Allison Hamel

▶0:00HostWelcome to the Built by People podcast, where we share the stories and insights of the world's top HR leaders. Join us as we dive deep into the minds of HR executives, uncovering their strategies, challenges, and triumphs in shaping today's workforce. I'm excited to welcome Allison to the Built by People podcast. Allison, thank you so much for joining us today. And as a starting question, I always love to ask if you could share a little bit more about your career journey.

▶0:49GuestYeah, it's funny. I knew I was going into HR at the young age of 18. So when I went to undergrad, I majored in business and HR and It's worked out well for me. I know a lot of other HR practitioners fell into it or by happenstance ended up in this career, but I've been doing it my whole career and I've had a variety of roles and experiences. I started out in retail, so I worked for Target Corporation for several years and held a variety of roles with them. I was a store HR manager for a while. Was a regional HR business partner, and I ran a store for a little while as well. So I jumped into operations, which was a little bit of a different adventure. Target for me was a little bit like a leadership and HR boot camp. So taught me a lot of just foundational kind of best practices around leading teams and HR. I was really young and in my mid-20s leading sometimes teams of 200 people. Them, they stuck with me through it as I was learning in the deep end, but it was a really great opportunity and lots of takeaways from my time there. After Target, I worked for the Denver Public School System for a period of time, and that was definitely a pivot. I was leading HR business partners and supporting school leaders and superintendents at the time there, and that really taught me a mission-driven type of organization, people with so much heart in really high-stakes environment when you think about kids and education and the importance of what we were doing there. So a lot of values-based leadership, and I worked with some really awesome people and definitely think fondly on my time there. After that, I went and worked for the City of Denver for a period of time and led the HR team that supported the Department of Public Safety. And so that, again, definitely an interesting environment and very different. I learned to navigate complexity in systems. There's a lot of bureaucracy, you It was a highly political environment as well. But I would say again, working with first responders and the work that they do every day, it was definitely motivating and inspiring. And I have a lot of admiration for folks in that line of work after having worked closely with them. Then I entered tech and that was a blind move. I knew Huddle was a great company and I wanted to get closer to home and I stumbled upon it and I joined Huddle about 6 years ago. In an HR operations role. And I would say early days I had imposter syndrome for sure because I wasn't quite sure what I had gotten into. I didn't know how to work in scaling tech and had to get scrappy and figure out how to build from scratch and build a great team around me. And so I've held a variety of roles here at Huddle and am currently leading the people function, and it's been an amazing opportunity with lots of growth and learning for me as well.

▶3:48HostAlison, can you tell us about your approach to building HR teams?

▶3:54GuestYeah, early in my career, I had advice from one of my first bosses. He told me, hire people that are smarter than you and your job becomes really easy. And I thought it was funny at the time. I'm like, hire people smarter than me? What are you talking about? But now that's really core to how I view and approach hiring. I think one of the most important things we do as people leaders. It's finding the right people for the right seats within our organization, and diversifying strengths on your team is so important. And so I need specialists, people that love a good comp strategy or an HRIS workflow. Those are not my strong suits, and so I have to surround myself with people that are great at those things, who are passionate about those things. And diversifying skill sets is really important. For me, and then I think, you know, when you think about skills as well and finding the right skills, curiosity and adaptability are things that I look for in building my team. Being able to challenge the status quo and being able to move fast while asking great questions are things that I really value and look for. I've also had the opportunity to hire some leaders on my team as well, and I definitely look for a balance of people who lead by building really strong team-oriented relationships while also having a high bar and high standards. And I think when you align those two things, building great relationships while also having a high bar and high accountability, work can be really fun. And so I've been able to have the opportunity to have a lot of fun building my team. I think we spend so much time at work with people, so you have to enjoy who you're doing it with. And so I want pros, but I also want people that genuinely are good teammates and are fun to work with. And so that's my motto around hiring and what I've been looking for as I've built a team at Huddle.

▶5:47HostAllison, how does your team maintain high engagement and combat burnout in HR, especially during challenging periods of change and transformation like the one we're going through right now?

▶6:00GuestThat's a good one. You hear so much these days about burnout and people leaving the profession or taking time away because the expectations are really high and things have changed and gotten really complicated. I have a meme on my phone that I relate to so much, and it's a picture of the gal from Office Christmas Party where she's got her like Christmas sweater and her clipboard and she's smiling and it says HR. 2019. And then next to it is a picture of Mel Gibson in Braveheart with his team, and he's got weapons and there's fire around him, and it says HR after 2019. I just can't relate to anything more than that because COVID really pivoted how we work, what's expected of HR. There's a lot of emotions and things are moving and changing so fast, and burnout is real. And so for me, what's important is managing the weight of that. I think this isn't a point in time, this isn't going away. I think expectations are gonna continue to climb, and so we have to manage ourselves within that a little bit as much as we have to manage the work and our tasks. And so I view burnout as it's not solved by doing more, but choosing. So I recently read the Let Them Theory by Mel Robbins, and I'm sure there's lots of differing perspectives on takeaways with that book, but something that resonated with me and I've really been trying to model is not wasting energy trying to control things that I can't control. So focusing on what I can do, what I can influence, and helping take out some of the noise that can really be a distraction for teams. Some of the things I do, if there's a stressor, am I going to worry about this in 2 weeks, in 2 months? Is it going to be something that I still think about? And if the answer is no, then it doesn't deserve my energy today, and I try to help My team think in that way as well, is how do we focus on what matters and what we can control and use our energy in the right way? When I talked about building teams, I think I try to hire really smart, accountable people that have a high drive. And within that, I give people flexibility. Work and life are so integrated at this point in time in terms of how we work. There really isn't a shutoff switch, but I try to let my team and I try to model balancing and integrating work and life in ways that make sense for people. So taking time away, having flexibility, doing what you need when you need to. I think we definitely have to lead that way because it is really challenging to balance it all. I have a lot of fun with my team too. So I think if you're not laughing at work, you're not doing it right. So that keeps us sane. We have a lot of fun, GIFs, emojis. HR doesn't have to be serious all the time. And so we're people, and, you know, I think relationships and fun go a long way in helping us manage some of the stressors that come with this profession.

▶8:57HostAllison, how do you approach being a strategic partner to the business, and can you walk us through how you build that relationship with business leaders?

▶9:06GuestYeah, that's a good one, and again, a hot topic around HR having a seat at the table or being a quote-unquote strategic partner. And The first step for me is shut up and listen. What is the business trying to do? Learning, being curious, making sure that you're grounded and understanding that. I think one of my favorite questions to ask business leaders is what keeps them up at night? So that is so telling to understand what leaders are stressed about or what they're thinking about. And if you don't understand the business, you can't be a strategic partner and there's really, it's hard to have a voice. At the table. And so I would say start there as a leader or as an HR business partner. And that's definitely something I encourage with my team as well. I think digging into their problems, understanding what they're solving for is so critical. The second thing I'll add is being solutions-oriented. I'm not an HR practitioner that leads with no and being a roadblock. I think we need to be solutions-oriented and listening and understanding why people are coming to us for support or help. If you're saying yes to everything and you're being an order taker, sometimes it's hard to prioritize, keep the North Star in mind. But I think we have to— if the business is coming to us for help or support, we need to listen, we need to understand and come up with creative solutions for them. May not be that I can help you today with that problem, but it's something that I can eventually help you with, or there might be some creative solutions in the short term. But I would say I definitely Encourage my team and try to make sure we're someone that is solutions-oriented and not a no or roadblocker, because I think that impedes the ability to really support the business. And then I think being practical, right? Like HR is not just a playbook. There are best practices and those are starting points for what we anchor to, but real impact happens when we tailor to the situation and it's unique to our business. And so I would say again, being really practical and not prescriptive with kind of the HR best practice speak is something I also definitely try to emulate. Being engaged in convos, just learning about the business, even when you're not there to solve a problem, is honestly the best way to learn. And as a people leader, it's up to me to connect those dots as I'm listening to the business, as I'm understanding what problems they're trying to solve, what does my team need to be focusing on and doing to propel the business forward. And so learning, listening, and being solutions-oriented are the things that I would anchor to on that point.

▶11:33HostAlison, can you share a story about how your diverse background across retail, education, government, and now tech has shaped your approach to HR leadership? What lessons carry through?

▶11:44GuestYeah, first and foremost, I think working in those different contexts has helped me be really resilient and adaptable, navigating different industries and requirements. When I think about my time in retail, I would say I learned how to move fast and really a practical approach with a high level of accountability. I think education taught me compassion and alignment to the mission, like I had previously mentioned. Government gave me an appreciation for complexity in systems, and patience isn't always my strongest virtue, but I learned to be patient and learn how to navigate. And then in tech, I've really learned how to build from scratch and live with a little bit more ambiguity. But I think, you know, when I joined Huddle, probably the story there is there weren't many HR foundations in place, and I had come from scaled and structured organizations, and I remember pausing and thinking like, I'm supposed to build all this? It was really humbling because I wasn't sure how to do that. As I mentioned before, I really focused on building a great team and taking the context from all of those other situations and knowing what worked well and what didn't and, and what might work here. And so, Building a great team and then setting up the foundations in a new environment has been a great learning for me. I think the biggest lesson across all those industries, people are people. Leadership and relationships are always going to be the anchor point. There's titles, org chart differences, but humans, you know, are humans. And so I think purpose, connection, clarity, those things stay true regardless of the industry that you're working in. And so that's definitely been a lesson as I think about my experiences in all those different environments.

▶13:24HostAllison, what parting advice would you like to share with our community?

▶13:28GuestYeah, I think a couple things for people that are maybe earlier in career or still figuring things out. I would encourage them not to overlook the imperfect jobs. Like, they often hold the most opportunity for growth. And don't disqualify yourself. Unqualified doesn't mean that you are. If I had known everything I was signing up for in my different experiences, I might have said no to some of them, but they've all been great for me, and I've had so many takeaways. And so, I would encourage people to take a leap and challenge yourself. Yourself. I think for practitioners or people that are leading HR teams, I would say have fun with your people. Laugh, celebrate the small wins, don't waste energy on things that you can't control, and just be a human, because that's what we are and what we're doing here. So those would be my parting words.

▶14:14HostAllison, thanks so much for joining us today on the Built by People podcast. It was a pleasure to have you involved.

▶14:19GuestAwesome. It was great being here. Thank you so much.