The individual in this podcast has chosen to remain anonymous. Instead she’s using the name of the online community she created, called “notSHRMapproved.”
The Admin behind notSHRMapproved has enjoyed the privilege of being in the Human Resources industry for over 16 years in a variety of companies from grassroots start-ups to Multi-National Enterprises, serving in an Executive HR leadership position for the last 8 years. Her verticals have included Financial Services, Professional Employer Organizations, Retail Manufacturing, Government Services, Fashion Design, Restaurants, and Global Distribution.
Starting in client services work out of undergrad school, notSHRMapproved entered into the Human Resources sphere when she found her passion for compliance and social justice could be combined into one career. She has been the HR guru for organizations as small as 25 and as large as 6,000 employees, ensuring employee-centric policies and procedures were at the heart of every company’s culture. Her experiences have been shaped by the warm, wonderful, motley populations that made up each company’s employee base and has been the driving factor in keeping service synonymous with success. She now harnesses those experiences to transform the trials and tribulations of HR professionals into relatable and humorous memes and stories on Instagram, Twitter, and TiKTok, earning a rep not only as an au courant HR Executive but as the hostess of an engaging community for the next generation of HR leaders.
She, her husband, and their cadre of children hail from the NYC Metro area. She is an enormously proud military daughter, granddaughter, and sister. She has a penchant for French white wine and ahi poke bowls, an unfortunate addiction to caffeine, a repetitive affair with the word f**k, and an avid love of the sea.
More from notSHRMapproved…
The admin behind notSHRMapproved is passionate about HR. And so that means she’s passionate about employees at every company she’s worked.
But what she loves about her online community is so many HR professionals reach out about trying to care for themselves. And she says she loves that.
She tells us:
“The thing that pops up the most is, how do I as an HR professional, care for myself, when I am the one caring for everybody else? And it makes me feel incredibly inspired, that people are thinking about that, because I think 10-15 years ago, it was keep your head down and keep your mask on and be a wall and don’t show vulnerability. But you can’t do that. Leaders, true leaders show vulnerability, they show empathy, they connect with the person that they’re connecting with, and they set expectations properly.
And in order to do any of that, you have to understand what state that you’re in. And you can’t ignore that you are a human being. So self-care and emotional fatigue in particular, have become very relevant topics for the community in light of 2020.
The HR community has had so much to contend with in 2020. It’s not just about the COVID protocols, and the safety protocols and the who’s getting this and then you’ve got the FFCRA (Families First Coronavirus Response Act). And you have all of the different legislators and laws and compliance. You’ve got all of that balancing act.
But then you’ve got the people who are in the verticals that have been highly affected by the shutdowns and economic turndowns. You have people who are reaching out to their executives that may or may not even really understand where their company is going in such uncertainty and they’re leaving their HR professionals to deal with that.
So you’ve got the COVID aspect, you have the awesome awakening that is going on behind and stress of the importance behind diversity and inclusion and equity that’s going on. But again, you have these executives who will come in and say well, you’re the HR manager, I need you to create a diversity and inclusion program. [And you’re thinking] I’m a 30 year old white woman with absolutely no experience in this, what do you want me to do? [And your boss says] oh, yeah, and you don’t have a budget. These are the real life stresses that the HR community has had to contend with in 2020. And so there’s burnout all over the place.
So in terms of emotional fatigue, in particular, and I love the way that that’s worded. Emotional fatigue is the core of what you need to address so that you can deal with the physical fatigue, you can deal with the stress, you can deal with the over preventing, sickness, or injury or illness.
And one of the things that I hope the most out of the notSHRMapproved community is that the solidarity and the humor, and the laughter and the resources that we provide for free on that community will help someone reach out, will help someone rebalance. And will help someone reassess where they are, so they can keep doing what they do best, which is helping their teams.”
