Episode 4: HR's Identity Crisis: Are We Business Leaders or Not?

In this episode of Breaking Views, Theresa Fesinstine and Anthony Onesto explore the intersection of HR, business strategy, and the evolving role of human capital.

The conversation begins with reflections from the Troop HR Retreat, highlighting the importance of connection, intentional design, and creating space for meaningful dialogue beyond traditional conference formats.

From there, the discussion expands into a broader critique of today’s HR landscape. They examine the gap between HR-focused content and true business fluency, questioning whether current conferences and conversations are adequately preparing HR leaders to operate as strategic business partners.

The episode also dives into topics like resilience, leadership mindset, and the need for more rigorous, standardized ways to measure human capital’s impact on business outcomes.

Throughout, the conversation challenges assumptions, surfaces tensions, and pushes toward a more integrated view of HR as a core driver of organizational success.

A wide-ranging, candid discussion that connects what’s happening in the world of work to what’s needed next.

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:11

Welcome to my latest breaking views. Are you ready to chat today?

SPEAKER_02 0:16

I am ready to go. Let's do this.

SPEAKER_01 0:19

All right. All right. So I just got back from you know, the past desert three or four weeks have been like retreatslash conference season. And so I just got back from Troop Retreat, which was phenomenal as always.

SPEAKER_02 0:33

It was uh, you know, desert, right?

SPEAKER_01 0:36

I was, yeah. We were in Arizona this year.

SPEAKER_02 0:38

You were cooking meth with one of your students from the university. No.

SPEAKER_01 0:42

Exactly.

SPEAKER_02 0:44

Walter White.

SPEAKER_01 0:46

I was probably the other guy.

SPEAKER_02 0:48

Right. Just to be clear, Teresa does not cook meth. It was a it was a breaking bed if you haven't seen it. Yeah. I do not extra as far as I know, Teresa does not cook meth.

SPEAKER_01 0:58

You know, you know what? I feel like AI could help me figure that out though. Um no, so it was funny because I I feel like there are a few places in the world where like just the physical topography are very different. Um, I felt that the first time when I traveled out after college, I went to Ireland for about a month, a few months uh on my own, just to kind of like get my travel, you know, see a new place in the world. And it wasn't until I got the west coat to the west coast of Ireland and I was like, wow, this just like looks different. Same feeling in Iceland. Wow, this looks really like there's a lot of places where it's like, oh yes, it's green and it's lush and it's beautiful, or it's whatever. This was another example of that like difference in topography, where I told my husband, I was like, I feel like I'm just in like the valley of boulders. It was like hills and mountains, but it looked beautiful. Made up of boulders. It was so crazy. It was beautiful. Oh my gosh.

SPEAKER_02 1:58

I get that same feeling when I go into the subway here in New York. It just feels so safe and full of boulders. Yeah. It's nice. The smell.

SPEAKER_01 2:09

It was funny because I had to take the train when I got back into JFK. And I haven't been on a train since since COVID.

SPEAKER_00 2:16

Huh. Wow.

SPEAKER_01 2:18

I refuse to get the subway in the city now. I just I can't like trauma drama.

SPEAKER_02 2:24

Yeah, I mean, listen, I think it's you know, media hype as we always talk about it. It's pretty safe. I'm I feel pretty safe. So I joke a lot about it, but it's more in the smell and the heat, especially in the summer. But yeah, so what what did you um I'm gonna put you on the spot because this is what we do here in Breaking Views. What did you learn? Like, what what did you pull? The one thing that maybe itched on your brain from your troop retreat. I I'm I'm sad I missed it because it looked like really cool. Like Tracy and team has they have done an amazing job building that community, but also like the experiences and especially the um the virtual events where they have a former CPO who interviews CEOs, like amazing content there, without a doubt.

SPEAKER_01 3:09

It's really, really amazing. Um, no, I think first of all, you know, for those that are listeners that aren't members of Troop HR, you know, without it being a sales pitch, because Troop did not sponsor this conversation, but I will say that from the community perspective, in terms of peers that have been in your shoes that are curious to both learn and share, it's top notch, no one better ever. And in terms of putting together time and space for people to connect and not filled with back to back-to-back panels, I was talking to a friend and I was like, she's like, Oh, how was the conference? And I was like, you know, they call it a retreat, and it really is. It's like you have a like a message in the morning. The first thing we did on day one was play poker, learn how to play poker. It was so much fun.

SPEAKER_00 3:58

Cool.

SPEAKER_01 3:58

Um, then they have a breakout session for 90 minutes, lunch, then another breakout, which ends up like 1:30 or two, and then it's like go on a hike, go to the pool, go connect with one another and have fun. And then we get together for a brilliant dinner. And uh, same thing, day two. Day two was nice. I heard they had one of the best presenters talk about AI. Um wonder who that can be got a little of the clamp because it was a dream of hers to be able to speak on the main stage and to do a main stage session there was really congrats to whomever that is. It was me.

SPEAKER_02 4:36

Oh, shocking.

SPEAKER_01 4:38

Me, and I just like the love that I got after the fact, after like, you know, I tend to stress because I ran a new program and I had specific exercises based on different fluency levels, and so it was a lot to dynamically figure out, and it worked really well and everybody celebrated. But that's awesome. If I say like the thing I walked away with, so the two sessions that I found most impact, Jen Fox. Um, some of you may know her, she did an amazing session on resilience uh as sort of the pre-pre conference or pre-retreat opening. And the thing that really struck me about that is one of the areas that I have a tendency to over-index on is tenacity. And I never would have said that before, but not that I wouldn't over-index, but that it was like a part of this resilience set. Like in my mind, I'm like, I'll work my ass off until three in the morning to get shit done. And that was like a power move in my mind. And recognizing that starting my own business, doing putting that kind of tenacity into the work and into the I also very much highly indexed on collaboration and connection, like those two things when you over-index how it pulls from the other areas of your life, like health, or you know, those things that also need to have balance in them. And so that was really meaningful.

SPEAKER_02 6:09

And I think that, and then I did a um Emily Golden and she and she was saying that's a negative, like because you're over-indexing here, you're underindexing on these other important elements.

SPEAKER_01 6:21

Exactly. So the connection that we made was like if you're over-indexing and working until consistently worked, overworking or applying too much energy here, then you end up not getting enough sleep, which impacts your health. And not when you don't get enough sleep, you don't show up as the self that you want to during the day. So maybe you're um you're less collaborative or you're more you get frustrated easily. And so that impacts your relationships. And so it's like this how do we find a balance between yes, you want the tenacity you need it if you're gonna own a business and even if you work inside another business. But how do we find more? And it's not even she wasn't even saying like Teresa, you need to do X. It was more like observe these different aspects and how they impact one another, and then how that results in uh either a higher sense of resiliency or not. And I think it you know, it really made sense. And then Emily Golden, um, she has a business, the Golden Rule, which I think is like just like did she change her name to Golden just so that she could have that that would be awesome, right? Like that's a great name. She did a um a meditation session, a breath breath work session that I think to me it was more about the feeling where everybody is right now and just needing connection. You know, it's like there's enough bad news, trauma, challenges, stories, whether it's layoffs here or the economy here, or you know, whatever the fuck it is. And I think people just needed a space to like say, hey, my brother-in-law passed away two years ago and I'm still feeling it, or you know, just like my dad's dealing with his health in a really way and it's causing rifts in the family that are fucking with my head when I'm also supposed to be doing this other stuff. So it I think the key for me at the retreat was that it's really about moments of connection versus like you compare that to transform, where transform was really about like panel after panel after panel after panel.

SPEAKER_02 8:33

Right. And selective connection. We've talked about this.

SPEAKER_01 8:36

Yeah, yeah, exactly.

SPEAKER_02 8:37

So yeah, like small little pockets of clicks. Yeah, when when you said that about you know going into educational conferences and then having room to go on hikes, like that's I think that's the big mistake of transform. Now, can you do that at scale? Because, you know, the troop retreat very candidly looked like it was, you know, one-tenth of transform, at least in terms of attendance. And maybe that's the intention of it. But you know, I think that was the missing piece of transform. I would, I would pull less content and more connection in unique ways. You don't necessarily have to go to a bar or a pool or whatever it is, but like, you know, the walks and and just the scenic area of of that where you were in the desert again, just just from the pictures, just looked absolutely beautiful. But I love that they're they're focusing on that because that to me, the connection is important with people, but it's I think that's when you get the most value, is when your people are stripped from, you know, listen, I think your whatever you did was probably amazing. Um, and you should never fear getting into the big stage, and you should just look for bigger and bigger stages because you deliver great stuff always. And I'm not, you know, I don't blow anybody uh, you know, blow smoke up anyone's rear on anything, and I do believe that, but I think transform could use a little bit of that connection piece. I think it's it's one of the missing pieces. Now, I I will ask you, like as you were talking, and I always come to this, and it's one of the things that I will be openly and publicly um critical of HR-ish conferences. So, do you do you think at a whenever CEOs get together, they talk about resilience and do breathing exercises? Like, I'm wondering, like, is that is it too much? And maybe we do need this, and it's it and this might be a me thing, not that we need to go alpha in anybody in these things, but like, or take selfies, honestly. Like, do you like you never see CEOs like, hey, I'm at a conference? No. Um, I I again I don't know if that's right or wrong, and I'm just being picky, but you know, I feel like yeah, I'm not sure what I'm trying to say here because I'm gonna get myself in trouble. But uh, you know, it's it's like do you understand what I'm saying? Like, I feel like it, and maybe that the intent of the retreat is exactly that.

SPEAKER_01 11:05

Question, maybe they need to do that more. Maybe exactly the alpha perspective of like, hey, we're our we're gonna first of all, when you I think this is something to navigate for myself. When you said that, I immediately thought of a group of men.

SPEAKER_00 11:23

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 11:25

Instead of seeing a blended gender mix of CEOs, which absolutely exist.

SPEAKER_02 11:31

And I forget, I forget who it was. So I'd interrupt you just quickly there because there was someone that did that. Like they went through a story and never said the genders of the characters in the story, and then made you write down what you visualized. And it was like a plane situation, like you're on an airplane, you're running late, you know, and you you run into the captain, and and like everyone, not even women, the captain was male, right? Like, so it's interesting. Like when I say alpha, and that's why I said alpha, because I didn't mean men, I meant like sort of just like an alpha CEO kind of persona.

SPEAKER_01 12:09

Um I only realized after, like, I know you said you didn't specify, but that's what came to mind.

SPEAKER_00 12:15

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 12:16

Like we don't even the men that were at Transform or at um retreat. I don't know that I saw a lot of like selfies. I mean, maybe that's a unique thing. It's like, I don't know why. Why don't men take selfies? My husband's never like, let's take a selfie, right? Like, why don't you take selfies? Are you a selfie guy?

SPEAKER_02 12:35

I a friend of mine forces me into them, so I'll do them. I don't think I would initiate them.

SPEAKER_01 12:41

Initiate them.

SPEAKER_02 12:42

I don't. I don't. Actually, with my kids, I do, because I goof on them and they want I wanted to embarrass them. So I I do when when only my my children, because I like pretending to be cool and not, you know, and and at the same time embarrass them. So anyway, I just like I'm I'm like the like I guess my point is like, can we can we have both where it's like and I do love, I think that was the big gap in transform was the connection. I love that stuff because again, that's where the value, that's where the connection exists. Like to me, and that's what I think CEO conferences and these other, they you know, they'll they say golfing and other things, like these the reason why they say deals are made on the golf course is because it's it's that intimate connection you make. So I I think that's an important part of it. But it's also like, you know, the topics we're covering in some of these conferences. Like, can we level up a little bit in terms of the topics?

SPEAKER_01 13:39

That's a great conversation to have. Because I was, you know, I was talking with a few people that attended both, you know, and we were talking about the conversations and the, you know, what's on stage and what's new, and what are the things that we need to be thinking about? What are some of the topics that you feel as you look at the agenda for different things? Like, what are the topics that you're not seeing that you feel like would whether it's a you know, CEO conference, product or like whatever it is? Like we all you can create a universal across. And I, you know, I'll just go ahead and say AI is at every fucking conference, and I get it, and I'm the one who's speaking.

SPEAKER_02 14:19

But outside of what are the meaningful things that no, like I'm I think it's easy for me to focus on HR conferences and basically, you know, this is why I created with Troop HR, the CEO Whisperer series, because I'm like, we should talk more about business. Like, that was why you and I are doing this. It's why we're not like, hey, I was an HR person and this is what I've done. It's like, no, okay, what's happening in the world from a business perspective, and what do we think about it? And I think that is again, I think there's room of that against and as an adjacent to the resilience and the breathing and all that, like, but we're missing that piece. Like, even like just economics, you know, of human capital or just like more business-related conversations. Like, you know, the and I talk about this, I shared this yesterday on LinkedIn. I'm a huge fan of this company, Irrational Capital, because what they've done is they've created, and again, no, we don't have advertisers on the show yet. Um, but if they want to, I'm happy to take advertising money. Um, you know, I have college to pay for. Um, and it's, you know, what they have done is they've said, okay, there are seven dimensions of human capital that we know for a fact. They did work with JP Morgan, they have an ETF fund. Again, not an advertising. This is not financial advice, but they've been able to connect human capital to business alpha, meaning that if you do these things well, and they have what I shared on LinkedIn was their chart of their top 15 companies that score high on what they call their human capital factor in their ETF fund, large cap fund, and it actually outperformed the SP by four, four or five points. So it shows we have connection of human capital to business. Like, why aren't we talking about that? Like, that's that's the unlock, like that's the conversation I want to raise it to. Like, again, I think, and I don't know, I've never been to a CEO conference, so I'm speculating that they're talking about global business and trade and all these sort of other things that are on the minds of like that. I want to raise the bar to that, or whatever. I don't want to even say raise the bar because I think the other content is great. It's like adjacent to that. Like, I want more of that kind of content. Like, how do I make that? Like, that's what I'm talking about.

SPEAKER_01 16:46

Like, that it's like we need to do an unhr conference for HR because at HR conferences, it does have it does tend to be about the the work and the focus of HR leaders in their day-to-day. And I don't know how much that levels up HR leaders that's really solid. Now, I will say, I think that they're you know, if you've never been to in a space where you have had opportunity to get exposure to certain topics or, you know, the topics that I think need to be at more HR conferences are topics like supporting employees through different phases of their life. Like you're in a different human when you're in your 20s than in your 40s than in your 60s. How and that means things, topics that we haven't necessarily talked about, that people are we're recognizing, you know, differences in those life phases and the compensation slash rewards that we provide to those at different levels. There's conversations like how do we actually, you know, without throwing, you know, fish in a bucket to try to figure it out, you know, there are ways to improve the way that we look at compensation, the way that we look at communication and performance. The way we were talking about this, I was talking about this with a few former coworkers that used to work for, I worked at News America Marketing, which it was a division of News Corp for 15 years. I talked to one person who worked at a different division of News Corp and one person who worked in my division. We hired her when she was fresh out of college, and now she's done amazing things as a in recruitment. But we talked about the cadence that we had that made our business so incredibly successful. We were the second most profitable division of News Corp that nobody ever heard of. We were called News America Marketing, and we an $8 billion company within the threshold of News American, within the threshold of News Corp. But part of the reason was because we had a very specific cadence for communication in that company. It was every Monday a two-hour executive meeting, every Monday a director level and above management council, every Monday, communication went out to the organization on what was happening, not just with the company, but who was no longer with the company, who just got hired from the company, how many opings we had, what the sales numbers were for the week, the um opportunities that were every department submitted and every company.

SPEAKER_00 19:12

Yeah, you were talking business.

SPEAKER_01 19:14

We were talking business to everybody, and it was everybody's part of everybody's nomenclature and part of it. I've gone to companies afterwards, many of us have that have tried to implement that same thing, and the conversation is always the same. It's too much time. We can't dedicate that much to we have to meet every week, and you're like, right. That's that is the formula for successful, communicated, understanding business. We had incredibly low turnover. Um, and we had people, we had a sales development program of 800 plus people. There wasn't one person in that company, and the company was 25, 30 years old. We didn't, we maybe had two or three people in our sales development program all the way up to the second in command of the company that didn't start as an account coordinator. Every single homegrown. Yeah. So even if you were experienced sales, you started as an account coordinator and moved your way up.

SPEAKER_02 20:04

Interesting.

SPEAKER_01 20:05

There was a legacy about that, and everybody talked about the business, not just about their department or their function. And I think in HR, these conferences have a tendency to focus in on just the things that are in our domain. And so maybe we need an an HR HR conference to say we're just gonna talk about business.

SPEAKER_02 20:26

We're gonna talk about a media juggernaut. So we let's let's make it happen.

SPEAKER_01 20:30

No, uh it's so what are the things you would what would you want to see on that agenda, Anthony?

SPEAKER_02 20:36

Yeah, I I mean, listen, I would love sort of anything that you would you would cover like in the Wall Street Journal in sections, right? Like so the labor and the economy and global stuff, like global business, what's happening overall. I would I would include potentially, you know, financial statement 101 kind of thing, like how to read a PL or a balance sheet or something like that. And and just getting into the business and and always coming back to maybe like what what what I'm not seeing in conferences is it's a lot of AI, but none of it is like, all right, what is this world going to look like when we put humans next to AI? Like maybe there's some discussion around that, but I think like that like at a higher level, what does it mean when you have, and I've been very vocal about it. So some of this is recency bias because it's in my brain a lot these days, is when you have all these people unemployed, what are they doing? Like if you can't, if you can't buy stuff, like thinking like super high level, like what does the economy look like? Like again, maybe that's too meta and it's too high level, but I think that's that's what's missing. And and again, I don't I don't think it's an absence uh in place of. I think it's either adjacent or to your point, maybe it's just a different conference, but it's It's it's it's what those things uh like what it could be like whatever they discuss at Davos. I just want to level up the conversation. I think there's still a need to talk about what you just talked about, the operational pieces and how to make sure like there's room for that for Sherman, these other conferences. I think the the the the forward progressive things you're thinking about, like persona-led HR a la carte based on who you are, your age, whatever it is, your profile. Like I think that's super innovative. Like there's room for that. Um, but yeah, I don't, you know, like like any good ideator, I have no idea. I just know I like it.

SPEAKER_01 22:38

I think you do though. You just mentioned some really interesting things. And part of what I think would make it even better is I am I am done. Like, I don't know if it's my age, what I do. I am so done, like just sitting in a room and listening to somebody pontificate to me for an hour or a group of four people who have a very intentional reason for being there because they put money on the table to sponsor it, to just basically work around the edges to essentially sell me their product. But what if it was we're gonna get together and we're gonna talk about some really interesting topics in business, not just HR, in business. And it's gonna be fishbowl conversations where we've got people that have an interest exiting and entering the conversation. We're going to have um topic talks where it's like you're rotating different topics and you've got 20 minutes each to actually participate in a conversation. Here's some pre-work so that you can actually participate in the like something that like that's what I really like. Oh shit, I get to come in and talk about how even if it's you know, this is not just something that's HR related, although it's very central to HR, but like what is the impact, to your point, of the 200,000 plus half a million people that have been laid off or rift over the past year. What is the impact of that on the economy? And and then how do we, you know, I think the smart HR leaders are gonna figure out how to tie that back to their work and their world. Right.

SPEAKER_02 24:20

When that comes to them, they you know, instead of just being like, hey, okay, I'm going into rift mode, instead, let's have a discussion on this CEO, CFO, board, whomever is bringing this to you to be like, hey, is this the right decision for us? And by the way, I've noticed that when this happens, this happens. Or because of what's happening in Iran and the all, like all of these, like connecting these, I think it's just, and again, it might be too meta to a certain degree, but also to your point, like just these other, it's almost like you know, the MBA for HR. Like what, like, how do we, and there are a lot of HR folks that have this, like there's a lot of HR folks that that can talk business. So we'd have an endless amount of speakers for this kind of stuff. But I I and and it's not so much it's an absence in the profession, although I'd argue to a degree it is, it's an absence in in the content. Like, like I'll ask you a question. This is more rhetorical, you don't have to answer it, but like, when is the last conference you went to when you went when you were like, holy shit, I just learned something? Like I could, you could probably point out a book, maybe a research article, but when was the last time you went to a conference and you're like, man, that blew my hair back? Like that is now a thing. Like I am, you know, like the human capital factor I stumbled on. I didn't there that wasn't at a conference, um, and that blew my hair back. I'm like, this is, you know, what I'll call the algebra of people. Like, this is the equation that we're, you know, and and there's actually a bunch of investment firms that are like, shut up because we're using this to to be better than the other investment firms. Like, we're using this as our secret sauce. So anyway, I don't, I don't, I I like to double click a little bit more on it.

SPEAKER_00 26:07

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 26:12

We are onto something here because there there are, you know, it it goes back to a conversation I had um over at at retreat around the conversation on HR sort of quote unquote wants a seat at the table, right? And I always felt a little confused by that. But I don't think I realized for a lot of my career that the way that we operated at News America at this news corp company, HR was always at the table. They we were a part of all the strategic decision making. We so I I never I never perceived us as different, as not a part of the business.

SPEAKER_02 26:57

You weren't outside, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 26:58

Yeah, and once you sort of talk with other people, I think what I've realized is the more I hear people say speak from the context of looking for permission to run their HR function the way that they think is best, is maybe because these topics that are more business focused, they've not been exposed to. They haven't been invited to the to the business party, if you will.

SPEAKER_00 27:25

Right.

SPEAKER_01 27:27

But I think there's a a blend of that where you have to feel comfortable inserting yourself in the business. So great example. When I worked for a commercial real estate company, one of the things I always really appreciated was that I was invited um and asked for, because I was generally excited and curious about floor plans and the dynamics and the way that humans flow with one another in a space. And so I was able to be a part of literal floor designs and and not just the accoutrement of a space, but like literally the flow and like should we have a room here? Should we do this? And that was very much the business of bringing people in. Very unusual for me to be a part of that uh in a commercial real estate company. HR usually wouldn't be involved, but my CEO there, John Jonathan had this vision. And I and I, but I also think it's a combination of HR not just waiting to be asked, but saying, hey, that's something I'd like to be a part of.

SPEAKER_02 28:28

Go grab that chair. Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly. You know, the one thing that resonated with me years ago that I actually brought into Fresh Direct. So um Vinny Stabil was the founder, um, not founder, he was the VP or CPO of JetBlue, and he was an advisor of mine. And he brought me into an onboarding session for JetBlue when they first started. And in the onboarding session, they talked about Rasm and Chasm, revenue per air seat mile and cost per air seat mile or whatever it is. So they went into like, I don't want to say super detail, and but they they the one aha moment was teach employees how the business operates. Like, what is the business, the financial part of the business? Like, why is that chasm and the rasm so important? And and to me, I you know, I brought that into Fresh Direct, and that is always resonated with me. Like, to your point, being curious, like whenever I had an HRBP assigned to a group, I'm like, I want you to know more about their business. I want you to ask the entire group of leaders you work with, what newsletters do you read? What pay, you know, like at the time, newspapers, like what do you absorb? And that's what I did with CEOs. I'm like, what do you read? What do you and they're like Financial Times? And I'm like, I get the Financial Times literally paper version of Financial Times every day. And they read it to cover not everything super detailed, but and I'm not special, I'm just curious. Like you said, I think that was a key element of it. But you're right. Like, I think there is a um, I would say nine times out of ten, it hasn't been perceived as a strategic arm of a business, um, which is why I fall back to the human capital factor. I'm like, here, here it like unequivocally, human capital is your greatest advantage, even in the in the in the face of AI, in terms of creating business value that's better than everyone else. So why the heck aren't we focused on human capital? Who's the head of HR? Who are you hiring there? That kind of stuff. But it's also like one out of 10 is the person not, you know, not being curious.

SPEAKER_01 30:36

So um, I'm giving a lot of grace to the HR profession, but a lack of curiosity, or you know, I've said this before that, and I I'm sure I might get some non-fans as a result of this, but you know, it's easy to sit and say, gosh, we don't have time to do this, we don't have time to be strategic. The the day-to-day is so overwhelming. And I was we were both HR for many years, and I'm not saying it's not overwhelming and there wasn't a lot, but I do believe that once innovation starts to come, you've got to reckon with yourself to say, okay, if I now have the time to do that thing I've been saying I haven't had the time for, do I really feel confident that I'm able to do that thing? Can I be strategic? Do I know the questions to ask? So I think this idea of helping HR leaders not just be leaders in HR, but be leaders in an organization, be a business leader, a developer of revenue, understanding EBITDA, understanding the you know, the metrics of a business. And not I'm not saying there aren't many, many out there that do, but there are probably many more that don't. And so being a service to helping understand that that perspective to because you're right, it all ties back in with the people and the respect factor. I was also thinking about, and I know we're running out of time here, but I was also thinking about the idea that we keep in HR, we keep trying to find the correct nomenclature for the evolution of our function.

SPEAKER_00 32:10

Sure.

SPEAKER_01 32:10

And I and I don't really feel like I've seen that in other departments. You know, like marketing has been marketing, finance is finance. And it's this like the tug of who are you and what do you do and what's your role here? And you know, uh this like trying to rebrand ourselves so that we can have the respect and the you know, the business visibility that we feel we have deserved deserved for self- although I I would argue personnel, the branding from personnel to human resources to people.

SPEAKER_02 32:45

I I'm I'm in full agreement of that. Like I I don't want to be the chief personnel officer, but um how do you feel about human capital? Like I well, I was actually I was an early I forget which startup, but I was director of human capital because I wanted I I saw branding and semantics as being important. And so I was director of human capital. Um, because I wanted that sort of business, at least branding around what I was doing. But it's interesting they say that because I think HR, I think the fundamental problem with the rebranding is there isn't a consistent, like whether it's legal or agreed upon principles to which you are measuring human capital. So, CFO, you have gap accounting. There are certain principles. So at some point in the world, all the accountants got together. Man, what a party that must have been, right? All the accountants in the world coming together. I know, I'm just I love accountants. I was an accountant, by the way. I can make fun of accountants because I was an accountant. Isn't that the rule? Um so anyway, it's and they came together and go, all right, this like how we like, how do we recognize revenue? And what does this look like? And what does that look like? And they're all like, all right, do we agree? Yes, great. They now became gap principles. And so you can go to any company, and for you know, outside of we work with their what was it, earnings before community bullshit. Um, you know, like like you can to a degree look at every company and measure how they are doing based on these agreed-upon principles. Marketing, same kind of stuff. Like, hey, like it listen, it's a little squishy, but like qualified lead, marketing, qualified driven. Like all of them got together and said, okay, yeah, this is kind of what and and those things change over time, direct mail to email to what you know, social, all that kind of stuff. But it was always like, all right, we're gonna agree, and and the businesses would agree, okay, yes, that's what we're tracking. Human capital, there's no set standard. There's not the SEC doesn't even require other than headcount and some other things. Like, there's so I think the rebranding is is is more of a fundamental framework issue. Like, we should get together, like the accountants did, in the desert, um, because it just looked really nice, and be like, all right, this is, but it's also, you know, in fairness, nuanced to a certain degree, like revenue is revenue. But people got together and said, this is what we're gonna agree upon. These are gonna be the human capital standards that every company is gonna be measured on. And then once we start agreeing to that, the SEC agrees to it, or whatever it is, it just becomes common knowledge. Then there's gonna be some analyst or AI now is gonna go, all right, I want to measure your human capital, um, you know, your human capital metrics against your business metrics. And and like the irrational capital folks, someone's gonna go, oh shit. There's actually a correlation between doing these things good and the business. And all of a sudden, the world is gonna change. Like HR will be the most popular role, and we'll be on boards or whatever it is. Like, this isn't this is like this magical place I dream of in my brain. But you know what I'm saying? Like, but there's no print, like, and by the way, there's a couple of professors that tried, there's a bunch of effort trying to get some commonality, and the HR profession is pushing back on it because it's too much work to put these things together. So, anyway, that's my TED talk today. Thank you for coming.

SPEAKER_01 36:31

The the industry has tried, right? HRCI and and and SHERM to have these like in this similar vein of a CPO, although I hope probably not as uh not as uh challenging, restrictive, whatever it is. But I I I think that's a part of it, that every you have some companies that while in the finance space, some may be an old-fashioned finance manager, right? And some may be very modern and updated. In HR, you have the same thing, but it's dealing with the people. And so no matter where you are in a financial role, if you're a CPO uh or a CFO, you you understand that you're dealing with concrete numbers. At the end of the day, I can say this is the number.

SPEAKER_02 37:19

This is how we measure this. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 37:21

With a people team, C HR, whatever you have some team members out there that really operate and maybe have a title of a CHRO or a CPO or whatever, and they're still probably operating as benefits and payroll. And you have others who like, oh my gosh, I have a whole team of business partners and I'm really I don't do any of the day-to-day with the people with you know, one-on-one, I'm talking all strategy, it's all future business.

SPEAKER_02 37:52

And so the the uh and they both probably measure attrition differently and disagree. Is it monthly times 12 times this? Like, is it annualized? Is it monthly? How do we like there's no standard process for any of this? So we can look at any organization, pull out, I'm not saying 20 metrics, 10, whatever. You know, like most, you know, accounting folks obviously they have financial sheets, it's very specific, but you know, recognize revenue and ARR is a thing. And you can look at a company and you can look at revenue per employee and say, okay, we are we growing on an efficient clip because our revenue per employee is going up. Boom, done. Like that's an easy one. And then it's like, well, is this a headcount or is this not a headcount? Is this does it count as per diem or not? It's like, like, let's just get an agreement on these things. And then it doesn't matter if you're progressive or you're traditional, it's the same, like your way of attacking the problem or getting better at whatever that number is, whether you want to reduce that number uh or not, in some roles, you know, like I always talk about McDonald's, your drive-thru, you're okay if there's high attrition there because you don't want to be paying that person 30 bucks an hour because they've been there for 10 years. Like, that's not the motto. It doesn't work that way. But like, we should all agree on what those numbers are, and then you could like if you want 30 different paths to to impacting that number, I'm okay with it. You know what I'm saying?

SPEAKER_01 39:22

Like, so here's what I think we do to wrap up this episode, which has been as usual, topic upon topic, lots of lots to talk about every time. But I think that's what we do for next time, Anthony. We have two two things we have to attack. Number one, when and where is the unhr conference happening? And two, we at that conference are gonna come up with a list of here's what we believe are the 10 universal metrics around business success relative to human capital, even though I hate the term human capital because I think it just turns people into money. But we'll come up with a better name because there's a branding.

SPEAKER_02 40:04

Exactly. Where are we having this? Where is our conference? That's the most important.

SPEAKER_01 40:09

That'll take up a few minutes of our opening because I'm sure there will be a shit ton of other things to talk about on the breaking views.