The First-Time Manager: HR

INTRODUCTION

Welcome to the world of human resources management. And I mean that in two ways: first, you’ve likely been part of the world of human resources management for some time now. More significantly, you’ve graduated to the rank of manager recently and purchased this book to help you master the challenges that are sure to come your way across the full spectrum of the HR discipline—from recruitment and employee relations to compensation and benefits to training and HR information systems (HRIS) and much more. As you’re likely aware, HR is a tremendously broad field with new responsibilities and challenges coming our way all the time.

My goal in writing this book for the renowned First-Time Manager series will be to take a coaching approach with you, the reader, and welcome you to sit side by side with a more seasoned HR executive who can show you the ropes, teach you shortcuts, and help you come up to speed in the many diverse aspects of the HR discipline in your organization. Of course, if you’re reading this book in hopes of becoming a manager in HR at some point in the not-too-distant future, you’ve likewise come to the right place as well. This should help you broaden your understanding of the many business aspects of leadership and talent development within your organization and shorten your learning curve significantly.

First, a bit about me. I was honored to serve as the chief human resources officer (CHRO) of the Nickelodeon Animation Studio in Burbank, California. I was also head of international HR for Paramount Pictures—both companies fell under the umbrella of Viacom at the time (today’s Paramount Global), where I worked for just shy of a decade. In my most recent HR role, I served for five years as the CHRO of the Motion Picture and Television Fund (MPTF)—a health-care nonprofit dedicated to the needs of entertainment industry veterans, primarily in its capacity as a residential care facility for the elderly and a skilled nursing facility that included memory care and behavioral psychiatry. In prior positions, I worked as a managing director of HR in the biotech/bioscience space, and I likewise served as head of employee and labor relations for the City of Hope Cancer Center, a renowned hospital and research facility globally recognized for its achievements in the oncology and diabetes space. Finally, I worked in financial services at a private equity firm where I was responsible for recruiting C-level talent (that is, CEOs, CFOs, and COOs) for the firm’s newly acquired portfolio companies. I spent three decades in the frontline trenches of HR across multiple industries and in fairly diverse environments—Fortune 500, nonprofit, union, international, and small to midsized firms—that provided me a breadth of experience into the varying aspects of HR management and leadership.

Aside from my direct work experience, I taught at UCLA Extension’s School of Business and Management for well over a decade in their HR professional designation program, highlighting many of the concepts that we’re about to address together. I’ve been a leadership trainer for the American Management Association, a keynote speaker at various HR conferences, and I’m also a long-term columnist for the Society of Human Resource Management’s HR Magazine and HR Daily Newsletter. In 2022, I launched my own consulting firm, Paul Falcone Workplace Leadership Consulting, focusing on (1) management and leadership training, (2) executive coaching, (3) international keynote speaking, and (4) HR advisory services. I recognize and am grateful for the fact that I’ve gotten opportunities to experience and contribute to some great companies, and I’ve had some fantastic mentors along the way.

My goal now is to bottle all of these various experiences into one book to help you maximize your career opportunities within the HR space. Specifically, I hope to:

round out your exposure to the full gamut of disciplines and specialties within the HR suite of services;

share deeper-dive knowledge and insights into specific areas of the HR world to shortcut the natural learning curve;

maximize certain features of HR programs and service offerings to help you attract, develop, and retain top talent;

raise red flags in areas that could potentially expose you or your organization to unwanted legal liability;

help you master the levers of HR so that you can perform agilely and skillfully across the full HR spectrum—even if you have only limited exposure at this point to all the subdisciplines within the HR space; and

provide a tool for your own personal and professional development as you progress within your HR career.

We’ll approach the material together, as if I’m your coach and mentor, making even complex concepts easy to understand and explain to others, while avoiding typical pitfalls and roadblocks that others have had to learn through hard-won experience. (There’s nothing wrong with that, of course, but this book should help you catapult over a number of obstacles that people often miss and that could come back to bite a newer manager who might not have had exposure to some of the underlying challenges inherent in the HR practice.)

Further, my goal is to make you your clients’ favorite HR person, not only because you listen well to their business needs and care about them personally, but also because you rock your area of HR expertise and know your stuff. People respect competence. They’re drawn to people who are passionate about what they do. And they often come to HR when they feel vulnerable and in need of someone with exceptional people leadership abilities who can help them out of a jam. This book will provide you with a fuller understanding of many of the tools, resources, and programs at your fingertips to help strengthen the muscle of your organization’s frontline operational leadership team, inspire your employees to fall in love with your company, and move your organization forward in a healthy, creative, and compliant way.

It’s an honor for me to join you on such a noble path. It’s an incredible opportunity for me to give back to the field that gave me a career for three decades and to pay it forward to newer generations of HR professionals as a way of thanking those who mentored me. Know that you’re not alone and that we’re in this together. The two of us will make our way through some of the complexities in the HR space, the history and laws that have created today’s modern workplace, and—yes—even some of the quirky human behaviors that show themselves from time to time when people are feeling vulnerable or frightened. Consider this book a handy guide and a guiding hand to accompany you each step of the way, something that not only explains the salient elements of the various HR disciplines but that helps you gain deeper-dive knowledge and wisdom beyond your years of experience. We’ll walk through this together, step-by-step, building on previous lessons and sharing hard-won insights from a more seasoned practitioner in the field who also happens to be a teacher, lecturer, and keynote speaker.

In many ways, we’ve lost the ability as a society to sit around the campfire, share a peace pipe, and have elders pass wisdom down to the younger generations. Consider this our HR campfire, our safe place to explore the HR discipline together while I have your back. I hope this book leads to multiple aha moments, shares insights that inspire even more curiosity on your part, and provides a foundation for your career that you can rely on and access again at any point in the future. Let’s jump right in and begin our journey together—I’m really excited to walk this path with you . . .

Paul Falcone

Los Angeles, 2024

PART ONE

CORE HR LEADERSHIP PRINCIPLES THAT DRIVE YOUR BUSINESS

OPENING ADVICE

I plan to start each major section of this book with some high-level career guidance to help you see the forest and not just the trees. A common problem facing new managers is that many of the things that made them successful individual contributors won’t actually help them as people leaders. For example, newly minted HR managers often try and take over for poorer performing staff members instead of training them how to perform at a higher level. They rarely have the time to do that, of course, yet they stretch themselves thin to do so, often to the detriment of the team.

Here’s what it often looks like for first-time managers. There’s an expression that says, What got you here won’t get you there. In this case, what made you successful as an individual contributor won’t necessarily help you as a people leader. There’s a shift in mindset that is required that, unfortunately, many managers never make. And it all has to do with control. What you can guarantee as an individual contributor is that you’re in control of everything on your desk, everything you submit, and everything that you recommend. Not so with managers: now your work product and deliverables are contingent upon other members of your team. But they carry your name with them on everything they produce—good or bad.

If you’re not successful transitioning from an individual contributor to a manager mindset, you’ll focus on controlling everything in your path. And that translates to micromanagement. Micromanagement stems from a paranoia and fear that you’re no longer aware of everything being generated from your team. Don’t go there. No one wants to work for a micromanager. Developing a reputation for übercontrol won’t help you scale your career, and you’ll run yourself ragged in the process. In other words, if you get bogged down managing four people, you may never have a chance to get to supervise forty or four hundred.

Of course, you have the right to see final products and recommendations before they leave your office. But train your team in their craft. (This book will surely help!) Set expectations clearly regarding what you’ll want to see and when. Give people the room and discretion to find their own solutions and ways of doing things. See yourself as a mentor and coach rather than a unilateral decision-maker or disciplinarian. You won’t have all the answers and don’t have to: leadership is a team sport based on collaboration. The changing role of leadership in today’s schizophrenic and crisis-driven world focuses on authenticity, trust, agility, and emotional intelligence. Be there to support your team. Have their backs. And build their self-confidence. But always hold them to high performance standards while doing so.

You’ll be loved rather than feared, sought after rather than avoided, and praised rather than chided when you’re not in the room. Simply put, strive to become your people’s favorite boss by training them, communicating expectations clearly, and setting high expectations for results. People will shine when they feel they can do their very best work every day with peace of mind while you help them deliver results and master their craft so they can progress in their own careers over time.

1

EMERGING TRENDS, IMMEDIATE DEMOGRAPHIC CHALLENGES, AND THE FUTURE OF WORK

Talent. Talent acquisition. Talent management. Talent development. Whatever way you look at it, talent remains the defining asset that drives a company’s business and the primary profit lever that differentiates superstar organizations from those that struggle. It’s always been that way. Today, however, the value of talent is more recognized and appreciated than ever. The COVID pandemic helped shine a light on how critical it is to have the right talent in place to keep your doors open and your cash flowing. But that was only a beginning, a sliver of light that pointed toward a whole new twenty-first-century paradigm. In fact, one of the key defining variables of organizational success for the remainder of this century will lie in talent acquisition and development. Let’s look at why from a historical perspective.

GENERATIONAL NAMES AND IDENTITIES

First, here’s how today’s working generations of talent line up, as a point of reference:

Note that, as of this writing, millennials and Gen Z comprise approximately 38 percent of the US workforce, and that percentage is increasing exponentially as the baby boomers move toward full retirement around 2029.

In fairness, the workplace has never been a single-generation monopoly. Junior workers have always focused on gaining experience and advancing their careers. Senior workers have always served as supervisors and mentors. And there’s always been some tension between the two. That’s to be expected. But workplaces generally employed Americans from two or (at most) three generations, not five. As one might expect, this phenomenon affects the workforce in both subtle and overt ways, especially when compounded by rapid changes in technology and communication tools. It’s not uncommon to see seventy-seven-year-olds and recent high school graduates on the same teams and in the same departments. That’s a consideration we’ll explore further in the book.

MILLENNIAL AND GEN Z PRIORITIES

Gen-Y millennials and Gen-Z Zoomers are the most studied generational cohorts in world history. Employers know their priorities and would be wise to direct their workforce planning and cultural enrichment efforts to accommodating their desires and goals, which include:

career and professional development;

diversity of thoughts, ideas, and voices;

an ethical employer, meaningful work, and a management team that cares about them personally;

work-life-family balance, control, and equilibrium; and

corporate social responsibility and environmentalism.

These top five desires will remain our priority throughout the book as well because they’re clearly defined and relatively easy to build our strategies around. Granted, we’re not attempting to place people in boxes by their birth year; but generational norms are shifting. For example, junior employees want positive reinforcement frequently (Gen Y and Gen Z). There is a desire for more flexibility among people who are advanced in their careers and have family commitments (Gen X and baby boomers). Generations are clues, not boxes, but we would be wise to track and trend what’s most important to our workers depending on their age and stage of life (which, of course, includes the generation they belong to).

DEMOGRAPHIC SHIFTS

The baby boom began after World War II in 1946 and ended in 1964 with the introduction of the birth control pill. Seventy-five million babies were born over that eighteen-year period—some ten thousand per day. What occurred in 2011 garnered few headlines but was critical to America’s future labor supply: the first baby boomers turned sixty-five, and from 2011 to 2029, ten thousand Americans per day retire. Combine this with the fact that the baby boom was followed by the baby bust (a.k.a. Gen X), a generation only roughly half its size, and you’ve got a formula for massive labor shortfalls. True, the Gen-Y millennials are actually bigger than the baby boomers with eighty million constituents, but there will be a lag before they can fully replace aging boomers.

FALLING LABOR FORCE PARTICIPATION RATES

COVID shone a light on talent scarcity, but a declining labor force participation rate adds significantly to the mix and will extend far beyond the pandemic postintegration phase. The labor force participation rate fell from 67 percent in 2000 to roughly 60 percent as of this writing and is projected to remain at that lower level through 2050.

DECLINING GLOBAL BIRTH RATES IN INDUSTRIALIZED NATIONS

By 2050, advanced industrial countries will be losing population at a dramatic rate, making this a global phenomenon. While the world population hit eight billion for the first time in 2022, the majority of those births took place in underdeveloped, agricultural societies where newborns are needed to ensure the security of aging parents (that is, in nations where there are few social safety nets like Social Security to provide income for basic living needs). As George Friedman pointed out in his New York Times bestseller, The Next Hundred Years, living with underpopulation will remain the norm for the remainder of this century. By the 2040s, many industrialized nations will be enticing tax-paying foreign workers to enter their borders. Some, like Japan and South Korea, have already begun offering foreign workers financial incentives and fast tracks to citizenship.

A NEW TALENT POOL

Today, underrepresented ethnic groups account for 30 percent of the total US population. By 2060, they are expected to reach 60 percent of the population. These groups have historically been overlooked but have a growing amount of buying power. As such, a diverse talent pool increases the range of human capital available to American companies while also better reflecting the buying habits of a more diverse consumer base. This is likely the most critical benefit of diversity hiring: it represents a concrete and reasonable way to develop external talent pools going forward.

This is likewise a core business driver of the DEI&B movement: Diversity, equity, inclusion, and belonging are not only the right things to do for the sake of ethics, morality, and equality of opportunity. DEI&B likewise serves a fundamental business need of supplying untapped talent to fill critical future employment openings. Simply put, organizations that prioritize DEI&B tend to attract a wider range of candidates from different backgrounds and with different experiences. This, in turn, can help companies tap into talent pools that they might otherwise have missed.

We can expect to see a growing focus on talent development and talent management as a result. External talent acquisition will remain in high demand, of course, but wise organizations will look to grow their own by focusing their energies and dollars on developing talent rather than simply assuming that posting a job ad or even calling a headhunter will guarantee them superior results. There’s no doubt about it: tapping into underrepresented and diverse talent pools will likely be America’s lifeline moving forward into the twenty-first century. Wise employers will seize that opportunity by getting ahead of the game and developing a talent bench that reflects their customer base.

Finally, we can expect the future of work to revolve around technological advances that will exceed any of our current expectations. Artificial intelligence, quantum computing, cognitive technology, machine learning, and robotic-process automation (RPA) represent some of the most advanced tools available to measure human capital talent as a true corporate asset. As you move forward in your career, you can expect generative artificial intelligence (AI) to unify data, build rich profiles, minimize unconscious or implicit bias, and build cognitive aptitudes that allow for conversations with employees and job applicants. AI will likewise select appropriate training recommendations that feed individuals’ career and professional development needs that dwarf today’s capabilities. Data metrics and analytics will drive future strategic recommendations and decision-making, undergirding our talent planning efforts.

It goes without saying: human resources as a discipline within corporate America has a tremendous future due to the scarcity of qualified talent that will be available over the coming decades. As an HR practitioner and manager, you’ll likewise have the opportunity to train frontline operational leaders and build management muscle that will help those leaders communicate more effectively, build stronger teams, and positively influence your organization’s culture. Combined with the technological tools that are now or will soon be at your disposal, you’ll be able to influence your organization’s primary profit lever—its talent—and measure and manage increases in performance and productivity that will create a significant return on investment (ROI). Now that’s something to be excited about!

THE OPPORTUNITIES AND CHALLENGES IN HR’S FUTURE

The opportunities that we just discussed are impressive. It’s an exciting time to join the ranks of human resource management because of the tremendous potential that the future holds. With constant change comes multiple opportunities. But you may sometimes feel like the Be careful what you wish for maxim applies here. As a human resources manager, you’ll face a variety of challenges in today’s fast-paced and rapidly changing business environment as well. Let’s look at just some of the ways these challenges and opportunities might manifest themselves in your world.

The Great Resignation, the Gray Resignation, the Great Regret, quiet quitting, quiet firing, and so many other epithets have developed in recent years for good reason: the economy lurches back and forth between talent scarcity and layoffs. The schizophrenic pressures and poly-crises of global wars, corporate slowdowns, introductions of new technology, stock market and interest rate gyrations, political turmoil, gun violence, climate change, and so many other critical factors to our society today constantly pervade the workplace. Simply put, many employees are exhausted, confused, and overwhelmed. The pace of change will likewise only exacerbate the situation, leaving workers constantly putting out fires, both at work and at home. Where do we as HR professionals step in to help? Do we draw a line between employees’