Summary:

Hope Harris, VP of HR at Real Floors, joins Dr. Jim on the HR Impact show to discuss building a highly cross-functional learning organization, even in teams with a heavy field and hourly employee presence. Hope emphasizes the importance of understanding business acumen and the ins and outs of an organization, regardless of industry. She shares her passion for the construction industry and the value she sees in blue-collar skilled trade roles. Hope also highlights the need to build trust with teams and challenges the misconception that HR is solely an administrative function. She believes that HR should be an integral part of strategic decision-making in an organization. Hope discusses the cost of viewing HR as an administrative function and the impact it has on employee engagement, turnover, and overall organizational culture. She emphasizes the importance of onboarding, training, and development in building high-performing teams and suggests that managers take ownership of their people strategy. Hope shares her moonshot goal of focusing on efficiencies and leveraging team strengths at Real Floors. She also discusses the process of identifying areas for automation and improving HR processes. Hope believes that building a collaborative learning organization requires a shared understanding and perspective among teams. She suggests cross-functional training and shadowing experiences to foster collaboration and build trust. Hope concludes by emphasizing the need for collaborative problem-solving and breaking down silos within an organization.

Key Takeaways:

• Building a highly cross-functional learning organization requires a shared understanding and perspective among teams.
• HR should be seen as an integral part of strategic decision-making in an organization, not just an administrative function.
• Onboarding, training, and development are crucial for building high-performing teams and reducing turnover.
• Managers need to take ownership of their people strategy and invest time in developing their team members.
• Collaborative problem-solving and breaking down silos are essential for building a collaborative learning organization.

Chapters:

0:00:00 Cross functional collaboration in field and hourly employee teams.

0:03:23 Accounting for skill set qualifications in talent strategy.

0:07:37 HR should be seen as strategic, not just administrative.

0:10:54 Creating cross functional training plans to connect the dots.

0:13:49 Managers often expect new hires to hit the ground running

0:17:03 Managers often default to HR for culture and engagement issues

0:19:55 Building a shared perspective by experiencing others' roles

0:21:52 Collaborative problem-solving fosters a shared understanding and culture

Connect with Dr. Jim: linkedin.com/in/drjimk

Connect with CT: linkedin.com/in/cheetung

Connect with Hope Harris: linkedin.com/in/harrishope

Music Credit: winning elevation - Hot_Dope



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What if you could bring that into teams that had a heavy field and hourly employee footprint? That's what we're going to explore today in our conversation with Hope Harris, who is the VP of HR at Real Floors. Let me tell you a little bit about hope and her background. She's had at least 15 years of HR leadership experience, and she's covered a number of industries in both the nonprofit and profit sectors. She's currently the VP of HR at real floors prior to coming on to real floors. She was a CH, CHRO of a national nonprofit organization supporting the public health sector.

Hope Harris, welcome to the show. I think we're going to have a lot to talk about in this conversation. And before we dive into the broad strokes of what we're going to talk about. I want you to fill in some of the gaps in terms of your background and experience that's going to inform this conversation.

Hope Harris: I've worked in multifaceted industries throughout my career. I know some people take a look at my resume and they're like, how did this get put together this way? And I always say at the end of the day, it's because I understand business. And so just having a well rounded business acumen and understanding the ins and outs of an organization.

That'd say that's my sweet spot and where my passion lies. And that kind of lends to that merging the. Best of both worlds from the corporate and the non, I would say traditional corporate perspective.

Dr. Jim: One of the things that I'm curious about is why have you gravitated more towards The manufacturing constructions, skilled trade sort of environments versus the standard white collar environments.

Hope Harris: I love to see tangible things like come to fruition by the end. There's obviously a million great things that happens in professional services sometimes, very much relating to like strategy and organizational design and those sort of things.

So you can somewhat seem come to fruition, but I really like seeing those kind of tangible at the end of the day products, buildings being built, homes being made, those sort of things. And I think for me too, personally. Some of the roles in which fall into the blue collar skilled trade perspective go so undervalued and get so unseen.

What do you have to account for and do differently? When you're looking at executing talent strategy in that environment that you wouldn't normally pay attention to in a white collar environment.

Hope Harris: Yeah, I think something to keep in mind too, obviously from an organizational perspective, a lot of times when you're working in like professional services or white collar services, there's a, just a general broad understanding of what your operation is and everybody's operating at that same level, .

In the context of like scope of work, shared understanding of things, but also sometimes from a. skillset qualification standpoint, . When you're working in, blue collar skilled trade, you have the gamut across the organization of folks that are in various positions all the way down to skilled trade, hourly positions, just all over the place.

And so it's a great mix of folks coming together where you get to see all facets of the organization.

You're pretty new at real floor. We'll probably look at the role prior to that. What's the accomplishment that you're most proud of?

Hope Harris: building trust with the teams. I think a lot of times in H. R. H. R. Is different everywhere you go, but I think there's such a shared level of responsibility across the organization to build trust with the teams, but more so with H. R. We owe it to our employees to make sure we're building their trust.

And we have to make sure that we do our due diligence and take the time to do that. And so knowing that I've been able to build the trust with the teams is really important to me.

That's an interesting answer. And the reason why it's interesting to me is that when you ask the average person, what do you think about HR, the default answer is going to be HR is not your friend. HR is quote unquote, the enemy. So when you talk about building trust. In the HR function, how do you execute that when there's a lot of people that are sitting there thinking I don't want to be friends with those people.

I think from, just across the organization, It takes time to build that trust with the team. And a lot of it's just visibility, transparency, and things. I'm really big on explaining the why. We can't spend a lot of our time in HR, explaining what happened, why we made a decision, but we do owe it to our employees to make sure we're educating ourselves on.

Dr. Jim: You're pretty new at real floors and I'm sure in the short amount of time that you've been there, you've probably got a laundry list of things that you want to get done. When you think about the one big moonshot that you want to accomplish by this time next year, what is that?

Hope Harris: the one big thing is really focusing on efficiencies and leveraging our team strengths. We have a ton of talented team members in this organization, and we're spending a lot of time around some non automated processes. So working on process improvement and automation is key to be able to leverage their strengths.

Dr. Jim: You mentioned something about focusing on identifying what can be automated. I'd assume that there was a pretty long list of things that were potential targets for automation in terms of building efficiencies within the organization.

So how did you narrow that down? What was your process for getting to the handful of things that were most critical to improve.

But going through that process, really thinking through cross departmentally. All of the ins and outs and the conversations and requests that have to happen and really focusing on that employee life cycle. Because at the end of the day, that literally grabs everything from ops to it, to accounting, to all facets of the organization.

Dr. Jim: When you think about all the different things that exist in terms of leadership myths and HR myths, what's the thing that you wish would just go away?

Hope Harris: Oh my gosh. I think the fact that people still think, HR is payroll and benefits. It's fascinating to know. There are a lot of organizations out there who really still do not see HR as a, integral part of the strategic decision making in an organization or an HR shared business partner and those sort of things.

Dr. Jim: Why is it a mistake to view HR as an administrative function versus a strategic function?

Hope Harris: Think about it. What are organizations aren't processes? Yes, they have, services or tangible outcomes right at the end of the day, but organizations are people, if you could rename it or people resources right at the end of the day. So that's part of every facet of the organization. It's your biggest return on investment.

It's all things. And so at the end of the day, people make up every business decision. Everything that's happened in the organization.

Dr. Jim: When I opened the show, I talked about, cross functional collaboration being the hallmark of a highly effective corporate team. You've talked about your sweet spot being in, more blue collar organizations and field oriented organizations.

How do you bridge the gap between those two things? How does that tie in with the realization that really helped you build high performing teams?

They want to see value in what they do. They want to work for an organization that resonates with them and they want to be proud of the work that they do. That's shared across all organizations and all people, . And so I think a lot of times where things fall short is that's not a value that's perceived in some organizations and in some trades.

I think that's where things fall short.

Dr. Jim: I'd like you to expand on this a little bit more. You mentioned connecting passion and purpose to the work and that sounds great in theory. And I know how to do that. In a corporate environment, how do you connect those dots to that new hourly employee that comes into your organization?

And to me, connecting the dots is giving those people that,. At the end of the day, like I said, I think sometimes there's a misconception that people don't all come to. Want to come to work, . Want to do good, want to have fun, but also really want to be, tied into the passion of the organization.

And what is the mission and vision of the organization? To me, I think taking the time with those employees, creating a cross functional training plan where they get to sit or to work alongside or to shatter whatever definition of it you would like to use along with folks at all levels in the organization so they can put the full picture together of what they're doing, why they're doing that work, and then what is the outcome of that work.

What's the way forward. So you can make the time and connect those dots.

Hope Harris: I think some of it is understanding the value of it, . You could approach it from a data perspective and show people like, the cost of what it takes to replace someone in an organization, what the cost is of a bad new hire, those sorts of things. If you look at it relative to recruiting employee, the data shows, if you take the time on the front end, at the end of the day, there's retention on the back end.

And it's the very same similar concept of it. The person, knows that you respect them, knows that you value them to the point you're Making time to grow and to develop them, because that's what you're doing in that space when you're having them shadow or doing cross functional collaboration.

And so people pull back all the time and say, what's that one thing I can do to impact turnover and they'll come up with, foosball day or something like that, or really at the end of the day, people want to have passion and purpose in their work. And they do that by working alongside others on the team, figuring out what's going on, knowing the why no one with the full cycle of the customer service aspects of what they do

Dr. Jim: Because not enough time is being spent on onboarding training and development. how much is that tied to the constant churn that exists within the organization? What's your line of sight into that?

Hope Harris: Throughout my entire HR career, that is one of the things that I've heard the most,. They'll say, I need a great person. I need a best fit for the role. The person comes into the role and they're a great fit for the role. Maybe 70 percent of the time things are happening, what they need to do.

And if you look at it across any organization, managers struggle in that space a lot. And I think it has to come from the executive team, the senior leadership team to really set that cultural perspective of take the time to train your team. Otherwise you're going to end up back in the same space.

Dr. Jim: That's really interesting and I want to get a temp check from your perspective. So I was on the agency side, so I did a lot of talent acquisition stuff from the agency side. And one of the things that I would hear from managers all the time is this quote, and you've probably heard it too.

We need somebody that's going to be able to come in here and hit the ground running. How much of that. Thinking is rooted in managers, not taking ownership of what their primary responsibility is, which is developing their people.

But I would say that's a small percentage of organizations,. Where the larger percentage is, I need you to come in and hit the ground running. Don't ask too many questions. I hired you cause you know what you're doing, but there's this huge gap in how they do it at their organization happens to me in HR all the time.

From that perspective, HR is different everywhere you go. And it's the same thing in pretty much all aspects of the work. And yeah, I think there's, there is a very serious lack of understanding of. What that is and how that should be approached.

Dr. Jim: When you were describing your experience, there's a phrase that popped into my head, which was past results, doesn't indicate future performance. And the reason why it hit me, Is that managers often delude themselves into thinking that, Hey, if I hire a top performer from X, Y, Z organization and bring them in here, I can run them on autopilot and there isn't anything that I need to do.

It's just foolish. It's setting yourself up for some pretty big failure. And speaking of failure, I'd like you to spell out what is the cost of that sort of thinking?

Hope Harris: If you look at it from that cost perspective, and lately people are going to become disengaged. How I'm a true firm believer. Most people want to come to work to do their job and to do it right. And so if every single day it's being approached, if you're not doing this you're not getting that right.

You're not doing this. Obviously that's aware. And then that's a loss from a cost standpoint, high turnover. Employee morale, culture, obviously productivity. All those things fall into that from a cost standpoint. But I think overall, from a long term perspective, the culture of your organization at the end of the day, people see it.

Dr. Jim: those are just some of the soft costs that you described when talking about hard costs. If you're dealing with voluntary turnover within an organization, you can expect per turnover instance to 250 percent of their salary in replacement costs. And then you just mentioned employee engagement and burnout.

When I think it was Gallup that had this data Every year, Gallup does all sorts of surveys. And one of the most recent ones is that when you're talking about employee engagement, that poor employee engagement costs us organizations anywhere from 400 to 500 billion every year in lost productivity.

Hope Harris: It always falls back on HR. Yes, I laugh about that all the time. I love when it's like the person sitting at the table says who's responsible for culture and everybody looks at HR, right? It's good. All the management on it. I know it's funny. We actually did the Gallup survey year over year at my previous organization and it was so Super exciting, but also one of those like eye opening things to see from an impact perspective that, that soft spot of the question that they have is, do you feel like you have a best friend at work?

From an engagement perspective, that was one of the most like highly impactful scores. And you could see it across the organization when that score would ebb and flow and sway as to where the culture of the organization was from a turnover perspective, from so many things.

Employees. How do you pull that off? What are the steps that you need to be considering to make that sort of organization come to life?

Hope Harris: Yeah, I think the biggest thing is really understanding at a high level, the interdependencies between the departments and where that cross functional collaboration happens. And really understanding and gauging, there's a lot of teams who work together on a day to day, others who are not so much, but at the end of the day, really understanding that business ecosystem.

Um, And how people cohesively work across departments. So that's one thing there. I'm really big on bringing in a shared perspective too, and really understanding what the team's needs are. It was fun. We actually did a exercise recently here where they went around as a team, put together a list of what they needed from other teams and walk through a series of a, what I need from you.

finishing their time cards, but they may not be able to, they may not be in front of a computer all day. And so really getting that shared understanding and buying from your team on what they need from each other and then really start to focus on, okay, if we could start to work on how to build this out.

And again, it's going to depend on your organization, the time, the formalities of things really start to work on what your team would see as beneficial and understanding of each other's roles. And that's going to be at all levels of the organization, not just horizontally and different levels of.

Colleagues, but really thinking through it as a team across the organization.

Dr. Jim: That last bit that you mentioned about getting everybody on the same page and understanding the value of each role within the organization. That's a big ask. So how have you accomplished that? Where would somebody start in even tackling that issue?

And because the biggest thing is A lot of times people are bringing the problem to the other department to help them find a solution, . And so innately, a lot of people think, oh here's your fix. They don't necessarily really understand the problem and so that just leads to a whole bunch of back and forth or not necessarily a solution to whatever the challenge is and so really taking that time to build that shared perspective.

But a lot of times that means working alongside it, even if it's something they fully understand, it's okay. Work through it. Work through it as a team. Show them what your challenges are. Have that lived experience with them. So y'all could work to a shared solution.

Hope Harris: Yeah, I think at the core of it, call it like collaborative problem solving, right? At the end of the day, really breaking down the silos and really fostering and building a shared understanding to encourage collaborative teamwork. And that's at all aspects of things. I think a lot of times decisions are made at very high levels or they're made in certain aspects.

an organization, but that's not necessarily collaborative approach across an organization. It doesn't necessarily create that collaborative culture and shared understanding of the work that everyone's doing. And so if you want to look at it from like a build, problem solving perspective, collaborative, problem solving.

Dr. Jim: Hope, thanks for hanging out with us. If people want to continue the conversation, what's the best way for them to get in touch with you?

Dr. Jim: Awesome stuff. When I think about this conversation, there's a few things that stand out in my mind in terms of building a highly collaborative organization. I think first and foremost, everybody needs to spend enough time in understanding the overall business.

anD I think that's important whether you're in HR or whether you're in other It's especially important if you're in other functional groups, because that's going to actually tune you in to the interdependencies between your division and another division and see where the root causes or problems might exist.

So if you don't have visibility at that level, you're going to struggle in building an integrated environment. The other thing that stood out about this conversation is your emphasis early on. It being a critical responsibility for HR and also leaders in general to build trust across the organization.

Hope really strong stuff. Really enjoyed the conversation. For those of you who have been listening to this episode, we appreciate you hanging out. If you liked the conversation, leave us a review, let us know what you thought of it, and then tune in next time where we'll bring in another leader to share with us the game changing realizations that they had that helped them build high performing teams.