The following transcript is provided unedited.
Jeff Palkowski:
And I make this comparison a lot when I talk to people that are outside of HR. I said I almost feel like a firefighter at times. I’m waiting for that alarm to go off. And as a group of firefighters come to a situation, you have to assess it, you need to take immediate action, it needs to be the right action. And I think in a lot of ways, there are many aspects of human resources that kind of fall into that same world.
Tony Lee:
Welcome to the HR Storytellers 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 Storytellers 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’re joined by Jeff Palkowski, Workforce Relations Manager at the University of Wisconsin in Madison. Jeff, welcome.
Jeff Palkowski:
Thanks, Tony.
Tony Lee:
So you’ve got an interesting story to tell.
Jeff Palkowski:
Sure. I guess it might be interesting.
I’ve been in human resources for, hard to believe, almost two decades, but it was a second career. As I look at the students that are human resources students, I’m envious of them in many ways because my start in human resources started after a career.
When I graduated from college, I graduated with a mass communication journalism degree, decided I wasn’t going to be a newspaper reporter, So at that time, it was find work.
So actually, I started off … I thought about what I did well, and I communicated well. So actually that moved me into a customer service role. I worked for a large financial services company, and that was my first career. It was something that I excelled pretty well in and moved up the ranks pretty far.
But then as I reached that point, I realized this was not something I wanted to do for the next 30, 40 years.
So I thought about what I really liked, and as I reflected back on what I had done so far, there were aspects of my role as a manager that kept pointing me to human resources. It was working with individuals, it was compliance, it was the recruiting part of it. And I made a drastic shift to human resources.
And what I ended up doing is I actually left that field, went back to school and completed a Masters of Human Resource Management and decided this was going to be my new career.
Tony Lee:
That’s fantastic. Yeah.
So it’s interesting, because a lot of people get into HR by surprise, the surprise HR people, but it’s usually because they’re working somewhere and someone in HR leaves and they say, “Hey, you want to move to the HR department?”
You did it much more intentionally.
Jeff Palkowski:
Well, I actually did.
And again, it certainly wasn’t a knee jerk reaction. I went through a period where, again, I just realized what I was doing was not something I wanted to do for the rest of my career.
So I started doing some soul searching and just some internal review, looked at different careers, but I found that it kept leading me to human resources. And so it really was an intentional decision.
I think one of the things that helped me was, when I worked in my previous role as a manager, I worked with some very talented human resources professionals. So they served really as examples for me, and I saw what they dealt with and I found that was something that really interested me, but then realized making a career shift is not something I could do very easily.
Particularly if you looked at my resume; human resources didn’t exist anywhere on there. So I had to make some steps.
And really, that first step was I had started a Masters of Business Administration and I decided to stop and, again, go back to school and decide to get that Masters of Human Resource Management because that was what I would need to start that career.
And then I also did … I joined SHRM. I figured that would be another nice line on my resume. And by doing those things, I realized I was going to have to take a couple steps back before moving forward.
So my first role was actually working for a staffing agency, and I was definitely going to learn human resources from the ground up out in the field in the trenches, if you will. And that was really what got my start.
Tony Lee:
That’s really fascinating.
You know, staffing is such a big part of everything that goes on in human resources, but a lot of HR people think of staffing as a whole other world.
Is it another world or do you use skills within staffing that are the same as you would anywhere else in HR?
Jeff Palkowski:
I may be biased here, but I think staffing is one of the best ways to learn about human resources, because a lot of times, when people think of staffing, it’s putting people in positions. And certainly that’s a major part of it, but when you deal with staffing full life cycle, you’re dealing with every aspect of it.
I mean, I was working with them on the payroll side, working with them on benefits, and really working with that individual that I’d hired from beginning to end. And it really touched on all of the various disciplines of human resources in that role.
And by doing so, again, I did that for a few years, and then, again, it further helped me realize what my true interest was. I actually went into recruiting initially and then eventually moved into the field that I’ve been in for some time now in workforce relations or employee relations.
Tony Lee:
Yeah.
So working in a university system like you do, what does workforce relations entail?
Jeff Palkowski:
It entails a lot.
Probably the hardest part of it is dealing with workplace investigations, discipline; kind of the part that not everyone in HR likes to deal with it. Because it can be challenging, it can be emotional when you’re dealing with employees, certainly if you have to make that tough decision working with your managers to separate an employee. That’s a tough decision.
So at the university, it involves a lot of, maybe even more levels than in the private sector, because we certainly have … Besides our university policies, we’re also a state run university, so we have state laws that we have to work within. And in the university setting, we have something called shared governance, which is basically individuals that are there to advise our chancellor. And many things go through that group as well.
So it’s longer, it’s probably a little bit more difficult in terms of the timeline. When I work with managers that previously worked in the private sector, they think we move at a glacial speed. And in some cases we do, but we want to make sure that, if we make a major decision, particularly if it’s going to be a separation, that we’ve done all of our due diligence.
Tony Lee:
Yeah.
You know, I’ve talked to others who specialize in workplace investigations and they seem to love it. I mean, once they get into it, it seems like it’s this niche that’s like CSI. You know, you’re gathering the data, you’re interviewing witnesses.
I mean, is that how you feel about it?
Jeff Palkowski:
Absolutely.
And again, without going into much detail or breaching any confidential … I just completed a two month investigation, which is a very major investigation, and it touched so many different areas of the university. And again, much like CSI, I mean, we had witnesses, we had forensic evidence that we had to maintain.
So there definitely is that element.
And then besides the investigatory part, I mean, you kind of move over to the legal part and working with our legal counsel. Because again, we’re making a major decision here that could come back, and again, if we don’t do our due diligence and demonstrate that there was just cause for termination, that can certainly create a lot of problems.
So again, I don’t know that that particular area is for everyone, but it is one that I feel I do well with. I like the attention to detail that’s required and making sure that you’re coming to the proper conclusion. And I think that’s what I like most about it.
Tony Lee:
Yeah.
So if you were advising HR professionals who don’t do investigations regularly, and maybe they’re a department of one or two and have to do an investigation, what guidance would you offer?
Jeff Palkowski:
Well, there are a couple of things I would recommend.
And I would probably say this for just about every HR discipline, is find a mentor, particularly in human resources. There’s somebody out there who’s doing what you aspire to be as far as being an expert.
And that’s one thing that I take pride in, is I have a very wide professional network. So as things come up, I know that I have trusted individuals that I can reach out to.
So I think that would be step one.
Certainly there’s opportunities for training, professional development. I went through a pretty intensive investigation course that was three days, and was one that a lot of law enforcement go through to basically interview and interrogate individuals. And I actually used some of those skills, which is kind of fascinating, but it’s very proven.
That was something that I felt was going to help me in my role, and that’s certainly something I would recommend as well.
Tony Lee:
Yeah.
And not to make light of it, but as a student thinking about HR, I’m the HR cop. Right? I mean, there are a lot of things that students don’t think about with HR that they can … You know, from recruiting to spending their days doing comp to this. HR really offers pretty much anything that anybody could want, don’t you think?
Jeff Palkowski:
There are so many different pathways. And I guess that’s what, overall, HR … That’s really what interested me. It was not going to be the same day to day.
And I know we’re talking a little bit about workplace investigations. Fortunately, that’s not something that happens frequently, but when it does, it’s normally something that’s critical, needs to be done right, needs to be done as efficiently as possible. And so you need to be prepared.
And I make this comparison a lot when I talk to people that are outside of HR. I said, “I almost feel like a firefighter at times. I’m waiting for that alarm to go off.” And as a group of firefighters come to a situation, you have to assess it, you need to take immediate action, it needs to be the right action. And I think in a lot of ways, there are many aspects of human resources that kind of fall into that same world.
Tony Lee:
Yeah.
So you work in the public sector, right? So much has gone on in the last couple of years.
Has the public sector responded the same as … ? Because you’ve been in the private sector too. Has it impacted how you respond to a pandemic, to high rates of turnover, to inflation? Or do you feel like you’re in the same boat as everyone else?
Jeff Palkowski:
Well, I mean, I would say yes and no to that one.
I would say that all of the same issues that the private sector has been facing, we face it as well. Because obviously we have similar labor pools, similar rules.
I think in many ways it can be a little bit more complex with the public sector, as I mentioned earlier.
So let’s take the pandemic, for example.
Everything that we did was, because we’re a public institution, was public. So if we wanted to make a rule change that affected our employees regarding COVID, that was on the front page of the newspaper.
And so besides having to deal with the employees, as you would with a private company, we also have to deal with the public reaction to what we’re doing.
And that’s something that we always keep in mind as well, being employees of a public institution. There are no secrets. I mean, just about everything we do can be subject to an open records. And that certainly, I think, changes the approach, the way that we approach things.
I think we almost have to take it to another level of detail to make sure that things are right, knowing that we can be faced with public scrutiny, as we should since the public is actually paying our wages.
Tony Lee:
Yeah.
So any secrets that you’ve come across to get through a period of instability like this? Everybody looks to HR and says, “Help us”, right?
Jeff Palkowski:
Well, they do. I mean, I think in many aspects we’re kind of that last resort. They tend to call us last.
And I would say, if there’s any secret, I’ve really strived to develop strong relationships, particularly with managers; certainly our employees, but managers as well, because they’re on the front lines and they face a lot of these issues.
And what I try to do, and I think I have been able to do in my current role, is develop a relationship where I’m not necessarily the last call, but I may be the second call. I mean, they try to deal with issues themselves, but then they realize it’s something that’s going to go beyond what they can handle, they’re comfortable calling me.
And so I think that can be very helpful to keep issues from escalating. In many cases, it can keep issues from, besides escalating, becoming a problem down the road.
I like to be more proactive than reactive. I think too often in human resources we tend to react, as I gave the firefighter example; firefighters don’t drive around looking for fires, they wait for that. And while that happens a lot, I think in many ways, I look more like … I’m going to use that same example; fire prevention. How can we prevent the fire from happening at first?
And I think those are some things that I’ve learned throughout my career; that we’re always going to be reacting because there’s things out of our control, things that we didn’t anticipate, but it’s easier to deal with those if you can deal with the things that you at least have some insight on and can be proactive and address before they become issues.
Tony Lee:
Yeah.
Now a lot of people managers don’t have warm, fuzzy feelings for HR.
So you say you have a lot of conversations. How do you get over that negativity that that’s out there?
Jeff Palkowski:
Well, I think a big part of it is … And again, you’re absolutely right, and again, everyone’s an individual and you certainly have to build those relationships and some are stronger than others.
I think a big part of it is I let managers know up front that I’m not an adversary, I’m a partner. If they bring a problem to me, I’d let them know that, “It is not my problem”, and, “How are we going to work on it together?” I think that’s been very helpful.
But I think words can only go so far. It’s basically demonstrating a true commitment.
And again, a lot of times it comes from dealing with a problem. So if it’s just conversations, yeah, there might still be some concern about whether or not HR can be trusted or if I really want to call them, but when we kind of go in the trenches together and they see that I’m fighting side by side with them, whatever the issue might be, I think that’s where I’ve been able to develop the strongest relationship; showing that I truly am a business partner to them.
Tony Lee:
Yeah.
What do you say to your fellow HR professionals who are so stressed and really burned out from what’s been going on? I mean, whether it’s fighting with a people manager or whatever, it’s been a problem lately, right?
Jeff Palkowski:
It certainly is.
And certainly, again, because I connect with so many human resource professionals, I know how much burnout there is.
And again, while HR has been on the front lines through throughout the pandemic, I’ve seen burnout from all of our employees.
I mean, I can tell you that mental health has been a huge issue. Because part of my role is also to deal with medical leaves and accommodations, and there’s been so many mental health requests that have come over the last two years or so. So I certainly know it’s out there.
So I mean, what my approach to it is, is you have to take each day at a time and really understand what’s in your control and what isn’t.
I think that’s usually my biggest advice for anyone in human resources. We can’t control everything. And so it’s really setting priorities; control what you can, control what’s important, and then always remember that …
And again, the classic example; I think in a lot of ways, HR, we have to kind of remember … Like the safety instructions on an airplane; put our oxygen mask on first before helping others. And that’s the same thing. If we don’t take care of ourselves, we’re not able to take care of our employees or the organization.
So I think self-awareness and self-care is something that I have to remind myself to do, because I think it’s so important. If we’re going to be able to help others, we need to make sure that we’re doing well ourselves.
Tony Lee:
Terrific. Thank you so much, Jeff. We really appreciate it. Thanks to Jeff Palkowski for sharing his insights and stories. You can hear all of our HR Storytellers podcasts by visiting our website at shrm.org/podcast. Thank you for listening.