The following transcript is provided unedited.
Tony Lee:
Welcome to the HR Storyteller podcast series from the Society for Human Resource Management. I’m your host, Tony Lee, head of content here at SHRM. Thank you for joining us. Our HR Storyteller podcast feature practitioners and thought leaders in human resources, sharing stories about why they love HR, what motivates them, and what’s moved them in their careers. Today we are joined by Alexander C. Pullen, who is an HR business partner focused on inclusion and belonging at HubSpot. And you’re in Atlanta.
Alexander C. Pullen:
I am.
Tony Lee:
Welcome.
Alexander C. Pullen:
Thank you so much for having me, Tony. It’s a pleasure to be here.
Tony Lee:
It’s a pleasure to have you. So you have a story you’d like to share with us.
Alexander C. Pullen:
Yeah. Every once in a while, I think back to why I’m in HR, why I’m so passionate about this work and the purpose or the impact of this work beyond just our employees. And I thought back to a story maybe a year before the pandemic. It was a Monday night, and I was sitting next to my mother who was in a wheelchair.
She was bent over with pains, shooting pain around her chest. And after about an hour and a half, I went to the check in counter. And as soon as I walked up the attendance said, “Chest pain’s, right?” I said, “Yes, sir.” He said, “What’s your mother’s last name?” I said, “Pullen.” He says, “She’s next.”
And sure enough, she was next to get her vitals taken. And we were in a different part of the hospital waiting for another hour and a half for her to be seen by a doctor. And I remember the stories. I remember the commentary that nurses and doctors were making while we were waiting. Years later, I’m still disturbed by them.
The racial jokes I heard were disturbing. The commentary about no one makes it out of here alive, that was disturbing. The elderly woman who had been waiting, she says, for some 10 hours to be seen reaching out to a nurse to say, “Hey, when can I be seen?” And the nurse response, “Well, you can leave here if you want,” with sort of a shrug.
That was disturbing. And in the middle of finals, sitting there with a textbook trying to read, but trying to pay attention to my mother and not being able not to overhear the conversations. I remember thinking in my head, “Where’s HR? In an organization where people have been overworked to the point that their worst sides are coming out when so many people need their best sides, where’s HR?
In an organization where people feel comfortable to tell racially and gender based disturbing jokes with quotes, where’s HR?” At the time, I was working for a university and I thought about the schools of medicine and nursing and public health that trained this next set of leaders.
And I wondered even about the culture of academic programs where these folks felt comfortable, however many years beyond their program, I really wonder, well, where is HR in all of this? And it’s not to say that HR was responsible for people being inappropriate directly.
But it was a reminder that when we’re doing our jobs, when we’re teaching leaders about serving and transformational leadership, when we’re leading culture initiatives that teach our folks to be more kind and compassionate with themselves and with each other, and then with our customers, when we are coaching and providing safe spaces for leaders and employees to be human, have some space to make some mistakes, and yet the encouragement and the empowerment to be better and to do better.
When we’re doing all of that, the hope is that we wouldn’t have what my mother and I experienced that night. My mother’s well, she’s with us in Atlanta. But I still remember how I felt that night, and I still remember why our work is so important. Because when we do all that we can to support leaders to be their best, to create cultures that are kind and compassionate, we change not only our employees’ lives, we change the lives of their families, their communities. And I’m a little crazy enough to believe we change the world.
Tony Lee:
Well, no question that we do. And thank you. And I’m so pleased that your mom is doing well.
Alexander C. Pullen:
Thank you.
Tony Lee:
So let me ask you a question. When you think back on that period, HR was there somewhere.
Alexander C. Pullen:
Right.
Tony Lee:
Right? But you think it was cultural within the organization? What was involved that created an atmosphere like that?
Alexander C. Pullen:
I often go back to culture. One thing I often say, Tony, is every organization has a culture. Whether you think about it or not, whether you’re intentional or not, you have a culture. And when we’re not intentional about the culture we want to have in our organization, we default to a culture. And the default culture is generally not what we want it to be.
Tony Lee:
Right.
Alexander C. Pullen:
It’s generally not the culture in the best interest of our employees and our customers. And so I wonder, were we not, HR and even the leadership, were we not having conversations about what culture do we want to build, what are our values, how do we want folks to show up every day, and then assessing are we meeting our goals? So at least my hypothesis.
Tony Lee:
Yeah. So HR has been through the ringer. The last few years, right? And nothing’s stopping. I mean… Talent shortages and salary compression, I mean, you name it. I don’t have to list them all here. So where does culture fit in all of that? I mean, is that number one, and then you worry about the day-to-day stuff? Or does it develop through the day-to-day stuff? Where does it come from?
Alexander C. Pullen:
Such a great question. I think culture is number one. You start with culture and a lot of the other pieces start to come into place. In my academic program, I study organizational resilience because I want to know how can organizations withstand crises like a COVID-19. And one of the elements in the research is about culture.
That when we promote a kind of collective resilience, people start to look out for each other. It was so interesting that I thought when I started this research that I was going to find, well, when you put a whole bunch of individually resilient people together, you get organizational or collective or group resilience.
As some of the research says, no, it’s actually the opposite. If you have a whole bunch of individually resilient people, they would do what they need to do to make sure they’re good and not the group. If you have a culture of resilience though. If you have a culture of resilience though, you promote these values where it’s not just about Tony doing well or Alexander doing well, but Alexander does well when Tony does well.
Alexander can do well when I can make sure Tony has support, if he needs to take off time for a loved ones. Alexander does well when I can make sure Tony can get the resources that he needs to do his best. And when I care about Tony and Tony cares about Alexander, then we can withstand the storms.
We can withstand companies coming out to say, “We have to slow down on hiring and we won’t be having salary increase or merit increase conversations this year because we need to be a little bit more prudent with spending.” Then we can make that work. We can withstand an influx or a kind of drop in customers. Right? We can withstand some things when we’re starting to think about our collective values and our collective resilience and ultimately our culture.
Tony Lee:
So HR has talked for years and years about a seat at the table. And CEOs are now looking at HR probably like they never have before. But culture comes from the top. So how much of a role does HR play in getting the senior leaders on board with a message? That HR knows needs to go out there.
Alexander C. Pullen:
Yeah. Well, let me put it like this. If it’s not HR holding a mirror up to our leaders to let them know, “This is where we are, are you satisfied with this?” The question is, who will it be? If it’s not HR, can we expect our legal colleagues to do that? If it’s not HR, can we expect our finance colleagues to do that? If it’s not HR, can we expect the product and customer success and different parts of our business to do it? The answer is likely, no.
Tony Lee:
Right.
Alexander C. Pullen:
We have the responsibility to help see themselves and help them see the organization they’re leading and help them reimagine what it could be.
Tony Lee:
So employee engagement obviously is kind of key here. Because if you’ve got a culture that’s toxic, that’s not where you want it to be. Employees figure that out, right? And they hit the door. So there are practical applications to this, right?
Alexander C. Pullen:
Yeah. You’re so spot out. When you don’t have a great coach, you’re likely going to have absenteeism, you’re going to have retention challenges. And we know that especially in this market, none of our organizations can’t sustain that. And so when you’re not intentional about understanding how engaged your employees are and then acting kind of against that, against those measurements to better move the needle in a positive direction, you’re going to suffer. The organization at large will suffer more. And so that’s why I’m such a big proponent of employee engagement surveys.
My company, we do them every quarter just to get a post of what’s going on. And I hear some companies, Tony, say, “Well, we’re going to do one every other year.” In this market, you don’t have a year and a half or two years to get it right. You just don’t. You have to be very intentional and on top of understanding how engaged your employees are and creating solutions and interventions that is appropriate to make them more engaged, to make them want to do the work on behalf of the organization, on behalf of your customers.
Tony Lee:
Yeah. And it’s funny, everyone’s so focused on attracting talent in and paying talent right and getting benefits, but none of that matters if they’re not engaged. Right?
Alexander C. Pullen:
Yeah. You’re so spot on. My role, part of my role is focusing on what do we do once we get this high performing diverse talent base? Right? How do we make sure everybody’s included? How do we make sure everybody feels like they belong here?
And I find that a lot of organizations are good on that recruiting part. Then they get there, there’s no clear onboarding, they have a toxic manager or micromanaging manager. It’s not a place they want to stay there. And so we have to be very thoughtful about engagement, development, and retention.
Tony Lee:
Yeah. Well, we have been joined by Alexander C. Pullen, who shared some great stories and great insights. We really appreciate that. You can hear all of our HR storyteller podcasts by visiting our website at SHRM.org/podcast. Thanks for listening.
Alexander C. Pullen:
Thank you so much, Tony.