cavnessHR Podcast Show Notes

Jason: You too, Steve. Steve Browne is a Vice President of Human Resources for LaRosa's Inc., a regional pizzeria restaurant chain in southwest Ohio with 13 location and over 1100 team members. Steve has been an HR professional for 30 years and has worked in the hospitality, manufacturing, consumer products, and professional services industries in various HR roles. He's currently a member for the Society for Human Management Board of Directors and has been a member of the membership advisor council representative for the north central region of SHRM, and past Ohio State director. He facilitates a monthly HR roundtable as well as an HR internet forum called HRnet, which reaches over 11,000 people globally each week.

Jason: Steve is an accomplished speaker who has been featured at local, regional, and national conferences, Chamber of Commerce, HR chapters, and business. Steve is active in social media, and has a nationally recognized HR blog, Everyday People. He has also authored a new book called "HR On Purpose", which looks at Human Resources from a fresh, positive and intensive perspective.

Jason: I also want to add real fast, if you're in HR and you don't know who Steve Browne is, you need to find out who Steve Browne is. Steve is the man. Steve, what's keeping you busy right now? What are you focused on?

Steve: Quite a few things. We're working on a new development program for our managers, it's really exciting. It's not training and development, it's just development. So we're helping them become better business people running their locations. I have several locations of our pizzerias, we have 13 that I help with. I get to be a resource for them. So it's fun to do some culture work.

Jason: Steve, yeah, I like the way you're always walking around and interacting with your people. More HR people need to do that.

Steve: Yeah, I think so. I think it's a lot more, getting the pulse of your business, you gotta talk to the people who are doing the business. Staying at your desk doesn't give you as good of a picture as you could have.

Jason: So Steve, a question for you. I think right now HR's in two camps. There's one camp which I call the Old HR, HR of No, the new camp, HR of Yes, the new HR. Old HR, you know, stays in a desk 9 to 5, the answer's always no. If you ask what's going on in this other department? "I don't know. I run HR. I don't run that department." The New HR of Yes, they walk around, they find out what's going on, they find out where to say yes. How do we get the people who I call the HR of No, to become HR of Yes in the new HR?

Steve: I think there's a couple of ways. One, I think they have to be excited about what they do for the organization. HR is critical. We help deal with people and work with people. The more you're connected to your people, not just the H in HR, I hate that. I think you need to be more connected intentionally with the people all throughout the business, every department. When we make it that everybody has to come to HR, it isolates you, it makes you off as an island. It should be more, we're integrated throughout the business. There are times to say no, but not no because it's a policy, no because you looked in to it. You found out what was going on. Here's the direction we want to go. Interact with people. They want to do the right thing, so when you do have to say no or be critical, you have context around what you want to do.

Jason: So, Steve, there's a lot of HR people who have great bosses, those bosses value HR, they know their value added, but unfortunately some HR people don't have that luxury. For HR people who work for people who don't value HR and don't get the value of HR, what advice do you have for them?

Steve: Two things. One, it sounds a little harsh, if you don't think they're gonna value HR long term, find another company. I hate to be that way, but why keep plodding against the wall all the frickin' time?

Steve: Now, at the same time, you can do good work in an organization that may not value HR by showing through your behavior what you're doing and doing well. Because if you do it well, the company will say, hey what's he doing, or what's she doing? They'll take notice. It may have a limited reach, but at least you're helping the people that are working in general. I think it's more based on behavior than it is anything else.

Jason: Steve, from your point of view, what values and characteristics should an HR professional possess?

Steve: Oh, gosh, that's a great question, Jason. Genuine, first and foremost. Genuine. Be who you are. Don't put on some airs or something that says, I'm an HR person and fear me, or scary music that follows you or anything like that. I think you just need to be authentic. Too often we try and put on a corporate face or an office face or an HR face instead of just being Steve, or Jason, or Suzie, or Johnny. Whatever you're gonna be. When you're genuine, it goes miles.

Steve: The second thing is, you need to be an active listener. I listen to more stories than talk. I hear all the stories, good, bad, and indifferent. I don't try and solve things automatically, I listen to people. People want acknowledgment and a great HR person, in my opinion, acknowledges the people who come do their work every day, from the executives to the front line. You'd be surprised how many executives don't take the time to listen and we can turn that around. As an executive myself, I spend more time listening than I do talking.

Steve: The third thing I would be, is have fun. Gosh, you know, you're at work all day. You should enjoy what you're doing. I love what I'm doing. I've been in three pizzerias today, this is my fourth. I have two more to go. It's a great day. I get to be with people that take care of our guests in business. There's a lot of joy in that. I don't see people in HR enjoying people, we keep trying to make this some program instead of being who we naturally are.

Jason: Oh yes, I know. Steve, I know for one I always like it when you post stories of you meeting your employees one on one. Like, you'll talk about they've done for 20 years or it's their birthday. I like how you always put that out there. What advice would you have for a job seeker whether it's, someone who's a new college graduate, someone trying to break into HR, someone who's trying to find their first HR job? What advice would you have for them?

Steve: I think people need to be better at networking, Jason. I don't think that we do it very well. Or we'll do it for a period of time. I know, especially as job seekers, and I work with a lot of them because people in transition come to my roundtable, and what they tend to do is in a moment of desperation they'll meet people in order to get a job and then they go back to their same old patterns. Meeting people is a business skill. It's not just a job seeking skill. So I would like to see people network on purpose, and HR people need to know HR people.

Steve: It's one of those great things that we learn more from the people that we know versus just going against like I said before, a wall all the time. I want to know all my peers. It's how I got to know you. I think it's important for us to know peers because then we have resources at our fingertip. If you're trying to get in HR, I would find people that you think do this well and contact them. Chances are they'll reach out say, "Sure, what do you want to talk about?" I talk to graduates all the time, I talk to people brand new in the field that just fell in to HR. My personal opinion, I'll make time for people that want to be in the field that I love.

Jason: I talk to people all the time, just introduce yourself. Ask for help. Nine out of 10 that person's gonna say yes.

Steve: Sure, more often than not.

Jason: So, Steve, you have experience in various industries. In those industries has your approach to HR always been the same or have you had to try to change your approach depending on what the industry was?

Steve: That's a great question. Yes and no. I don't think I've changed that much. I like to be with humans. When I worked in a welding facility, I was out on the floor learning how to weld. When I was in a carpentry facility I was learning how to be a carpenter. Or a painter. I worked for a company that made nuts and bolts and was actually in charge of a team on the floor that did great tool and die work. The difference between white collar versus blue collar, huge difference. I think the people I've worked with in the blue-collar arenas are much more open. They don't play as many corporate politics, and they're incredibly honest. I love that. Now they might be too honest at times, but it's raw, and I dig that. I don't like the politics side. When I worked in some of the more corporate environments it was posturing, and there's no need for it. Makes it very difficult to practice HR.

Jason: Steve, you've been HR for 30 years. Can you tell me about some of the positive changes during that time and also some of the negative changes in HR during that time?

Steve: Sure. Positive changes were becoming more people-centric as organizations. I think that's going to continue to grow. People keep freaking out about AI and how everything's going to replace us. Don't see it. There's going to be people who will be doing different things, but over 30 years we're doing different things as well. It's less and less administrative, which is great. Less paper. More technology, which is wonderful. HR tech has really changed our field for the good.

Steve: The thing that's worse, honestly, is regulations. Man, we have so many laws you just can't keep up with everything. It's not an administration thing or a politics thing. It's how do I make sure I'm compliant. We spend too much time on rules. I know a lot of my peers who spend more time trying to control people than work with people. I wish they would learn to work with people and they would need fewer rules.

Jason: Yeah, you're right about it. The job's always going to change. I just read an article maybe a couple weeks ago where back when the automobile industry came out, the big thing was, oh my goodness, we can't have automobiles. Because people actually had jobs picking up horse waste, and so all those people are going to lose their job, you know. It's just a cycle that happens over and over again. Jobs will go away and more jobs come.

Steve: Yeah, it's going to evolve. The thing that is important to me, as I think HR people, we need to evolve with it. We are the most resistant to change of all the professions. Which is wild because we're supposed to be in charge of change. It's just very ironic. But HR people need to go with the flow a little more instead of trying to regiment everything.

Jason: So Steve let's say some of the listeners to this podcast were like, you know what? I want to work for Steve Browne. How does that person get your attention, to get on your radar?

Steve: Oh, I don't know. I don't have any openings. But I think it's more I'd like to have people listen to a positive approach and understand that you can do HR in a different way and impact in your organization and help them add value by lifting up the people that work there.

Steve: I really think and I always have believed, you focus on people and good things happen. More often than not, people want to do the right thing, so being in HR is being about people. In business, it's honestly about people. Not just HR by itself.

Jason: Steve, so I think one problem with some HR people is they're HR focused, but they don't learn their business. They don't know what's going on internally to their business. How do we get that across as important to HR people?

Steve: One of the things that Jennifer McClure and I talked about years ago, and she says it all the time, you need to be a business person who practices HR. Just like you need to be a business person who practices finance. Or a business person who practices marketing. Your job is to make your business succeed. Every team member in your company is meant to help the business succeed. So you need to reframe how you look at work. I'm a business person. I can do things to help people do better, and that's the focus that we have as a company. They'll take care of our guests, the more guests that come in, the better we do. I get to keep my job.

Jason: Steve, how do you approach building great teams?

Steve: Something I've been doing for a while, Jason, is I'm a big strengths person. I like the strengths movement. I don't like doing comparative things where you talk about what people can't do. I want to see what you can do. I can fill other people around in the team with other strengths. So if someone's very strong in one area but weak in another area, I'll find that complementary strength, put them together. So too often in work, we focus on what we don't do instead of what we do offer. I try to make teams aware of what their strengths are, how to understand each other differently, but the big key, other than just strengths, is others focused. I think you can't just focus on yourself, personally. As people we tend to be selfish, it's unfortunate but it's true. I'd rather learn you, what makes you drive, and learn your style, and then work with you and your style instead of saying you need to be like me.

Steve: We complement each other and it's just more of a big picture instead of individual people doing their own thing.

Jason: Steve, so let's fix the book you just wrote, HR On Purpose. What motivated you to want to want to write a book?

Steve: That's a tough one. I've been fortunate, I get to speak all over the country on HR stuff and HR events and several people came up to me and said, you know you have great ideas, you should put them in a book. That's very nice and humbling, if I can crank something out and it starts to come together, I'll follow it through. But if I don't, it was a nice idea. Once I started typing, I just kept going and going and going. I'm a storyteller. I tend to hear people have examples. People like to hear stories on real-world stuff and I've heard from many people over the years, people like to hear from people that do the work they do.

Steve: So I am an HR practitioner. I am not above and beyond or outside. I do the work every day just like other people in the field. So, it's resonated very well because of that.

Jason: Not to boost your ego anymore, but in my podcast, I talk to people in tech, startups, HR, founders, small business owners. Most of the HR people recommend your book when I asked them what book to recommend.

Steve: Ah, that's great. I think it's resonating with people because they see themselves in the book. That's true with every book I read. If I see myself in it, I enjoy it more. I think it was a message they needed and I think honestly, Jason, HR people need someone they can believe in. I don't want it to be me, as a person, but I believe in the work that we do.

Jason: Steve, next, can you talk about a time you have success in the past, what you learned from the success and what we can learn from this?

Steve: One of the things I never thought would be an earth-shattering change in HR, I tend to be somebody who simplifies things, Jason. I don't like to add layers. I like to tear things down and just make it more simplified for everybody involved. Here we have a recognition program. We used to do it more formally like a lot of places. We'd have a big banquet and we'd bring people up front and say each other's names and give them pins and hugs and stuff or handshakes, and it just didn't feel right to anybody involved. Team members or the corporate side. So my boss said, "Hey, how do you want to make this work?" He let me have a blank slate and I changed it to getting cookies for people, and balloons, and a gift card. Then instead of them coming to us as some formal gathering, I go out and see them where they work.

Steve: You'd be amazed how much balloons, cookies, and a gift card changes recognition. Because I think you should value people for who they are, where they are, and when they do it. If it's Saturday night and it's your 10 year anniversary and that's when you work, that's when I show up. I have people who, when I see them, they cry. I've got other people who hug the cookie tray, who said, "Oh my gosh, it's time for my cookies. I can't believe it." I'm like, okay. So I think recognition, like a lot of things in HR, should be simplified. Because I really care that someone was kind enough to work for us for a period of years. We need to recognize that when it happens. It's changed the culture of our company.

Jason: Plus, the fact that you actually go in there and they get to have all this done in front of their peers has had a big impact, also.

Steve: It does and you know what? I appreciate the work they do, because I really do. I think it's amazing. I don't think it's less than or more than, I think it's incredibly valuable.

Jason: Steve, follow up question. Next, talk about a time you failed in the past, what you learned from this, and what we can learn.

Steve: There was a time when I was in charge of safety at an organization and I'd never understood how big of a responsibility it is and how important safety is and I got caught. A regulatory person came in and said, "Hey, here are the things you aren't doing." I said, "Yes, sir." I said, "Tell you what. Instead of just telling me what's wrong, why don't you show me how to improve it?" So it was a painful process. But over a week-long investigation, he showed me everything that where we were lacking and when I went in front of the hearing, I sat in front of the district officer. The district officer said, "You're the first person who sat down with our inspector and tried to learn from us." Now, we still had a hefty fine, but it was much better, and we were able to improve and actually have a focused safety versus just trying to do it to go through the motions.

Jason: So Steve, you brought up another question that I thought of. Can you talk about the expanse of HR? HR covers so many things, I don't think some people realize it. Some people say, oh HR is recruiting, or it's payroll, it's benefits. Can you talk about how exactly expansive the role of HR is?

Steve: Oh, absolutely. I think it depends on what a company wants to do. There are tons of people who are in HR departments of one, which is what I was in all the way up until I came to work here, and you're in charge of everything. From interviewing to sourcing to hiring to interviewing to onboarding to recognition and discipline and securing the facility. It really is a huge, even benefits. Oh my gosh, worker's comp, unemployment claims. Employment Verifications. It's hard I think because HR people try to be everything to everyone, and we really shouldn't. I think the big shift for us, Jason, is we have to quit being a support function within our organizations, be a resource in our organization. If we're a resource, then we're bringing skills to the table. If we're support, we're just an afterthought. I think we need to be ahead of the curve on that.

Jason: Steve, can you talk about someone who has helped in the past and how they helped you?

Steve: There's all kinds of people that help me. Here's my favorite one from a long time ago. Joe Lane was our welding supervisor at a plant I used to work. I was hiring people. I knew how to interview. I could interview as good as anybody. But everybody I hired didn't make it past me. They'd get out of the car and they wouldn't know what they were doing. They were telling me about the words of welding, but I didn't know what it meant. They had me go out and work on the floor with Joe. He's a tough boss and I'm not a good welder. Anything I welded, just so you know, never went out because it would have fallen apart in the field. But he showed me the equipment. He showed me how they think. How they measure different types of welding work. Then, after about a month, I went back to interviewing where we used to have nobody get hired, four out of five got hired and they stayed on.

Steve: To be a little more humble and sit down and learn from somebody who's doing the work was a huge lesson for me.

Jason: I really like the fact that you picked a non HR person for that. I really like that.

Jason: So this next question might be hard for you to answer because you're pretty transparent. But tell us something about yourself that most people don't know. You know, your close friends, close family know this, but people that work for you day to day, do not know this about Steve Browne.

Steve: That's a tough one, Jason. I am pretty transparent. I'm pretty open about everything. I'm a huge music person. Love music. As a conference director in Ohio, the theme was HR Rocks because I wanted there to be music, and I wrote a song. Because I write a song every week for part of the HRnet. But I wrote a song with one of the guys at work here. Awesome. It was to AC/DC, Thunderstruck. I dressed up as Angus Young and walked out on catwalk and got everybody excited, and I'd always had this thrill that the rock stars go, "Hello Seattle," or wherever they're at. But when we got to the end of the song, I got to scream out to the crowd, "Hello Sandusky. How are you doing?" And they went crazy. It was a bucket moment for me. Because if I ever could be a rock star, not that I am at all, or have the talent to be. I'd love to be the one who yells at the crowd to get them all excited.

Jason: So Steve, you obviously have your full-time job that pays you and you do a lot of other stuff for HR, social media, everything, that has to be a full-time job. How do you manage all that? How do you prioritize all that and not go insane? Plus you still have your family life, social life going on, how do you manage all that?

Steve: I think I look at time differently than most people. I think the truth is, we always put our efforts towards the things we want to do. Trying to manage everything I don't want to do, all the ugly stuff, I try to make sure I have time for all those things. What's funny, as full as I am, and as full as everybody else is, because I'm no different than anybody else, you'll make the time for what's important. So connecting with people on a daily basis through social media Is important to me. Making sure that I'm very cognizant of my work and the people that I work with, important to me. My family, important to me. My faith, important. Writing a blog. Reaching out to people. Doing podcasts. All those things matter. I have more time than I know what to do with. I could probably do more if I wanted to. I just don't get burdened by trying to fit everything in. I go with the flow.

Steve: I do schedule my time more than most people think I do. I'm not so structured I get stuck on what I'm not doing. I just focus on what happened in the day and you go from there.

Jason: I think sometimes people forget there's actually 168 hours in a week. 168, that is a lot of time.

Steve: It is.

Jason: Even if you work 40 hours, you still have 120 hours, and you take an eight hours sleep, that's still like 80 hours you have to do stuff with.

Jason: Steve, I understand you have a book to recommend for our listeners today.

Steve: My book? Is that what you're asking?

Jason: Yes, of course.

Steve: I would love for people to look at "HR On Purpose" because it's a positive look at HR and it's needed. We need to be positive in what we do and make an impact. I think people would enjoy it. It's an easy read. It's not difficult. I can tell you stories that would turn your head about how it's been so well picked up around the world. From Nigeria to Australia to England to all over the United States. It's really made a big difference and I would love for people to pick it up on Amazon if they so choose.

Jason: Steve, can you provide our listeners your social media links so people can reach out to you?

Steve: The best way to get a hold of me is Twitter. I'm @sbrowneHR, that's S B R O W N E H R. I'm on Twitter all the time and I'll be glad to connect with you there. And LinkedIn. I would love to connect. I love connecting to people. I'm very genuine. But understand, if you connect with me, it's going to be intentional.

Jason: For our listeners, we're going to have a link to his book and social media on our show notes, and our show notes will be at www.cavnessHRblog.com.

Jason: Steve, we're coming to the end of this great talk. Can you provide our listeners any last minute wisdom or advice on any subject you want to talk about?

Steve: The thing I'd like to leave with you, Jason, is I wish people would believe in others. Not just HR people, just people in general. Because I find more value in the diversity of humanity every day. Wonderful and cruddy as it is at times, it's the best. My day is spent more valued in time and in effort by hanging around people who are new and different than me. I hope others do it as well.

Jason: Steve, thank you for that great advice. Steve, thanks for your time today, I know you're a busy person, doing a lot of great things. Not just for HR but people in general, so thank you very much.

Steve: Thanks, Jason. I really appreciate the chance to be on with you.

Jason: For our listeners, thank you for your time as well, and remember to be great every day.

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CavnessHR: Focus on your business, we've got your HR

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November 11, 2018

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cavnessHR Podcast Show Notes

A talk with Steve Browne, VP of HR at LaRosa's Inc. - Board of Directors At-Large Member SHRM - Author of "HR on Purpose"

The cavnessHR podcast – A talk with Steve Browne, VP of HR at LaRosa’s Inc. – Board of Directors At-Large Member SHRM – Author of “HR on Purpose”

“HR on Purpose: Developing Deliberate People Passion” by Steve Browne

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