[00:00:00] Speaker A: Sam.
Hello and welcome to tonight's episode of Pivotal Change. I'm your host, Ryan Kahn, and this is a show that is all about leadership. Business executives, people that want to have influence or grow their influence, and anyone that is just a leader invested in making people better or wants to find those one or two key points in their life that they can make their pivotal change to further their path to success. I've got a really great guest on the show tonight. She has a quite the interest in helping and serving people and just making lives better around them. Nicole and Anderson has led MEND hr, which is an HR recruiting and HR solutions. And she has some incredible expertise in her field. It's quite the entrepreneur and she does a lot of other things. She helps with human trafficking and rescuing people from sexual assault situations, in addition to one running a powerful company. So, Nicole, thank you so much for coming onto the show.
[00:01:22] Speaker B: Thank you so much for having me, Ryan. I'm happy to be here.
[00:01:25] Speaker A: Well, it's, it's my pleasure. I know that you've been all over the place, abc, NBC, the cw, things like that. And you're even the author of hrsx, which I think is a very catchy title. And so it's my pleasure to have you on the show. And what I'd like to do is I'd also kind of like to jump straight into the questions. Everybody knows we're always up against the, the minutes on the clock. And the other thing that I didn't tell you before when we first met was that I tell my audience to watch with a pen and paper. So anytime you have just a really good note or something, you can literally tell the audience, hey, write that down.
That'll help us lock in people on their growth. So let's talk HR and let's talk about leaders dealing with hr. And what I think is very common problem is people delay and wait to call HR until there's already some type of crisis.
Why do people do that?
[00:02:14] Speaker B: I think for the most part, it's comfortability.
HR has a bad rap, right?
You can read multiple Reddits and TikTok videos all the time about the rap that HR has.
So people will wait until something. I mean, and this is even entrepreneurs and business owners, like, they'll wait until it's a crisis to even reach out. And then I have to, like, figure out I'm in crisis mode now.
And so typically it is. They're not sure if they even have a reason to come to hr, so they want to get more evidence or they Want to get more, more information to come to HR to provide that information. Sometimes entrepreneurs, they, they might have done something wrong or they might have found out like, oh, we were, we're breaking this law. Like, and they're, they're more ashamed of it. And I'm like, no, no, bring it so we can fix it, make it better.
Which is typically what I get from an entrepreneur. So I, I think it is definitely just a comfortability issue and HR has a bad rap.
[00:03:21] Speaker A: Nothing. Those are really good points. And I think know you kind of brought something up that made me. I'm a big fan of metaphors and parallels and things like that. And I think about two different types of children with their parents. And one child gets in a tight spot or has a confusing situation, says, oh my gosh, don't tell my parents, they're going to kill me. Right? And so they wait till the absolute emergency. And the other healthy child says, ooh, I don't know what to do here. This could potentially be bad. I'm going to run and tell my dad or I'm going to tell my mom because they're going to know what to do. Is that a fair metaphor to how we should start to think about hrs that high, that healthy relationship?
[00:03:54] Speaker B: Absolutely.
And I get it, like you're going to have some old school HR people that are pretty by the book and, you know, throw the hammer down and they need these facts. But for the most part, the sooner you get there so that we can help you resolve the issue, the better it's going to be so that we're able to get you moved in the right direction. Because nobody wants to come to work in a hostile environment or having trouble. I mean, you spend a lot of time there.
So most of us want it to be, want it to be resolved as soon as possible.
[00:04:27] Speaker A: I like that. And to resolve things as soon as possible is that. Definitely. Even if it feels like a small issue or it's early on and the potential of it getting a big issue, like the danger is not going or ignoring HR early on at the start of the issue. Is that correct?
[00:04:45] Speaker B: Yeah, absolutely. To me, if, like the smallest thing, I want you to come and tell me so I can say, hey, maybe do it this way so it doesn't escalate or do this and kind of mitigate. I'd rather not go in crisis mode for any, for anybody. Because when you're in crisis mode, mistakes happen by everybody involved. So we can resolve it as soon as possible would be fantastic.
[00:05:09] Speaker A: I like that. So we're getting to the mindset of, like, yeah, let's just go ahead. Let's not ignore the small things. Let's not let stuff build. Let's get there early and start. So somebody logically understands that, but they're fighting with maybe some embarrassment or something like that, whether it's a leader or an employ or asking for help when going to hr. Like, how would, how would you tell someone to navigate that?
[00:05:30] Speaker B: So I think it's. How serious is it to you? Right? Even the smallest, the smallest issue, is it affecting you day to day at the job? Is it affecting your work, your work priorities, your work productivity? Is it making you uncomfortable? I can use the example of you heard some coworkers snickering about a promotion you got or something, and somebody was saying something basic awesome office gossip, right?
How is it affecting you? Is it affecting you enough that you can't do your job? Even though it may, Even though that gossip might be pretty small, if it's affecting you in any way, come let's, let's have a conversation about it.
Let's see if we, you know, can talk to the other people and say, hey, you know, kind of, what, what was this issue? Why were you having an issue with this?
Or sometimes you just need somebody else to talk to. Right? And so you don't really want it resolved, but you want somebody to hear you that, hey, make note of it. These people were gossiping about my promotion and it didn't feel good. It didn't feel okay. I just wanted to give you a heads up and just talk through it so it could go either way. Usually if it's not a legal issue or something, that's major.
Most of the time, I'll give the employee the option. Right? Like, do you want me to address it or do you, you know, it's basically, do, or you want me to listen or do you want me to fix it?
Relationship 101. Like, what do you want me to do here?
[00:07:00] Speaker A: You could be a marriage counselor.
[00:07:02] Speaker B: Yeah, and so, so that's, that's typically my question. You want me to fix it or you just want me to listen? And then depending on what they say, like, I'll give them some advice on how to move forward. A lot of times I want them to have the courage to go up to people and be like, hey, this didn't feel like, why, why would you say this about me? Most people aren't going to. Because that leads into, like, the whole confrontation issue.
[00:07:26] Speaker A: Yeah, there's so many people.
My brain is, is different in many ways. Again, you could ask my wife and kids, but, like, for me, like, confrontation doesn't bother me, and I guess that's like a broken twitch in. In my brain or something. But I'll just be like, hey, what's going on here? Why are people, you know, talking about this? What's. What's the vibe? You know, what's going on here? And just like, I like to nip things in the bud.
And for me, you mentioned gossip being one of them, and that was your example. Gossip, to me is one fastest ways to basically burn down morale and burn down team cohesiveness and ultimately the organization. And so people thinking gossip's not a big deal and being afraid to go to somebody and talk about it and work through it, which I also believe half the time it's just like, hey, I want to listen to you. I was frustrated about, you know, what knucklehead over here said, and. But no, I feel better now. I don't need you to go, you know, smacking people around with the HR stick. So I really like your example, and it's very realistic and well worked through.
So in that, you kind of gave us an example of how sometimes people just like to be listened to.
How does maybe getting into it early and getting over the feelings or the fear or the embarrassment of asking for help, how does that early support or that. That early intervention really change outcomes? I think logically we could do it. But do you have examples like how it's helped employees or leaders? Both.
[00:08:37] Speaker B: So going back to what we said to the beginning is that some people just want to be heard, right?
In the workplace, a lot of times, everybody's so busy and everybody's just getting things done and moving, moving, moving, moving, moving, that.
That morale starts to drop. Which if morale drops, then you have productivity drop, you have performance drop, you have all of those things.
And then you move into where people start to stop trusting leadership. They start stop trusting their fellow employees. When you resolve things fast, you continue to build on that trust that employees know that you have their back, and in doing so, you begin to.
You begin to build more trust. And that means your productivity is going to be better. Your employees want to come to work, they want to perform, and they want to do things that are going to make the organization successful because they feel like they can trust the leadership. And I. I think that's the. The give and take of addressing something early. If you address it early might be a little annoying at the beginning, right, because it's so minute. But the Trade off to that is you've built trust in your employees, which means they know you have their back and they're going to begin performing or they're going to continue performing better. So I think, I think that that's the main, the main focus of that.
[00:10:01] Speaker A: I like that. Okay, so that, no, that's really, really good advice. I think hopefully everyone that echoed pretty, pretty deep inside them on, you know, the outcomes that we can get. So we're going to cut to a commercial break here in about a minute. So 60 ish second answer this one. What's one thing? Pen and paper time. What's one thing a leader could do today to just prevent the next big crisis? If you're gonna be like, hey guys, boom, write this down. What advice do you have for us?
[00:10:28] Speaker B: Meet with your teams, right? Get a pulse check on your teams. A lot of payroll systems now have surveys. Like you can send one to two question surveys and just kind of get a pulse check of where your team's at. It's anonymous. You'll know. You won't know, but you'll know. You'll see, like, hey, there might be some issues.
Pay attention. Like come outside of your office for a moment and, you know, meet with your employees, have a conversation with them, go sit with them at lunch. You're not building friendships that are going to cause problems. Like, just go have, go have lunch with your team and just kind of see where things are at. And then that way you can kind of gauge what's going on before a crisis happen. You're also building trust so that when those little things happen, they may come to you and say, hey, I need your advice for this. And you get an idea of, of what's going on.
[00:11:16] Speaker A: I love that. I really like what you said about one, come out of your office. That's, that's advice that I give to a lot of people. You got to be down amongst your people. You got to get to know them. Then they, like you said very early on was they can feel you genuinely care. And that little anonymous survey, I'm just thinking, I'm doubling back to, you know, that anonymous survey is building that trust because if they report something and it gets dealt with, then they don't have to do an anonymous anymore because they have the reputation. So that's a really good spot for us to kind of stick a pin in the conversation. Everyone else, stick tight. We're going to be coming back, we're going about what happens when employees stop feeling heard. So stay tuned. We'll be Right back after these messages for some more pivotal change.
Welcome back to Pivotal Change. I know you are ready for more Nicole Anderson and more Mendhr and all the wisdom she's bringing us through her expertise. But before, did you guys know that you can get 24. 7 streaming access to Pivotal Change and all of the other content on the Now Media TV network? It's pretty fantastic. Now Media TV is available both on Roku and iOS. You can download everything and you can watch it at your leisure. In addition, if for some reason you just don't have time to watch an episode, there's the podcast. Now, not just of this show, but every show, everything from culture to leadership to business and news updates, you can find it around the clock and you can get it ready wherever you are on NOW Media tv. So think about that. Anytime you miss an episode or you feel like you can't stay updated on issues like HR and experts like Nicole that we have on the show today, we've had a great conversation so so far and we want to keep moving along to, you know, the genuine side and care and being able to be among your people is where we left off. So now we want to kind of hit that. What about being heard, being listened to and things like that? So I want to ask you this question to lead off this segment. What causes employees to like, shut down or just stop speaking up? What would be some of the. The causes to that?
[00:13:39] Speaker B: So typically it's, they've went to somebody for help and nobody has. Nobody has helped them and they didn't get.
And you know, sometimes when I talk to leadership and employees, there is a fine line between there are things that we can do and things that we can't do. Right. And I think it's setting the employees up for like, with expectations of, you know, this is what we can do within the bounds of the law. This is what we can't do and we can't accomplish. So sometimes not giving the employee those expectations, they. They tend to, like, lose trust in leadership and the HR team because they just are not sure that we did anything. But what I do with my leadership teams and what I do with employees that we talk to is that I tell them up, right? I was like, what is your outcome? What do you want your outcome for this issue to be?
If somebody tells me, well, I want the person terminated and. And I'm like, I'm going to let you know right now that that's probably not the case.
And so I give them that expectation up front to let. And so A lot of times that doesn't happen. So when they come to hr, they come to leadership. They're expecting that this person that wronged them is going to get terminated, but there's not real grounds to terminate the employee. There's grounds for maybe a corrective action or to have a conversation, but it's setting those expectations that cause or that not setting those expectations that cause that distress.
[00:15:16] Speaker A: In my language. And I absolutely love this. So I have the seven pillars of leadership, which is something that I coach and deliver with people. And pillar number three is setting clear boundaries and expectations.
I think it's a huge, huge gap for. For leaders in general. And the fact that you're really bringing us the opportunity to apply that real world that says if you want people to stop shutting down, you want them to continue to speak up, you want to have this open dialogue in this healthy culture to do exactly what we started the episode about, preventing things before they start or getting an early, early action plan against them. Letting them know that, like, hey, yeah, there's going to be an investigation. There's going to be things that follow. We're gonna have to interview. People might have to come talk to you about this. Well, what do you want to have done out of this?
I don't know. I don't want to say the word petty, but if I. People are petty. They hurt my feelings, so I want them fired. And then you think in your head, you really want to change their life and take away the livelihood of their family because of a piece of gossip or something harsh that somebody said? And it's not illegal. It's not some, you know, ripple effect that's going to damage everybody's life and you want to take their livelihood from them.
You know, I think. I think it's pretty interesting. So I want to just do. Real quick tangent. Do you have to deal constantly with, I guess, pettiness or tattletailing in hr? And how do you navigate some of that?
[00:16:29] Speaker B: Oh, a hundred percent. Like, I would say probably 75 to 80% of what we do is that petty tattletale. This person said this about me. This person.
You can relate it to high school drama, right? Like, it's.
And the expectation sometimes is.
Well, let me take that back. The issue is that most people learn keywords, right? This person discriminated against me. This person harassed me. They're creating a hostile work environment. They're doing all of these things. So they start learning those keywords, and they think those keywords are what's going to get that Person fired. And so that's where the expectations come in when they come and tell, you know, they tattletail on an employee that made a snide comment in the cafeteria or something. And they come to me and they're like, this person is creating a hostile work environment. And I'm like, okay, lay it out for me.
And they lay it out. And I said, okay, listen, by law, these are the four criteria to meet discrimination.
And I'm like, can you prove all four of them that it was done specifically for this reason? That it was, you know, and. And go through that with them? And then after, they're like, well, no, I just. I don't want them to. I said, okay, so let's start there. You don't want them to talk about you anymore, so let's have a conversation with them and say, hey, listen, I'm like, but your key words.
And they do that because it scares companies a lot of time they use the keywords. But again, it's going back to setting those expectations. Like, if you tell that person, okay, we're going to look into this and we're going to get to the bottom of it, and we're going to, you know, do this, and, you know, we'll let you know the outcome, then that outcome doesn't happen because you've done your investigation and there was no such thing as discrimination in this case.
But now the employee knows before they leave my office or get off the phone with me that it's not discrimination. We just need to have a conversation about, you know, you shouldn't talk bad about people in the workplace.
[00:18:37] Speaker A: Yeah, I. I love this so much because one of the things I always try to do is before we really jump into anything, I kind of want to have an understanding of the definitions, like, what is abuse, what is discrimination? What is, you know, and then you go in here and once you do exactly what you said, hey, these four parts must exist. People immediately start scratching their head and. And I think they also get these buzzwords, like you were saying, and think that they have, like, this power card, this trump card they can play against the company to kind of get their way or have the impact they want. But the immediate response of like, 75% is high school drama. And I think you're being nice to people. I think it's more like middle school drama. But, I mean, that's almost shocking to me. I knew there was going to be a bunch of it, but to have a rough estimate of 75% is. Is pretty interesting. So you get These people in the room, you share expectations, you give the parameters of what's going to happen, all this kind of stuff. And we kind of mentioned in the beginning listening to people.
So why does listening, once you get them in the room and just listen, let them vent maybe a little bit. Why does that seem to make such a huge difference and specifically like in motivation for that employee?
[00:19:41] Speaker B: Well, you have to take into consideration things that happen outside of work too, as. Right. You have to take that into consideration with an employee. And sometimes employees aren't heard anywhere in their lives.
And while most people may think that that's not your concern as a leader, that is a concern because what, what affects somebody on the outside affects people on the inside same, you know, vice versa.
So if they're having trouble at home where they're not being heard, they're not being listened to, and they come into the workplace, they're already defensive, right? They're already defensive that nobody's going to hear me, nobody's going to listen to what I have to say.
So the importance of a leader and an HR person, providing somebody with that ear helps to mitigate what they're already dealing with at home, which in turn gives them an avenue at work to say, okay, at least here I'm being listened to. I can just shut off what's happening at home and come into the job and do what I need to do. And again, you increase productivity, you increase performance, you increase revenue when you pay attention and you build that relationship with the employee.
[00:20:57] Speaker A: I like it, what you're describing to me. And again, I come up with all my own little ideas and stuff is the difference between heard and listened to. And listening to has all of that follow up, all of that impact and things like that. And there's a, you know, real digestion of what was said and exchanged and communicated.
And I appreciate you pointing that out. And also I always like to put my little twist on things too. So if people want to start really doing something different or having a way to show to their people that their voice matters, like what's something that they can say differently to people to get that message across?
[00:21:30] Speaker B: I think the, the leaders, they, they're.
I mean, it's going to be demeanor, right? Like your body language is going to be more than verbal.
It's going to be your body language, how you interact with them.
But they can definitely say to their employees, like, hey, I know we all have a lot going on and I know we have stuff in our personal lives, we have stuff at work, but I'M here if there's issues or concerns or even if you just want to tell me something good that happened today. I, I have a leader at one of my companies right now that they hold the team huddle every day.
And at that team huddle, they're like, what's one exciting thing that happened yesterday?
And whether it's personal or professional, what's one exciting. And you hear that one of the employees, you know, their, their son scored a soccer, a goal in soccer for the first time. He's been playing for five years. Right. It's those exciting things that you share. You stay human with your employees, and you, you remember that your employees are human as well. So I think it's just taking the extra initiative and just saying, hey, let's do something a little different. What exciting happened to you yesterday?
[00:22:42] Speaker A: I like that. So what you're, what I'm grabbing from this, I'm gonna say if I'm gonna start having meetings with my employees, whether it's a group meeting or individual meetings, team meetings, whatever it may be, I can make a change. I can literally go back to the office tomorrow and I can say, hey, tell me one exciting thing or what was the best part of your day? Or what was the funniest thing you experienced? You know, and bring out that positivity and that connection. So people that are watching, write that down. She just told you one thing you can change right now. So that's really awesome. So, Nicole, before we move on, go to the next comm. One thing I want to do is the viewers at this point are probably really enjoying your expertise and your wisdom. Where's a place that we can find you? How would somebody get a hold of you to get more? Nicole?
[00:23:21] Speaker B: So my website, mendhr.com we also have, I have LinkedIn and Instagram.
We're just starting to get started on TikTok. We're going to be doing a lot of TikTok videos on entrepreneurship, HR, you name it. We're actually going to be challenging some of the HR experts that are spewing stuff on Tick Tock right now. So you, it's all. You all should stay tuned for that.
It's going to be pretty comical.
And I said LinkedIn already. And then we have our nonprofit website, loveinspiringlife.org love that.
[00:23:57] Speaker A: Perfect. Well, we're going to come back and talk about these things right after the break. Everybody stay tuned. And we're going to keep rocking and rolling with this awesome conversation. It's foreign.
Welcome back. You've passed the halfway point of this episode of Pivotal Change, Nicole Anderson has been really dropping some awesome advice for us. And during that commercial break, we were, we were talking and Nicole, you said something kind of, I thought, pretty profound that the audience needs to hear about being human, everybody's human, and then leadership. Do you mind just repeating that for the audience to hear?
[00:25:00] Speaker B: Absolutely. So I remind the leaders all the time that they're human and that the people that they're working with are human. And we've all been in situations, and I think it's imperative to remember that when you're talking to them, when you're dealing with them, that you have to be a better leader than your worst leader that you've ever had.
It's pretty important to just remember where you came from.
You were at the bottom once you were working your way up and just have, you know, have some grace for the people that work for you.
[00:25:33] Speaker A: I love that. Have that grace, carry that perspective of where you came from or what it took to build. And that's really fantastic. And I know that deviates a little bit than, than the topics where we're trying to go in there, but I just thought that little nugget of wisdom was really important to be heard. So we're going to start moving in and talking about some silent killers in the workplace stuff that, you know, just cut down morale. And one of the big ones is confusing policies, unclear, maybe unenforced policies and things like that. So I'm going to kind happen.
Happen into that category to have this conversation go about again, confusing or even outdated policies. So what happens to a workplace when policies are confusing, unclear, or just plain outdated?
[00:26:13] Speaker B: Well, I think so. One time I had a leader say that if nothing is in writing, then I'm not promising anything.
So I mean, and I thought, I mean, I can't. I can't hate him for that, right? Like, he's not wrong because he. His whole point was, is when you put something in policy, you are promising that you're going to abide by that policy every single day.
If you put a directive out an sop, like you're saying, this is what we're doing every day.
And so it is.
If you implement that policy, but you do not apply it to certain individuals, or you, you apply half of it, or you, oh, we have the policy, but we're just going to have a leeway and then somebody takes it really far and now you have to reprimand them for.
Can cause massive issues within the workplace.
Talking about discrimination in the last Segment.
It's an easy way to be able to set crystal clear definition of discrimination by applying a policy to one person and not applying it to somebody else.
And you find it a lot. You get the favoritism. You get, you know, wrongful terminations because, well, you let five other people do this. I did it and you terminated me. Right. But your consistency shows that this is the policy that you're abiding by.
So I think it's important that if you're going to have. I mean, it's almost better to not have a policy than to have a policy that's written down. I do not advocate for that whatsoever.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. I definitely do not advocate for that. But if you're going to have policies, you have to enforce them.
[00:27:58] Speaker A: Yeah. Love it. Yep. And one thing we do, you tell me if this is. This is reasonable. There's a recommendation of mine from an HR expert that I used to go to, and he said, you can always write discretion into your policy. Say, here's the standard. But nothing in this policy upserps the president or the CEO or whoever's ability to make an exception or discretionary judgment on this policy. Something like that. And then of course, now when that discretion or that exception comes, well, that that person has to articulate themselves really well.
But it also helps shield from just like, oh, you just decided not to use the policy one day, and you're like, no, things were different, and here's why. And I don't know in your HR brain if that's legitimate or if you walk a dangerous path doing that.
[00:28:44] Speaker B: I definitely think you're walking a fine line because you're still getting to the. The part where we were discretionary on this person, but not discretionary on this person. Why?
[00:28:55] Speaker A: Right.
[00:28:56] Speaker B: What made, like, why, why are we having, like, why are we having two different policies at this point?
And I don't dislike discretion in it. I think there are certain circumstances.
Attendance is usually like a big one that, you know, we have to play with discretion.
Mary, you know, she got into a car accident on the way to work, but she's had five absences in the last 70 days or whatever the policy says. But she got into a major car accident. Are you going to fire her because she got into a major car accident? No, because you're probably going to be violating ada, fmla, like, all kinds of other things that she's afforded.
But that attendance is the easiest one to go to because it's typically very discretionary. Yeah, about. With attendance.
[00:29:47] Speaker A: That's where our policy Came in, we had a employee get breast cancer and it was bad and advanced and obviously that ate up sick time policy. FMLA was even maxed out and all that kind of stuff. And so we had to use some discretion on that. And we literally just called everybody in the office and said this is what we're doing. And we see this to be an exception. And everybody is like, nope, makes sense to us. But if somebody else just, you know, their puppy dies and they want to take an extra sick day they don't have, you know, that's really an awful situation and maybe I can help you with that. But there's a big difference between a sick puppy. Puppy and you know, fighting for your life, you know.
[00:30:20] Speaker B: Agreed, agreed. And that, that's what I mean by you know, that discretionary does come into play sometimes where it is really valid to have discretion. But if you're just having a policy, just to be discretionary, don't have policy.
[00:30:33] Speaker A: So, so keeping on this track with policy and discretion, we, we want to have, you know, simple rules, clear, easy, easy to explain and uphold. But how do you keep things simple without just necessarily losing protection?
[00:30:46] Speaker B: So I don't think you overcomplicate policies, which is a lot, a lot of people do and a lot of attorneys will. Right. Like they'll pump you out with five page policies when all you have to do is simplify it and it'll uphold in court.
It's a policy. It's something you have in writing. As long as you're following it to the best of your ability, you're not going to have any issues with it. But I'm all about the kiss method. Right. Keep it stupid, simple and so. And it helps employees be able to digest it easier. It's why I like a handbook. Because if you have a handbook, you can summarize everything very short and then pick out policies. Yeah. Where it's just very easy to just give to the employees and you're not going over it a hundred times.
[00:31:35] Speaker A: But I found too the more complex and just try to archetype everything you can think of into a policy, you're really painting yourself into a corner even more so because that can be nitpicked in every single circumstance. And then something a little weird, a little gray pops up and you've painted, boxed yourself in. Where simple. It's like, no, we followed it like you just said, to the best of our ability. And I think a reasonableness to test is often used is like, is this reasonable for you to apply this policy here or not apply this policy here. And that's, that's a pretty, pretty big term in courts and things like that.
[00:32:07] Speaker B: I was just gonna say reason of the reasonableness.
Hand stands up in court all day.
[00:32:13] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah. So that's really good. So I know people tend also to like, ignore and, you know, just do all kinds of crazy stuff with policies that are too long and too complicated and they kind of just get pushed aside.
But other than either just really writing out a complex policy, leaders need to communicate these expectations. As you said before, what is a good way a leader can do that in ways for people to rem, so they don't have to constantly look back to a policy manual to make every maneuver, every decision or talk to people?
[00:32:44] Speaker B: Well, I think it starts with onboarding and orientation. Right. I think that that's the first step. I mean, you don't want to keep somebody in policy reading for hours, but you definitely want to highlight to your staff, like, what's most important for the mission, vision and values of this organization.
So if you have, if you have, if you have a company that everybody travels a lot, your travel policy is going to be very important and it's probably going to be pretty extensive. Whereas your attendance policy, if everybody's out of your office traveling all the time, your attendance policy is not going to be as important as it would be if everybody was coming in and out of the office.
Obviously, you need to have an attendance policy so they show up on time and get to their business meetings. But at the end of the day, you need to focus on what's going to move forward. The, the mission, vision and values of the organization.
[00:33:37] Speaker A: You are speaking my language. Mission, vision and values. And I go around the country setting those up for people, including leadership policies and the framework of an sop. I don't touch HR stuff, but I. All I do is provide examples and say get with an attorney and an HR expert and you know, just to show the importance of them and tell some stories. So that's, that's really fun. So last question before we cut to commercial break here. What's one policy that every company should just probably go simplify right now?
[00:34:07] Speaker B: Attendance.
[00:34:08] Speaker A: Okay, good.
[00:34:10] Speaker B: And their AI policy.
[00:34:11] Speaker A: Oh, that's a good one. That's another breaking one. So simplify AI probably its use, purpose and integration. Yes, Simplify your attendance policy to give the generals of like, like starting, exiting, lunch breaks, vacation.
[00:34:24] Speaker B: Yeah. I mean, because they get so big. Right. The tennis policy point systems and you know, this and, and this. And you know, simplify to make it A rewards program.
Right? Like these things happen if you're on time.
Like it's just, to me, they're just over complicated all the time. The first thing I do when I go into an organization is I cut their attendance policy.
Make it so much simpler. But I think AI is, is becoming pretty heavy in the workplace and some of the policies that I've seen are just really extensive. Trying to cover everything and you're just not going to like, it is impossible to cover everything that could possibly go wrong with AI So just have a general policy that's a page like just setting up your expectations.
I have one company, I even got them down to just one line that says that if you use AI you have to, you have to notify the person that you're sending it to that they're, they're using AI Just very simple, very cool.
[00:35:33] Speaker A: I like that a lot. Okay, good. That was perfect. Perfect bridge into what's going to be our next and final segment of the night. So everybody sit tight. Everybody make sure you're checking your notes on the commercial break. We'll be right back after these messages. More Pivotal Change.
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So continuing on with this conversation as well, you're going to get empowered by this conversation because the HR wisdom that we're getting from Nicole Anderson and mend HR is fantastic. We're closing tonight's episode with probably the most difficult leadership conversations that you can have. Basically terminating or letting people go. We know that this is never easy. There's often emotional attachments and of course there's a lot that can actually go right and smooth, believe it or not. But there's a whole ton that can go wrong. It's one of the toughest leadership responsibilities, but it's something that must be done. So Nicole, why is letting go of someone so emotionally hard for leaders to do?
[00:37:30] Speaker B: Well, I think if you go back to, to the human comment I made early, there are some leaders or the majority of Leaders that are human and it bothers them that they have to let somebody go, even if it's an employee that caused themselves to be let go. Right.
There's some kind of emotional attachment to that person that you've guided. You've, you've led, you've, you've built them and you know, you're disappointed too, depending on the type of letdown. And so you just let all of your emotions get the best of you.
I think I would be worried if there was a leader that wanted, that terminated somebody and enjoyed it.
So I think I would be a little concerned about having that person on my team.
[00:38:20] Speaker A: Right. Yeah. They're not, not thinking of the big picture. They're definitely going to be, I won't say sociopath, but they're going to be absent of some needed emotions to be a caring and successful leader.
You know, I could see maybe some relief if you had a truly toxic person that was hurting the culture and stuff, but not enjoy, not happy. Yeah, that's an important part. So if you see that from people in your management, leadership teams, that's not just yellow or orange flag, that's big time red flag. So I really appreciate you probably pointing that out.
So one of the things, and you tell me if you see what I see, I see people just wait way too long. They delay the inevitable, they kick the can down the road and they just hold off on terminating when they really should. And it's the most proper time and it's time to go. How can delaying a needed termination hurt just not just the whole team, but the whole company?
[00:39:08] Speaker B: So I mean, I think that this is the, the most issues I get is people wanting to kick the can down the road. They're like, we want to do this. No, let's do this, let's do this. It's the confrontation.
Right. They don't. And some people will say it's HR preventing you from terminating the person. They'll kind of swipe it back, you know, swipe it back on hr. And I say, and for me it's no, you need to have the documentation.
I need to know that this person was aware that they're going to be terminated. And we're not just terminating them because you felt like it today.
So it's one of those things that the confrontation, nobody wants to have. Nobody wants to have the hard conversations.
And it's because of their comfortability.
They're not comfortable. They don't know how they're going to react. I've done some very, very hostile terminations.
Where we pretty much knew how it was going to go and we had to bring in mitigation to be able to help make this go as smooth as possible.
So I think that the kick the can down the road is because of the unknown. Like, they don't know how it's going to go and what's going to happen.
But sometimes you just like you. You have a young college student that's coming in and is so eager and ready to go and is like really trying their. Their hardest, but just not getting it right. They're just not getting it. And you can't just waste the time. But you want to keep trying at them, keep trying at them and hopefully they will get it because you've put work into them.
[00:40:43] Speaker A: Right?
[00:40:44] Speaker B: So. And you know, sometimes, you know, being a leader is not easy, but I mean, if you're letting go of a lot of people because your team is not performing, that's ultimately going to result in what you look like as a leader.
[00:40:59] Speaker A: Very good point is that, you know, that is a reflection of you. And, and I think that that kind of hits home with a lot of people to make them maybe make that final push. And, you know, if you get somebody that's toxic, how much life there's. We had a very difficult termination that we did.
Actually. It wasn't. It was mutual. Like, we find that most time when it comes up to termination both, you know, and they know it's not working, something's not right, and it's kind of this one's the inevitable conversation going to happen, and people are just kind of not retired on duty, but almost terminated on duty, just doing the bare minimum and just milking their way through, just punching their ticket and getting out. And there's not energy, there's not morale. And so I think, I think those are. Those are really good points. So you get to the point where you're like, okay, it's got to be done. I got to rip the band aid off. I got to have this conversation because I'm a human and they're a human. I want to do this, this letting go, this termination with fairness and dignity.
Are there some steps that you can help our audience with leaders to do that?
[00:41:55] Speaker B: So first off, don't make it public.
Like, that's the. That's the first thing.
It's be a private. Even if they're making it public, you be as private as possible with the situation.
Take them, you know, even if you have to do it off site, if it's a very public area, you have to do it off site at a restaurant or something like that. That's not. And I mean. I don't mean public. I mean, like, public within the organization.
So that's. The first thing, is try to keep it as private as possible.
The worst thing is that walk of shame, right? Where the leader will. Or it. Or security or whatever you have. HR will walk the person to their desk, let them pack up their belongings, Everybody's watching, everybody's seeing, and then they exit the building.
Right? Like, you can do that completely without having them box up their own items.
You go grab their personal items for them and let them go. And then when everybody is gone, pack their stuff up.
I think what you say in the.
In the termination meeting, I think is important as well.
One, you don't want to get the company in trouble by opening your mouth and being stupid, which some people do.
But the next thing you don't want to do is you don't want to patronize the employee.
You want to get straight to the point, let them know, like, hey, this is what's happened. We've had these conversations multiple times. It's now time to part ways. So you have those conversation, that conversation that way, and then you say, you know, we have somebody that's grabbing your personal belongings. They'll bring it in here. And then you can add exit, I think, you know, just leaving. Again, I go back to the simple, right? You keep it as simple as possible and maintain the dignity. I don't care if somebody stole money from you. Don't have them arrested on site.
Like, there's a way to do that. Like, there's no reason. And I've had. I've had. When I've worked in retail as hr, they were like, we got to prove a point.
And we. And I'm like, no.
Like, that's just. There's. There's no reason to do that. Like, everybody's gonna know that this person was arrested for theft. There's no reason to make a big scene about it. Just to get. Just to feed your ego. That.
[00:44:18] Speaker A: That's exactly right. Feeding. Feeding your ego, saying, see, you can't mess with me. See what happens? You mess with the bull, you get the horns.
Yeah, that bothers me. Yeah. I like discretion. I like dignity. I like honor and things like that. Even if there's some bad stuff. We've had people steal from us. We. We had people. People stealing client files and getting them to our competitor. Right. Of course, there's a whole chain of events that follows after that. And you gotta make the exit.
You know, even within. That's the last person that needs dignity.
Literally taking from your pocket and taking from your. Your client base. But they still get dignity. They're still human. Right. If they choose not to have it themselves, that's on them. But.
[00:44:55] Speaker B: Correct. But you.
[00:44:56] Speaker A: We're not gonna do it from our side.
[00:44:58] Speaker B: Yeah. You've been the better person at that point.
[00:45:02] Speaker A: So let me, let me do this last question of the night. And then I really want people to know where they can find you. So help our leaders out.
What is the one sign? Maybe there's two. What are the one or two signs that letting someone go is the right and necessary choice.
[00:45:17] Speaker B: So the, the biggest sign is, is when you think about letting this person go, your team gets better.
So the. The team gets better. And I think that that's the biggest sign. The second sign would be the performance and productivity numbers will increase.
So if you have somebody that's on your team and they're just. They may be a high performer, but they're wrecking morale. They're not nice to other employees. Their. Their ego is too big. Things like that that are causing morale issues. And employees are just tired and exhausted from this person. And you can really see it like somebody's always late to work. Right. And other people have to pick up their slack.
And so now they're doing the work of that person because they're always out, they're always late. They're habitual at that.
I think when you can remove that person mentally and say my team is going to be better, then you know that you. That this is the right move. If you are removing a person and it's not going to make the team better, it's actually going to hurt that hurt the team. Team probably should think about that a little more and see if there's any more coaching or performance things that can happen.
[00:46:32] Speaker A: That is so, so fantastic advice. I really like what you said about does the company, does the team get better? Does productivity overall go up?
That was a hard one for us. Was a high performing person. Was the most toxic person ever. So they're. They're performing out the wazoo. But guess what? The rest of the team is going to go up and over overlap that. So let's wrap up the night with this. I want people to be able to find you, to pick your brain to use your. Your wisdom that you've given us today. Where can people follow up? Find your work, get in touch with you. Not just mendhr but tell us a little about love inspiring life as well. We got about 30 seconds left on.
[00:47:05] Speaker B: The show, so HR answersndhr.com that's an email address that goes to me and my team. You can shoot us answers or questions. We'll we'll give you an answer.
Also, Instagram, Nicole Anderson 5, as well as LinkedIn, which is Nicole Anderson, HR where we provide all kinds of information. LoveInspiringLife.org is we do raid and recovery and rescue of sex trafficking and victims of sexual exploitation. And you can find
[email protected] love it.
[00:47:41] Speaker A: Nicole, thank you so much for coming on here. Everything was so incredibly value valuable. And I appreciate you.
To the rest of the audience, I just wanted you to go out there in the world. I want you to see the change, and I want you to be the change. And we'll catch you right here next time on PIVOTAL Change.
