Speaker 2: This is the Rebel HR podcast, the podcast about all things innovation in the people's space.
Speaker 2: I'm Kyle Rode.
Speaker 2: Let's start the show.
Speaker 2: Welcome back, rebel HR community.
Speaker 2: We are going to have a fun conversation today.
Speaker 2: With us we have the one the only, callie Bakken.
Speaker 2: She is the founder of WiggleWork.
Speaker 2: Had the joy of getting to interact directly with Callie at Disrupt HR Twin Cities here a few weeks ago and she has graciously joined us on the podcast.
Speaker 2: Callie, thanks for joining us.
Speaker 1: Thank you so much.
Speaker 1: I'm excited to be here.
Speaker 2: Well, we are so incredibly excited to have you.
Speaker 2: You know, I think, from my standpoint, we are kindred spirits and the belief of what HR can be, and so my first question for you is I'd like to understand what motivated you to found your company Wiggle Work.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so it's fun and kind of full circle, because it started out as a Disrupt HR talk.
Speaker 1: Actually, one of the things that I talked about was corporate child care is the biggest missed opportunity for being able to basically create your own returns in a workforce, and so I started talking about it, found out that a lot of people aren't doing it because it's just too complicated.
Speaker 1: People aren't doing it because it's just too complicated, and then I had my own.
Speaker 1: I guess I had my own child before that, but mostly, seeing the climate around child care, the fact that I've been on infant child care lists since April of 2022, and my name isn't going to come up for another year at least really helped me see that really someone needs to do something about this, and I guess it needs to be me.
Speaker 2: Oh my gosh.
Speaker 2: So we, we're gonna, we're gonna go down the rabbit hole here, because I think childcare is one of those areas.
Speaker 2: It's like everybody knows it's an issue, but so many of us just throw our hands up and say, well, yeah, that sucks.
Speaker 2: Um, you know great example here.
Speaker 2: So, uh, a couple of years ago, uh, I was an HR director at a manufacturing facility and we realized that we were losing a significant amount of new hires every single month because they could not figure out the childcare issue.
Speaker 2: Um, to the tune we we calc'd out the cost of turnover.
Speaker 2: It was like $20,000 a month that it was costing us in turnover expense because of daycare.
Speaker 2: And we were like, well, how can we fix this?
Speaker 2: But you know, you start peeling back the layers of the onion and you realize, well, it's hard to run a daycare.
Speaker 2: There's a lot of rules and regulations.
Speaker 2: And we put together a coalition of employers and, thankfully, a couple of the employers stepped up and and I'll give them a shout out here UnityPoint Health, one of our local health systems, actually helped us, found a daycare center called Cedar Valley Kids that now breaks ground in April, but it took seven years.
Speaker 2: It took seven years of doing this and I think but I think the reality is we didn't have a driver, like we didn't have somebody like you who was like driving the actions on a regular basis, and we kind of languished for a few years, quite frankly, as a bunch of employers that really didn't know what we were doing, and thankfully we had a coalition that came together and some community leaders that that helped us put this thing together.
Speaker 2: But, um, yeah, good for you for, for, for recognizing this need and and for addressing it.
Speaker 2: So, um, so, as you, as you think about the um, the work that you're doing at Wigglework and your, your experience in kind of organizational systems and what you've labeled as human-centered progress, how do you identify where to start?
Speaker 2: Because so often I feel like that's the issue, like we know there's an issue but we don't know where it falls on the level of priority.
Speaker 2: We don't really know where to start.
Speaker 2: We need kind of that help prioritizing.
Speaker 2: How do you approach that conundrum as kind of that systems person?
Speaker 1: Yeah, so I've been told that my superpower is being able to see the end of the book, and how to start that to get to the end.
Speaker 1: Where I struggle is getting people along fast enough to be able to see the chapters in between, and so I think you have to start by having an end game, right.
Speaker 1: If we don't know where we want to get, how do we possibly pick a starting point to work toward that?
Speaker 1: And also the idea that it's never going to be perfect, right.
Speaker 1: But getting started and taking that action rather than delaying to your point about taking seven years to get that child care center in place and ready to break ground we just have to get started, and it doesn't have to be the perfect spot.
Speaker 1: So I think that flexibility and confidence in anywhere is better than nowhere is really the best place to start.
Speaker 2: Oh my gosh, like I said, kindred spirits, I couldn't agree more.
Speaker 2: Sometimes the most important action is that you just take a step, whether it's the exact perfect step forward or not.
Speaker 2: And so, yeah, I want to unpack this a little bit, because I think I know we're talking specific to, like daycare and the work that you know, wiggle work.
Speaker 2: But, like the reality is, I feel like this is so much of HR in general, because there's so much of these things that we do that are they're fairly vague, right, like we have this end goal, like the end goal might be, we're trying to reduce turnover by whatever percent, because we know turnover is expensive and terrible and we can't train well.
Speaker 2: So when every time somebody leaves, leaves, they get worse training, the new hire gets worse training, and there's all these like there's all these things we're trying to do at HR, but so often we're dealing with organizational decisions that are very short-sighted.
Speaker 2: You know, we might know that it's a three-year vision to achieve our goal, but we got to make the quarterly results right, or we get this flavor in a month issue, or you've got to do this is what's most important this month to this leader.
Speaker 2: So we go chase that way and then kind of avoid what we know is the bigger goal.
Speaker 2: So, as you're thinking about systems and you're thinking about the work that you do, how do you help that kind of these people who are to pull in a lot of different directions, where we've got all these different priorities and I've got a team that maybe doesn't see the forest from the trees or doesn't see this kind of this end destination.
Speaker 2: How can we help our organizations overcome that?
Speaker 1: Help them get out of their own way, simplify their thoughts with it.
Speaker 1: We don't have to have a policy in place before we start something.
Speaker 1: In fact, it's probably better if we figure out the policy along the way, because then we know what we need to have included in it.
Speaker 1: It seems to me like we get caught and hung up a lot in semantics, and I get it.
Speaker 1: Hr people are perfectionists, they care deeply about people and they don't want to mess it up.
Speaker 1: But often that's where things get messed up is we take too long or we try to have every single piece spelled out, and that's impossible.
Speaker 1: People are messy and we have to acknowledge that people are messy and lead from that positioning if we're going to get anywhere.
Speaker 2: Totally.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I couldn't agree.
Speaker 2: Couldn't agree more.
Speaker 2: We probably don't have time to talk about like policies and like my vitriol for for this policy, first approach, but I couldn't agree.
Speaker 2: Like policies have a place, compliance has a place, you know, like all this stuff does.
Speaker 2: It does matter, but it makes no sense to try to build a structure for a policy when you don't even know the full picture of what you're doing, right.
Speaker 2: And you don't have to have a policy when you don't even know the the full picture of what you're doing right.
Speaker 2: And you don't have to have a policy to give direction to people, right, like that's the other thing, like these are human beings.
Speaker 2: We're messing.
Speaker 2: We don't necessarily know, know the answers, um so okay.
Speaker 2: So for those of us that because so I think there's my theory is there's two camps of hr, right, like there's the, there's like the, the HR that's like like policies are necessary evil.
Speaker 2: And then there's like HR that's like they like to lead with, like got to have policies and have everything completely documented.
Speaker 2: You know, and I and I I'm not saying that one is right or wrong, but I'm saying that there's kind of like, there's a happy balance.
Speaker 2: So, for those that are on the policy person side of the coin, and as you're helping these organizations, what's your approach to help them overcome that fear or that resistance?
Speaker 2: Because there's a lot of us right.
Speaker 1: There's a lot of us in that camp.
Speaker 1: I think you have to understand the drivers behind why they feel that way.
Speaker 1: I think a lot of the people that give HR a bad name are people who have that thought process because they're very type A, they like control, they saw HR as an opportunity to be in a position of control and, quite honestly, those are people that I probably will not work with if I have a choice, because fundamentally we disagree about why we're in the seat that we're in.
Speaker 1: You know, I have always been unapologetically, employee first and I know that that's not an easy seat to sit in and it's caused a lot of problems for me as an employee.
Speaker 1: But ultimately, I care about creating a great experience where people spend majority of their time, and if I'm not driving an organization in that direction, where we can see that you can have a good employee experience and that also limits your liability from a legal standpoint, then we're not going to work well together.
Speaker 1: So I don't want to say, like, throw the baby out with the bathwater.
Speaker 1: All of those people should go away, because of course, we do have a very structured system that we need to follow in a lot of places.
Speaker 1: But I think we have to drive the conversation in a way that makes sense, both for who we are fundamentally and what we're trying to accomplish as practitioners, and understanding what are we going to need to bring that person along with us.
Speaker 1: And if that person is very, very rule control driven, then you need to speak that language too, but try to do it in a way that helps them to understand.
Speaker 1: I guess the power from a policy standpoint in building the people into that process rather than being fearful of consequences when something goes awry.
Speaker 2: Right, right, yeah, I know those people.
Speaker 2: You know those HR people.
Speaker 2: I I mean it just like I can't tell you.
Speaker 2: It takes about two seconds when I'm interacting with an HR professional to figure out are they like, are they somebody I want to associate with or not.
Speaker 2: And so often it's about like you can just sense that they like they love the power, they love the control, they want to be in charge, they want to tell people what to do, boss them around.
Speaker 2: You know I'm here to protect the company.
Speaker 2: You know I'm not on anyone's side.
Speaker 2: I'm here to enforce the rules.
Speaker 2: You know it's like I'm like cool, great, see you later.
Speaker 2: I'll talk to you never, right, like it's like these are just not my people.
Speaker 2: There's a lot of them in HR.
Speaker 2: I mean, there really are.
Speaker 2: They're probably not listening to this podcast right now, so I think I can probably speak freely.
Speaker 2: Like you know, don't be an HR asshole.
Speaker 2: But I also think the reality is that's a large part of the corporate population as well.
Speaker 2: Like there's a lot of senior leaders that are in that exact headspace and a lot of times, I think a lot of the frustrations I deal with and other HR professionals deal with in kind of the corporate setting is you have to work with these people and you have to like find ways to like overcome these kind of silly approaches.
Speaker 2: So, so what?
Speaker 2: What advice do you give us when we don't have a choice to but but to work with these people?
Speaker 2: And I know you like you're, you're, you're like, like I'm like sitting here, I'm just like you know, hats off, you did it.
Speaker 2: You can choose not to work with those people, but for those of us that can't, what guidance would you give us?
Speaker 1: I think you have to lead from authenticity right of you can be courteous, you can know your shit better than they do and you can show them the results, and that's really all you can do, right, like you don't have to try to play a game against them or try to out people, please, because they're always going to be saying the right thing in front of the right people, because that's the only people they care about, and I don't know, I'm not interested in playing that game, but I can still.
Speaker 1: I can still interact with you in a way that's respectful, while placing boundaries in place, and I think that that's the boundary piece is really really hard, but that's maybe the most important piece, because otherwise there's no shame for them in trying to step around you or above you.
Speaker 1: So you just have to be better than them and, honestly, it's not that hard, because usually they're just a yes person and strategy is always going to win out if you have the skills to be able to communicate that strategy going to HR.
Speaker 2: You know, and we can unpack that.
Speaker 2: I know you're a, you know you went to college for psychology, so we can unpack like all the psychological, like trying to heal, you know, your, your, your childhood trauma, wounds, whatever, like your people pleasing because it gave you accolades when you were a child, et cetera.
Speaker 2: But there's a lot of us in HR, right, myself included.
Speaker 2: I'm kind of a natural kind of people pleaser, um, but I think the reality is like if you say yes too much, if you are just like a, you're a yes person, eventually people will not come to you for what you are most important, which is giving advice, right, helping support your team, like being a, you know, sounding board true decisions and ideas and thoughts.
Speaker 2: And hey, what do you think the team's going to think about this decision?
Speaker 2: How does this feel to you?
Speaker 2: Those are these kinds of things that, in my opinion, is where we add value.
Speaker 2: So, if you're a yes person or you're a people pleaser and I guess the question that I would ask is a question one of my mentors asked me a long time ago and to this day it still leaves a ripple and that is who are you and what do you stand for, because if you are just a yes person, the answer is I don't know and nothing, so which is a miserable place to be, and I've been there.
Speaker 1: I think there are people who are interested in contemplating that question and there are people who don't care, and maybe that's the distinction.
Speaker 2: I like it.
Speaker 2: Okay, Paul, that's right.
Speaker 2: A little bit more so for the people that don't give a shit, they're just happy to just fill the role, smile, it fits my worldview and I can go to work and be miserable and go home and complain about work and that's just the life that I'm okay with.
Speaker 2: Yeah, what do you do?
Speaker 2: How do you?
Speaker 2: How do you drive change in those organizations?
Speaker 1: So I'll flip that on you a little bit.
Speaker 1: I think the ones who are miserable are the ones who care, who have to work with those people.
Speaker 1: I think those people close their eyes and they can go to bed at night okay, I like that.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so, the so, the, the, the assholes that don't give a shit are the ones that are blissfully ignorant because they just don't care.
Speaker 2: There's, there's comfort in ignorance.
Speaker 2: There is totally.
Speaker 2: Yeah, there's a value in not giving a shit.
Speaker 2: Um so, but for those of us that can't not give a shit, what do we do?
Speaker 1: I think for me, the most freeing thing has been starting to realize who those people are and that I can't change them and I'm not going to fight it anymore, which has also again caused a lot of problems for me, which has also again caused a lot of problems for me.
Speaker 1: But coming out on the other side of it now I feel so much better because I know in my gut I cared for the right reasons and I'm working toward making change for the right reasons versus just following along with the status quo, and that's the most comfort I can take at this point, I guess, is that I do give a shit and that that's a good thing, it's not a bad thing.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so I'm fascinated in some of this.
Speaker 2: You know some of this research and I, you know, I certainly have my own personal opinions around it.
Speaker 2: But, um and we talked about this a little bit when I in my disrupt talk where which is that people who are acting outside of their own integrity and playing a role at work like they're on, they're almost like an actor at work or on a team's call or whatever um, that's just going to burn you out, you're just going to be miserable.
Speaker 2: And I think that is a lot of people that really do care, and that's why we see so much burnout in HR.
Speaker 2: That's why we see a lot of turnover in HR positions, because it's people who care and are just looking for help.
Speaker 2: And one of the things I want to talk about, like the thread I want to pull on there, is related to some of your work in human-centered systems, and I know that you did, you know you've done a lot related to kind of employee well-being and so for those of us that are kind of in that camp where we're a little bit burned out, we feel like we have to play a role.
Speaker 2: We're putting a mask on at work most of the time.
Speaker 2: We feel like we have to play a role.
Speaker 2: We're putting a mask on at work most of the time, you know.
Speaker 1: What guidance would you give us as it relates to, like how do we, how can we build a system or an environment where we can thrive, where we can actually care and not feel helpless?
Speaker 1: That is a big, big question, I mean.
Speaker 1: I think you're choosing authenticity is important, right?
Speaker 1: You know, being able to at least find ways that you can be yourself, if it's showing your tattoos, or you know, taking that little moment of rebellion to stand up against the weird thing that someone said that you're like, I don't think that makes sense and you don't have to be a jerk about it, right?
Speaker 1: But like, where are the places that we can start to push back and find other people who are like us in those organizations?
Speaker 1: Because then we can start to build our own little pod that can gain influence and bring others like us in.
Speaker 1: And at one point, at some point, one of those is going to win out, right?
Speaker 1: Either we're going to leave because we broke and we want to go somewhere else, and maybe that was the right choice, but if we can try to use our power for good, find other people who also feel the same way, at least there's comfort in knowing I'm not crazy.
Speaker 1: Other people also care.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that kind of reminds me of the Fred Rogers quote right, like in a crisis, go find the helpers and that'll help, you see your way through.
Speaker 2: Right, like, we do exist.
Speaker 2: And I'm a, I'm a big believer, like I'm kind of a.
Speaker 2: I'm a, maybe a, you know, an over, uh, an overwhelming optimist at times, or maybe overly optimistic at times.
Speaker 2: But, you know, the reality is I truly believe that I think most people do have good intentions, right?
Speaker 2: Um, it's just the way that those behaviors and actions present themselves don't necessarily show that, and so I think so much of it is finding, like, finding your, yeah, you know, your group, your people that that align with you, the people that do allow you to kind of be your own weird authentic self.
Speaker 2: And I side note, there are times where you got to mask up, right, like I think about.
Speaker 2: Like, like, every time I have to fire somebody, it's horrible, freaking horrible.
Speaker 2: And the other piece of advice one of my mentors gave me was the minute that it's not horrible, go find a new job.
Speaker 2: Right, like everybody should hate terminating people.
Speaker 2: That's like, yeah, that's horrible.
Speaker 2: A lot of times you have to put a mask on for that, right, like you can't let your full authentic self show it, you have to put a little bit of you know.
Speaker 1: It's like parenting right Like you can't.
Speaker 1: You have to show confidence even when you're not.
Speaker 1: You have not met Lisa Hannum, I don't believe, but she spoke at Disrupt Minneapolis last year and talked about welcome to the table.
Speaker 1: We're all terrified and, I think, recognizing that everybody, everybody is just trying to figure it out and you don't want to show your chaos Like that's.
Speaker 1: I think that that's a skill that is really important.
Speaker 1: So I appreciate you clarifying that that authenticity doesn't mean like, well, I'm a Muppet and everything is not higher.
Speaker 2: I will say one of the most, like maybe one of the more important decisions I made in my career related directly to this, which was, um, I am going to be 100% authentic about what I believe to be true and what I don't feel like I have enough information to know, right, and I think that that's that's a really important distinction where, like I think, a lot of times in HR, we're trying to figure out what's going on, trying to figure out how people are feeling, trying to figure out behaviors.
Speaker 2: A lot of times it's like holding a cloud because you don't really necessarily know.
Speaker 2: Now, that being said, there are ways to get reasonably comfortable that what you believe is correct, but at a certain point you're still operating off intuition a lot of times, right, and that's where, like I think you and I would agree, like that's where, like having the right system in place really matters, right.
Speaker 2: So, as you think about that and you think about kind of the new world of work and the work that you're doing with organizations and helping them kind of figure out these human centered programs, what are some of these organizational systems that you recommend that we invest our time and energy kind of figuring out or building within our organizations so we can operate with the best data that we can get and make sure that we are making really good, like broad, human centered decisions, as opposed to listening to, like you know, the squeaky wheels that get the greases and to use that you know colloquial saying.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you know the average person isn't going to tell you what they need, right?
Speaker 1: They're going to expect that.
Speaker 1: You already understand that, and we need to think that way about human data as well.
Speaker 1: If you're getting your data from a survey, you're doing it wrong because that's only going to give you a sliver of truth.
Speaker 1: Well, there's so much context behind any response, given whether it's a truthful response or a protective response, and so I think, recognizing that we probably have more data available to us at HR than any other department has and we squander it that is one of my big soapbox of, like you know, if you're looking at benefit data, you're looking at 401k utilization data.
Speaker 1: One of my favorite things to tell everyone to look at is are people actually changing their contributions or their designations for their retirement fund?
Speaker 1: Get access to that.
Speaker 1: There's no way you can't track that data down by talking to one person, probably, and you will learn so much about the financial health of your people by understanding that If everyone's putting their 3.5% at hire into a target fund and they never move it ever again, that is not a very financially savvy group of people and there's a lot of ways that you can support them and understand them more effectively.
Speaker 1: Take that same idea into your health data, into your PTO data.
Speaker 1: The other one that I get really crazy about is you should not have all of your PTO being designated six months in advance.
Speaker 1: If people don't have the ability to say today is not a good day, I can't come, that is a problem, and you can see that in the data of when our request turned in versus when is that being taken?
Speaker 1: So, starting to think differently about.
Speaker 1: Where are we getting our data from?
Speaker 1: How can we try to poke holes in our data to see if we're on the right track or if we're following a red herring?
Speaker 1: That is all really important.
Speaker 1: One of my favorite exercises to do in speaking is trying to work through an example where people follow their gut right and people want to just prove that what they think to be true is what's true.
Speaker 1: We don't actively think about disproving what we think is true to make sure that we know it's true.
Speaker 1: We don't actively think about disproving what we think is true to make sure that we know it's true, and so that's a really fun exercise to do with HR people.
Speaker 1: Coming back from an example I did in 300-level psych classes to show that we are really fallible in how we follow our gut versus making sure that our gut is founded in accuracy and trying to think about it differently.
Speaker 1: That way, I think the two theories I get really excited about one the Dunning-Kruger effect right.
Speaker 1: The less we know about something, the more certain that we have it all figured out we are.
Speaker 1: So when you start to question things, you're on the right track.
Speaker 1: That's exactly what you should be doing.
Speaker 1: It shows that you know enough about that.
Speaker 1: And the other is Occam's razor and usually the most simple.
Speaker 1: This most simple answer is probably the most likely answer and getting out of our own heads to think was this ill intent?
Speaker 1: What is going on?
Speaker 1: Those things are really really important, especially when we're tackling some of those big issues within the company, especially if there's any sort of questions about culture and how people are feeling about their place of work.
Speaker 2: Totally, I love it, I love it.
Speaker 2: I'm going to take it one step further and say here's the deal HR professionals listening to this, or people leaders, or anybody.
Speaker 2: The reality is some of us aren't very good at this, neither are our teams, and so, like I actually think we have a mandate and a call to action as HR professionals to make sure that we broadcast that out to our teams so that they're not falling prey to the Dunning-Kruger effect or confirmation bias or whatever kind of psychological you know term you want to place on it.
Speaker 2: The reality is we should know this stuff, like we should be the practitioners that understand human behavior better than anybody else in our company, and we should be the ones kind of like shouting from a rooftop like wait a minute, wait a minute, wait a minute.
Speaker 2: Don't outsmart your common sense.
Speaker 2: This is way more complicated than it needs to be.
Speaker 2: The reality is they just told us they feel like they should be paid more, and here's the market data they should probably be paid more.
Speaker 2: This isn't, you know, this isn't some grandiose strategic plan to go.
Speaker 2: You know, do whatever right.
Speaker 2: They're just literally like we should probably do this.
Speaker 2: And oh, by the way, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, like here's all the data that supports it, right?
Speaker 2: Or, yeah, the fact that this entire population hasn't increased their 401k contributions.
Speaker 2: Oh, by the way, I can go see 401k loan data.
Speaker 2: Oh, wow, we've got 25% of this specific group of people that are taking a 401k loan.
Speaker 2: That might be an issue.
Speaker 2: We should use that as a leading indicator that potentially there's some wage issues that we need to go take a look at right, like that's a really valuable proactive hr product.
Speaker 2: There's.
Speaker 2: There's all these sorts of things that we can do and we should do, but many of us, I think, are comfortable just saying, yeah, this is what it is, it's the way it is and that's what.
Speaker 2: So I want to.
Speaker 2: I want to talk about this.
Speaker 2: You mentioned this already.
Speaker 2: You mentioned being employee first.
Speaker 2: You know and, and, and you see this, you see all this stuff out there.
Speaker 2: Right, it was like HR should be.
Speaker 2: Hr is neutral, hr works for the company.
Speaker 2: Hr should be employee first.
Speaker 2: Walk me through your theory of employee first HR and what that means for you and why you believe that HR should be that.
Speaker 1: If you pay attention to the research, you should know that that's true.
Speaker 1: When we talk about 70 plus percent of people being disengaged at work and the billions of dollars that's costing us and lost productivity, it only makes sense that building a system where employees are involved and considered has huge financial returns to the company, and so I think we've gotten in this place where we think that there is some us versus them, but it's really us and them, and it always has been.
Speaker 1: Especially in a time when there's so much distrust of employees, of employees there's so much distrust of employers and whether or not employees are considered in the decisions being made.
Speaker 1: The companies that are going to win out are the ones that can show that it is us together and lead from that place.
Speaker 2: Absolutely so.
Speaker 2: I recoil, I get pissed when I hear this argument, because the answer to all these questions is yes.
Speaker 2: The answer is yes.
Speaker 2: I am here for the employee.
Speaker 2: The answer is yes.
Speaker 2: I am here for the company.
Speaker 2: The answer is yes.
Speaker 2: I'm here to be neutral.
Speaker 2: It's situational, right.
Speaker 2: Like people are messy, you can't say I'm totally polarized.
Speaker 2: I, I'm totally polarized over here.
Speaker 2: I'm totally polarized over here.
Speaker 2: My thesis, my theory, is that if you are making decisions in the context of what's right for my employees success, happiness, engagement, motivation that will unequivocally always ripple positively for the organization.
Speaker 2: But the reality of the job is sometimes you have to make tough decisions, right, but again, you still have to make it in the context of what's the best thing for the people in my company.
Speaker 2: If you're making decisions based on any different context, you're the wrong freaking job in my opinion.
Speaker 2: But that's just me.
Speaker 2: What do I know?
Speaker 1: No, I couldn't agree more.
Speaker 1: It's like hearing about mass layoff situations where people are finding out from a zoom call or they don't even get that because their computer just gets locked up and that's how they're finding out.
Speaker 1: You know, maybe some of those people are really happy to be done with your bs and that's great, but at least leave them feeling like you cared, that they were there in the first place.
Speaker 1: And it's not that hard to show that it's a tough decision.
Speaker 1: I think the default in trying to have that strong face or be that pillar when it's tough for you.
Speaker 1: I think sometimes we get in our head a little bit too much about what that looks like.
Speaker 1: And you can still be concise, thoughtful, and how would I like this to be handled if I were in that seat instead, if you're looking at it from that lens, you can still do the right thing, even when it's a hard thing to do.
Speaker 2: Right, right, I totally agree.
Speaker 2: I couldn't agree more and I think that, um, I think that this is a really great place to kind of leave it with people right, it's, it's, it's goes back to.
Speaker 2: In my opinion, it goes back to that like being authentic to yourself.
Speaker 2: You know, what do you believe to be true in your core?
Speaker 2: What is the data support?
Speaker 2: Have we eliminated all the biases?
Speaker 2: Are we making the right decisions for people?
Speaker 2: And then, at the end of the day, how are we actually treating people?
Speaker 2: And and you know, I tell people this all the time they ask, like, I tell, first of all, I tell them what my job is and they say, oh, my god, I wouldn't want to ever do that job.
Speaker 2: That sounds horrible.
Speaker 2: But I tell people everything I learned in my job I learned in kindergarten.
Speaker 2: Right, just because something's simple doesn't mean it's easy, um, and so you know, going back to everything I learned in my job, I learned in kindergarten, right, just because something's simple doesn't mean it's easy.
Speaker 2: And so you know, going back to the golden rule, going back to people first, like you know, be kind.
Speaker 2: All these things, in my opinion, are what we need to be for our organization.
Speaker 2: So thank you for supporting that work, and I can't wait to see what wiggle work turns into.
Speaker 2: We're all going to say, yeah, we knew Callie.
Speaker 2: We knew Callie when she was just starting this thing.
Speaker 2: With that being said, I appreciate that.
Speaker 1: I'm so grateful that there are people like you at the top of companies, showing what it can look like.
Speaker 1: I think there's a reason why we're seeing a lot of people heading up HR in big companies coming out of other areas and I know that people get really mad about that the head of sales or the head of marketing that's doing it and it's because they figured out something that a message of one hope that HR doesn't have to be this awful doom and gloom, you know, throw down the hammer sort of department, but also that people can rise to the top by having a people first mentality.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, you know we're in, we're in the holiday season, so for those of you that celebrate, you know, be a true believer, like we do exist.
Speaker 2: I did come out of IT and operations, though, so I can't like I'm in that camp, although I've been in HR for almost 20 years now.
Speaker 2: So it's, you know, it's, it's, I think I'm officially an HR professional.
Speaker 2: But yeah, we can, we can make change.
Speaker 2: So with that, callie, this is a great segue to our Rebel HR Flashroom.
Speaker 2: So I'm fascinated to hear your responses.
Speaker 2: Question number one where do we need to rebel?
Speaker 1: Everywhere.
Speaker 1: If you're not rebelling or thinking about where change needs to happen, it probably means you're a little too comfortable.
Speaker 2: I love it.
Speaker 2: I love it Be comfortable with discomfort, because the minute you rest on your laurel, something's going to go sideways.
Speaker 2: Question number two who should we be listening to?
Speaker 1: So I'm going to go a little bit off and say there's lots and lots of amazing people in HR and direct HR, supporting places that I could mention, but I'm going to mention the Brainy Business because maybe that's a place that your people haven't already found, but the intersection between economics and psychology is a really, really important place for HR people to be right now and she does a really, really great job introducing introducing HR people, I think, to some pretty cool concepts that can change the way we think about people operations.
Speaker 2: Yeah, no, I totally agree, and I think I think one of the most profound things you can do as HR professional is expand your aperture to other disciplines, because it all ties together back to human behavior.
Speaker 2: So like economics is a great example.
Speaker 2: I agree.
Speaker 2: I find like behavioral economics absolutely fascinating and I find that that informs a lot of the work I do as an HR professional.
Speaker 2: So final question how can our listeners connect with you, learn more and find out about Wigglework?
Speaker 1: Yeah, I spend too much time on LinkedIn, so that's an easy place to find me.
Speaker 1: I have not officially announced Wigglework.
Speaker 1: I want my website to be pretty, so you know I talk about not waiting to get started, but I need to have something, and so I will have an official announcement linking to my website all of that kind of stuff very, very, very soon.
Speaker 1: But LinkedIn is the best place to find me and probably will continue to be that for a while.
Speaker 2: Absolutely.
Speaker 2: We'll have a link to that in the show notes.
Speaker 2: Hop on in check it out.
Speaker 2: Follow Callie's work.
Speaker 2: I know that the videos from Disrupt Minneapolis are coming out here in the near future, so keep an eye open for that.
Speaker 2: Thank you so much for spending a few minutes with us here, Callie, and thank you for helping drive change in the world of HR.
Speaker 1: Thank you.
Speaker 1: I'm so grateful for the chance to talk with you and know that there's more of us out there.
Speaker 2: Power Thanks, all right, that does it for the Rebel HR podcast.
Speaker 2: Big thank you to our guests.
Speaker 2: Follow us on Facebook at Rebel HR podcast, twitter at Rebel HR guy, or see our website at rebelhumanresourcescom.
Speaker 2: The views and opinions expressed by Rebel HR podcast are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of any of the organizations that we represent.
Speaker 2: No animals were harmed during the filming of this podcast.
Speaker 2: Baby.