Larry Brand, CHRO at Justrite Safety Group and HREN Advisory Board member, recently sat for an interview about the latest HR trends and his own career. Check out his responses and let us know what you think on LinkedIn.
HREN: What are the top trends you’re seeing in HR now?
LB: Here is my list:
What Motivates Talent Has Evolved
I think generations like Baby Boomers and Gen X were very motivated by promotion and compensation. Quite frankly, they were driven by more material things 25+ years ago. The mission of young people was how quickly they could buy a house because nobody wants to rent. I find that value set very, very different with people in the first 10 years of their career now. They're much more mobile, they don't want to be tied down with the mortgage…
Talking Wellness at Work Is the Norm
There was no such thing as emotional health for the Baby Boomer generation. You just didn't talk about it. There’s just a value set that's come in the last 10 or 12 years, which I think is fantastic because it makes us all more vulnerable, all more open to knowing each other personally. But for people who worked in business for 30 years before that value set [became visible], it still makes them uncomfortable. And I see some frustration. ‘Why do you always want to talk about that? I don't want to talk about that.’ Whereas the younger generations might say, ‘I don't know why you're so close minded. I don't understand it.’ They both came up through very different value paths in this country over the course of the last 40 years. I think it's hard for the different generations to appreciate and understand each other.
Employees Gaining Leverage
I think the leverage has a lot to do with your position and supply and demand. If you create a highly technical position where there's always more positions available than people to do the work, you're always going to have the leverage. But I think any employee who's a strong performer has leverage over their employer, right? Because if I do my job, well, and I interview well, I'm always going to have options. So the question is what things are you providing to me in order to make sure that I kind of stay?
Generative Artificial Intelligence (GenAI) as. Productivity Tool
You can now go into ChatGBT and say, ‘Please provide a job description for a chief marketing officer at an industrial manufacturing company.’ This thing comes out, and it's like 85% right. This means you only have to tweak it for your company culture. So, what used to be a two-hour task between a professional and a manager now literally takes 10 minutes. That's an example of work going away in a good way. It is not going to cost somebody their job…They Don't teach cursive in school anymore. My kids are in their 20s. They don't know how to write cursive. There's no need for cursive in the world anymore. I don't think that cost anybody their job. But I think now, that goes over to the better keyboarding or, you know, better technology. So I think AI is going to be exciting. I worry less about it threatening mankind.
Remote Work Is Still Alive
Everybody has different opinions, but I definitely see a generational split [in the remote vs. in-the-office debate]. But it doesn't matter what senior leaders want, even if they are in the office, because that's not what employees want. We must listen to the voice of the customer, and I’ve spent a lot of time on that.
HREN: What drew you to HR?
LB: I'm one of the few people who actually went to college, studied Human Resources, and spent an entire career in Human Resources. I went to college on a basketball scholarship. So I've been a division one athlete and a high school athlete, and I've always been fascinated by role models for leadership, both on and off the court.
I thought I'd go and figure out how I could study what goes into leadership. Back when I was in school that happened to be Human Resources. And then I got out of school, looked for my first job, and ended up getting a job at a really good nonprofit, which allowed me to wear many hats and make very little money. But I supported the recruiting function, benefits and compensation, and training and development. Technology was just coming into play for business at that point in time. I really got my hands into a ton of different stuff.
Then, I decided that I liked recruiting and left to get a full-time recruiting job, which then led to a couple of promotions. Ultimately, that led to a Director of Human Resources spot about eight to 10 years into my career. From there, it's really been a learning journey. I think when you're 30 years old, you think you have everything figured out. Now I look back and think that I really didn't know much at all.
Finally got the opportunity be a chief of HR about 15 years ago. What's most enjoyable to me is the different levels of people in the organization on which you can affect change. And then going and visiting a manufacturing plant, and walking out on the production floor to interact with people. They're actually building products, lots of different stories, lots of different people, lots of different reasons on why people go to work. I find that psyche for the human being kind of interesting.
HREN: What do you wish you knew at the start of your HR career?
LB: HR is on the people side of the business. Many times, young people go into HR, not recognizing that they have to understand business to be really good at it. You need to understand profit loss. I've always worked in manufacturing companies, so I'll use that as a metaphor. You have to understand that work goes at cost of goods sold, raw material comes in one side of the plant, finished product goes out the other side of the plant, what are all the major steps along the way, and you must be a finance expert.
But you have to be able to sit with somebody who's running operations or marketing or running sales and understand what their world is like. Otherwise, it's difficult to deeply support him. So, get some business experience. When you're younger, in your first 10 years, there is no such thing as stupid questions. As I interact with some HR professionals who are mid-career or beyond, they struggle in the area of financial acumen. But they don't want to ask how to learn because they figure it won't look good for them.
HREN: Best takeaway to share?
LB: There's no better way to learn and be involved with the entire business. If you go into marketing, you're going to do marketing. If you go into HR, you're going to support marketing, you're going to support operations, you're going to support finance, you're going to interact with product development, you're going to interact wherever there are people. I have a much more holistic view of the whole company; the only person who probably has more of it than I do is the CEO because he touches everything.