So you're HR are you?

You’re a good person, you help people, you make a difference

You think that you wear many hats.

You let people give you many hats.

You love hats!

Hats make you feel useful, worthwhile, important.

Some hats don’t fit too well. Some are a bit tight, uncomfortable and don’t look so good.

But you’re a good person.

You’re not a psychologist, you’re not a therapist, you’re not a psychiatrist

But you need to understand people and know when to get such professional help

You need to be strong.

You need to be resilient.

You need to know that you’re going to get buffeted and torn.

You need to know that your values are going to be challenged by expediency.

Challenged by commercial reality. Challenged by different values.

You need to stop policing.

You need to treat people like adults, and expect them to respond as adults.

You need to be strong and stop writing bad bad policies that treat adults like children.

That get childish responses. That damage engagement and your reputation.

You need to be strong.

You need to be influential. You need to bring your organisations to a better place.

To understand people better.

How to lead better.

How to manage better.

How to work better.

You need to be kind. To others. I

n any way you can. Regardless of what you might have to do to them.

You need to be flexible.

You need to respond to people’s needs, not shovel them into a category or rules based response.

You need to be honest.

You need to reflect.

You need to know that your reputation will go before you.

You need to know that some will only see the HR badge.

You need to know that some will hate you.

But most of all you need to be you.

You need to be able to live with you.

You need to be able to look you in the mirror, and say

“I did my best, I’m me, I’m not just HR”