at a better spot anyway. There's even things that you can do in the workplace to help them understand what does really drive your employees and what makes them tick, what do they value? And once again, you can do that in a recruitment stage, you're actually looking at people's natural behaviour. But you can also do it once you've got someone started. So it's not too late. You can introduce it any time. You can do it with all of your current staff, with your management team, to make sure that you're building the most connected environment for people to be feeling valued and engaged and connected.

Leanne Simpson:              That's what your organisation is about isn't it? It's about helping people recognize the talent.

Debbie Dreaver:               That's right. And I do call myself a talent specialist. Talent I'm meaning as, the case of yes it's a person, and it's from a human capital perspective. But also talent's about the skills and abilities that people have. I connect with business to help them with their employees. Whether that be to actually attract people in the first place. And that comes before recruiting. Getting someone on board, starting them, and then managing their employment but also then retaining them. Because it's a really long and expensive exercise, if everyone really thinks about it, to employ staff and retain them. There's different things through my different services I offer. Basically that I can help employers connect with their staff and that's what my business does.

Leanne Simpson:              Okay. The takeaway item from this little talks seems to me that you need to put a little magic in your workplace.

Debbie Dreaver:               Yes, magic, that's correct. And for me it's, just remember, HR human resources but let's refocus that. Let's think, "Wow, change your world, let's refocus our thinking to make it human relationships." So that we can make our workforce, or our humans, resilience. So, human relationships, human resilience. And just because, remember that, relationship is the key to connection. And that's going to impact on the bottom line of your business. Or if you're an employee to how satisfied and engaged you are at your workplace.

Leanne Simpson:              Thank you very much. Debbie Dreaver from Debbie Dreaver HR, our talent specialist, who has come in and discussed the whole connection between worker and employer. Now, if anyone wants to know some more information we'll of course have some links, always available wherever this recording has been posted. And we look forward to you putting relationships back into HR, put in what else? Resilience back into HR? What else?

Debbie Dreaver:               Resilience. Helping resilience of your workforce.

Leanne Simpson:              Yeah, because it's very important. Thank you very much, Debbie, for being a part of Tribe Talk with Balance Minder.

Debbie Dreaver:               Thank you very much. Thanks for having me and hope everyone has a great day and stay connected.