Episode 37: Put A Little Heart Into It Mate: Why Soft HR Is Solid Gold

Reimagining HR with Trina Sunday is a rule breaking podcast

Trina Sunday: Today we're diving into why the H word, that's heart, can cause a visceral reaction in the corridors of power. And why leading with heart is actually the most hard headed move you can make. Welcome to Reimagining HR with Trina Sunday, the rule breaking podcast where we challenge our thinking and our, current people practises. This podcast is for time poor HR teams and business leaders who are feeling the burn, lacking laughs and not feeling the love. I'm Trina, your host and I'm here to cut through the bs, explore different ways of thinking and create high impact HR functions because happier, healthier organisations are better for our people and our bottom line. So if you are keen to flip traditional HR on its head, hit the follow or subscribe button so you're the first to know when new episodes drop. I'm, um, here to help and also to shake things up.

Trina suggests putting more heart into your workplace to boost results

So let's get started. So picture this. You suggest to your exec team that the secret to better results is putting more heart into each other. Cutie eye rolls, right? It's so epic that you'd think I'd ask them to replace spreadsheets with scented candles or something ridiculous. Like in my mind, I could have sworn he was calling me fluffy McFluff face for even daring to suggest that empathy belongs in the boardroom. I guess they do call them Happy Meals though, don't they? Good marketing, that. But given the work that I do, it can be really hard to see why the word heart makes execs twitch so much. And it really takes me back to a budget meeting that I had a few years ago, right, when I was an in house head of HR and I suggested that we add employee belonging to our KPIs. Pretty standard now, but at the time it was reacted to very strongly. Like the CFO's eyebrows shot off the top of his head. Looked like it was trying to go into the roof or something. And he literally said to me, like, belonging sounds a bit touchy feely. All right, Trina, because nothing says shareholder value like chronic burnout, right? 

But anyway. But here's the thing. In all the self development work that I've done, because the better I am myself, the better I am at what I do. I, now realise just how badly we've been conditioned to hide emotions. Like it's the messy kid at the wedding, right? Keep them quiet and definitely away from the head table. But HR cops it the worst. And if we even mention the F word, feelings, that is. You're too fluffy. Stop Hugging, Start firing people. There's no time for Kumbaya, Trina. Sound familiar? 

Quick sidebar, because I'm a bit curious about language when it comes to Kumbaya. I looked this up because someone had told me that Kumbaya was a reference to noongar culture and our first peoples in Australia. It is not. Kumbaya started life in the 20s and it came from African Americans and it was a spiritual song that literally meant something like, come by here. And it was a plea for help from oppressed folks, basically. It's hardly fluffy stuff. And you fast forward to the folk scene in the 50s and the 60s where they mainstreamed it. Somewhere along the line, corporate culture twisted Kumbaya into this shorthand for naive, like, I eyes closed around the campfire type optimism. So when someone sneers and says there's no time for Kumbaya, what they're really saying is like, keep the oppression on mute, but for me, not on my watch, right? And so in an Australian context, we do, we use it in a negative way when we're talking about reconciliation or coming together. And in general. And over recent years, like Kumbaya has become a term of derision and having been associated with what's considered naive, unrealistic attitudes of peace and harmony and cooperation. Which is exactly the context thrown at me in my budget meeting. Unrealistic and uncooperative at, ah, the very idea of bringing heart into our workplaces. 

But heart doesn't equal soft and there's hard data that supports that. And even if I look at anecdotal data, right, storytelling from my own work history, it's like if we head to the red dust of the Pilbara, for example, here in Western Australia, I was chatting to a frontline supervisor. His name's Troy. Big bloke, even bigger beard, but a heart of gold under his high vis, right? And his team had the lowest turnover on site, like, by half. It was like he was smashing it. And I spoke to him about it and I said, what's the secret? And he just shrugged and he's like, I just give us stuff about em Treens. Firstly, only my immediate family calls me Trin. And secondly, welcome to the family, Troy. But the research backs Troy up. Like, Gallup found that teams that, ah, lead with genuine care have 21% higher profitability. And Gallup tracked that with like more than 100,000 business units. And they showed that engagement isn't a warm, fuzzy metric. It's a straight to the bottom line leverage. That's a 21% uptake and it covers mining, retail, you name it. The references will be in the show notes. 

But Google's project Aristotle did a similar thing. Like they discovered that psychological safety is the single biggest predictor, um, of team performance and innovation. We can forget the awkward trustful drills that happen at retreats and things, but when people aren't bracing for, for a career ending chomp or losing their job, they turn that energy into faster and better outcomes like empathy. Isn't this squishy marshmallow thing. It's an industrial grade marshmallow cannon that fires and um, propels people's performance. Toast those suckers around your kumbaya campfire. 

But there's a whole heap of micro practises, small things that we can do that show heart. If you find yourself hung up on the H word like the rest of Western society seems to be, and a lot of it's compassion in action, right? And you can just simply swap the how are you tracking for what's on your plate today and how can I help? And a people leader that I know did that again. This was in mining and resources and fly and fly out. So FIFO environment. But there was a massive freak storm coming through night shift one day and this team leader essentially text nine family members, partners and basically just sent a simple text saying Jake's not online at the moment. just sending you a quick message to let you know that he's safe on site. Seems simple, right? And above and beyond I have people say, oh, as if you can expect us all to do that. But this is the difference, right? Genuine compassionate action that people leader's choice. But the result of that was retention skyrocketed in that team. And that maintenance crew quoted that back six months later as the reason they stayed with that organisation despite competitors coming in and trying to poach everybody at the time. And it's because they gave a damn. Bit like Troy, right? That wasn't Troy, that was someone else. Different side but.

Trina says giving employees autonomy in the workplace can be hugely beneficial

But it's the same with freedom and autonomy. Like if we're looking at micro practises showing heart in our workplace, like you can give adults the sandbox and the shovel and kind of trust that they're not going to eat the sand. Like our employees are not children, they're adults. Right?

And so even with another client in aged care, like letting their remote payroll officer, there'd been so much resistance to the remote work arrangements that she had requested. But letting that remote payroll officer choose her hours cut the error rate by 60% and on time pays Went through the roof. Finance called it witchcraft, I just called it adulting. 

But it's basically letting people figure out if it doesn't impact the work, what is the best way of working. Give them the autonomy, give them the freedom to choose if it's appropriate to do so. If, if we are measuring outcomes and not timesheets. Because at the end of the day it's also about curiosity before judgement. Right? The way I show up again, it's hard in the workplace but it's always kind of. I tend to ask that one more question than is comfortable. 

But my own fail with this in terms of where I show judgement before curiosity and not the other way around is I had assumed with one of my mining equipment clients just down the road, I'd assume that a quiet warehouse picker was really disengaged. This warehouse worker didn't really say anything, didn't contribute to conversations, but it turned out in the background that he was coding a cost saving logistics app which saved my client big bucks. It was close to 200k. I think it was $180k or something. And it's one of those really kind of pivotal moments where you're like okay, yes, good reminder, need to park my assumptions at the door. 

Another thing around kind of heart work is around connection rituals. So humans are like wifi devices really. We drop out without a regular signal. Not to try and make us all AI and robots, but we bolted a five minute rookie spotlight onto one of our clients Monday meeting calls where basically they had new starters. Share one fun fact and one why I'm here moment. Within eight weeks cross team Slack mentions tripled and this was a client in Asia that was using Slack a lot more than my Australian based clients do. But marketing then were able to pinch the idea and miracle of miracles, sales and everyone else knew who was who without squinting at the org chart. But there was also a huge amount of employer branding content to attract new hires.

So that winning ritual really made a difference because we had storytelling. But at the core of all of it is everyone wants to be connected. And so by learning about people and bringing people together it was able to highlight that. The other thing, and it's a big thing obviously that drives me is around fairness and equity. You know, level fields grow better crops. 

But after the latest WGEA reporting spotlighted a client's gender pay gap, we rolled out you know, really transparent salary ban tool. And yes, it triggered a really nervous reaction and rumbles from the exec team. But over the last six months pay equity Grievances. So complaints about not being paid equitably against peers for the same work fell about 30%. Legal cheering obviously, because no one likes disputes. But payroll also noticing a less crowded inbox. Right. Like people weren't asking so many questions and the exec team finally looked would you compliant now we've still got some ways to go in the fairness stakes though, right, in terms of lifting that. But if you're wanting to drive fairness and if you're wanting to create equitable organisations, we need to be able to show up with heart in that. And sometimes that means using data, but it's the storytelling of the data that becomes really impactful. 

So what are your stories of going from fluffy to functional? 

Because that's where the rubber hits the road, right? Game changers. 

And we need to be able to sell the heart to people that are, you know, built around spreadsheets. And sometimes that does mean metrics for that. And tracking connection via voluntary stay interviews, for example, like link it to retention and the dollars that we are saving. I'm a massive advocate for stay interviews. There's no point doing an exit interview when people have already left. What's the point? They've gone. Interview people, figure out what the connection looks like and what's making people stay, give a damn. Um, be Troy and then ritualize. 

Ah, it, you know, there's ways of, for example, starting every OPS meeting with a people headline, 90 seconds timer on. And I know a facilities management team that did this. And in sharing and kind of leading with the people stuff, someone flagged a potential strike about four weeks before it actually hit. And they were able to talk to people and find out what was happening and see what the feel and vibes were. And it's really important information. The other thing is around language and we've got to hack that. We need to replace soft skills with core skills or critical skills on our performance forms. And the way we talk about performance and capability in our organisations and you can watch credibility go up faster than Perth house prices or Australian house prices. And I'd really encourage you to check out Bethan Winn's cracking work in that space. 

But a geotech consultancy that I coach, Think Rock doctors in High Vis, they introduced a two question daily standup and they really shifted it away from the project and across to the people. And it was two things, two questions. What rocked and who helped you rock? And stress talk, what they're calling burnout complaints. But I think that the term burnout is very overused in my view. And in the wrong context, some people are just tired and need a nap. But anyways, they quote burnout complaints that they halved in six weeks. They got some extra points for puns as well, but the CEO called it a seismic culture shift. 

Actually, thinking about that, I'm not sure why HR is getting the bad rap for language here, given some of the puns that are flying around our organisations for having the audacity to talk about heart. But anyways, you get the gist. 

But inevitably through many of my chief People Officer and Chro Chief HRO clients, they ask me, yeah, but what if my CEO hates feelings? Insert sigh here. But my advice for now is to frame it around risk mitigation. I mean emotional risk is on the ISO 45003. It's on the menu now, mate, and it sits alongside ISO 45001 and it treats burnout like any other workplace hazard. If you ignore it, then you want to order it away from fame in the wrong newspaper. But if you want some tips to help your CEO actually level up in this space in terms of the heart work, Dr. Kirsten Ferguson's book Head and Heart, it's a book on modern leadership and the Art of Modern Leadership is a really good reference. So she argues that the best leaders juggle eight attributes. Four from the head, curiosity, wisdom, perspective, capability and four from the heart, humility, self awareness, courage and empathy. And the trick isn't picking a side, it's knowing which lever to pull in which moment. Now, the head stuff gets lots of airtime in the C suite already, right? KPIs, data dashboards, spreadsheets for days. So let's give the heart it's due.

Any CEO can start this week to dial up the heart. And the first one is around humility

There are four kind of no excuses micro moves that any CEO really can start this week to dial up the heart. And the first one is around the humility bit, right? So these are really short, sharp habits, 90 second habits that CEOs and exec teams can try, but especially for CEOs if they hate feelings. Like if you can't set this from the top and have some emotional intelligence flowing through your organisation, then your performance is going to be sorely a mess. And I, spoke with Amy Jacobson about this recently in terms of how it's going to thwart any change efforts in your organisation. But in the humility stakes, open the next town hall with here's one decision I'd redo and what I learned. And the bigger the stage, the better. The more exposed the CEO, the better it signals that it's safe for others to Own their mistakes early and surfaces issues before they become really big. The other thing's around self awareness. So a habit to try. And this is something I've been trying personally for the last six months. I started this in January as my thing for 2025 and it's actually really illuminating. So record a two minute voice note after really key meetings. So I do this on my iPhone in voice memo. I come out of a big meeting and I record a two minute voice note reflecting on what emotion did I bring into the room and how did it shape the outcome. And then every Friday I review it, I play that voice memo back to myself. How did my emotions play out this week in the moments that mattered, in the meetings that mattered. And it kind of builds an emotional black box really. And you can replay that. And I've found it so illuminating because I've spotted patterns and blind spots before my clients do or before my associate consultants do. And so it's a really great tool for self awareness if you're wanting to, you know, improve your heart work. The other one's around courage, this is a bit harder. But one CEO client that I worked with, they created and personally presented their new psychosocial risk heat map. They put a big physical one on the board and they went and they pinned their name physically to the action plan and it reframed wellbeing and creating safe workplaces away from being HR soft staff and across to being an enterprise risk. And it shows from a CEO perspective that the buck really stops with them, not with hr. And then the last thing I was reflecting on from Ferguson's work and that last heart kind of space that she talks about, which is empathy, I think this is where you can kind of shadow frontline shifts for a couple of hours. No entourage, no clipboard. And essentially it's a bit undercover boss, but not quite undercover. But you have the same impact if you're there doing the thing for enough time to see the realities that your people are facing. And the power of this is then showing up in whatever your comms platform is, whether That's Telegram or WhatsApp or Slack or whatever you're using through Microsoft. But show up with some reflections on what surprised me and what we will fix to make your work easier. It creates storytelling and you can create that storytelling and use that and quote it in strategy meetings. And it's going to prove that you're leading from the ground up, um, that you're relatable and you can't fake that if you spend enough time on the Front line, you'll get eaten alive by people that have zero tolerance for BS. But if you do that for 90 days, you can watch the vibe and the numbers shift. You'll still have all the head you need in terms of all that stuff. But it's now then, the heart stuff. Getting a workout is putting a spotlight on that. And as a strategic advisor who works with CEOs, I'm constantly reminding clients that balanced leaders, they stay off the front page and on the innovation scoreboard. And you can't do that without heart. You need heart for innovation. So where does that leave us? 

Heart's not fluff, it's your firmware. Compassion, autonomy, curiosity, connection, fairness. I mean, they were five simple switches that I've talked about to turn HR from hall monitor to value multiplier. But it is about taking the WTF away from the what the fuck, basically, to what the feels. And your emotional intelligence will start going up, along with the quality of your relationships and your work outcomes. Being heartfelt isn't feelings talk. Like, for me personally, it's about showing up, being genuine, sharp, authentic and giving a damn, like Troy. Right. But often we have this too emotional label that's thrown at hr. Anything to do with people change is seen as fluffy. It's too emotional. It's too emotional. If you're getting a lot of that pushback, you have some really good symptoms of where your culture is not playing in a constructive space. And a lot of the time it's really interesting because the people that are labelled as too emotional are often the people who are the most emotional. I'm looking at you, Musk and Trump, you know, but sure, women are too emotional to lead in the C suite, right? But it's a certain kind of emotion. It's the quote unquote, the soft side or the soft emotions as opposed to aggression. But when we're throwing our toys out of the cot, when we have emotions that are taking us away from innovation and performance and productivity and doing that thing that we need to be doing to get great results, whether that's for our society and community, whether that's for the people in our organisations, whether that's for our families at home, this is a space where if you lead with heart and if you show up with heart, you can make a massive difference. Right? So if you've tried any of these moves in doing your heart work or you've caught the epic eye roll like I have, jump into the comments or DMs because I really want to know what reactions you're seeing because how cool would it be to keep the heart pumping and the positive changes humming? 

Imagine that. 

Thanks for tuning in and leaning in to this week's episode. As we look to reimagine how we show up for our people, organisations and community, reach out to us via our website at www.reimaginehr.com.au with your HR horror stories or suggestions of people you'd love to hear from or topics you want to explore.

 It's all about people, purpose and impact and we are here for all of it. 

Until next time, take care team.