Minh Hua

▶0:01HostWelcome 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 Min to the Built By People Podcast. Min, thank you so much for joining us. And as a starting question, I always love to ask if you could share a little bit more about your career journey.

▶0:53GuestYeah. Dave, thanks for having me. When I think about my career journey, it's a series of accidents and good luck, a few bad luck moments, but mostly good luck that I'm very grateful for. In the '90s, I needed good mentoring and I didn't have it. I made my first bad career decision, which was not to accept my offer to join Georgia Tech's computer science program. Instead, I went to get a degree in psychology and my first job coming out of college paid a whopping $21,000 a year. My first professional job was actually at a nonprofit where I was working on Bill Clinton's Welfare Reform Act. I would help people in the community that maybe haven't worked for years or decades and maybe had disabilities or mental health challenges. And I would work with getting them in what we call work-ready shape. And then my partner would help place them in a job in a community. So from that, I learned the power of a job and the dignity it gives when you could earn your own way. So that's kind of how my career started. We didn't call it HR at the time, but it was very transferable to HR. And so I just have been in HR the entire time.

▶2:09HostMin, we've talked in the past that most HR practices were forged in the 20th century by companies like GE and Motorola. What key innovations or changes do you believe HR needs to embrace for the 21st century workplace?

▶2:25GuestYeah, I would say, Vince, if I'm speaking to a board, I would say that the HR function needs to be less political. It is right now largely a political function. And functions that don't deal with revenue, don't deal with technology or products, and don't have a lot of empirical basis tends to be political. First is HR needs to be less political. I think it needs to be more empirically driven. So in the 21st century, I think it's going to be all about behavioral science.

▶2:54HostThat leads me to my next question. Can you explain how behavioral economics can be applied to HR practices and share some concrete examples of how this approach has improved management decisions?

▶3:06GuestI'll use one, if I may, that's in the news right now, and this is Elon Musk in the federal government, right? But first, let me say, I'm not going to get into the politics, right or wrong, red versus blue. I'm just going to talk about the behavioral science of what we're seeing. Elon, through the OPM, which is the federal government's version of HR, is making news. And again, we're not going to get into politics. I'm just staying on the behavioral economic side of this. Okay. So one of the first asks Elon did was voluntary opt-out. We'll get an extended, basically, leave with pay, you essentially resign. There's a lot of support in behavioral economics for that, particularly choice architecture. Like for example, are most of the people who take that package, would they have left anyway? Therefore, it was not a good use of taxpayers' money or not. But in general, that strategy has a lot of foundational support from behavioral economics. So that first move, if you're a behavioral economist like me, I'd give it a B+. Okay. The latest move, it's a little bit of a head scratcher. Again, we're not going to get into politics. Okay. Just from the behavioral science of it. When you ask employees to write 5 things that you did the prior week, and keep in mind, you've done all these things in the news and you walked on a stage with a chainsaw, you'll get perhaps not the most precise answers. From people who do respond. Okay. Now, if we listen to Elon on his design, and he says this in writing, check to make sure people are working, responding. So if that's the goal, you could reach that goal, but I would think your IT department could probably do that even better. Your IT department can measure if your people are working, because these are all knowledge workers by and large. And then there's another claim that we'll take these emails and we'll put it in the AI and then it'll help us decide which jobs should be eliminated. Okay. So the first problem is game theory or what I called behavioral economics earlier, where when people are under fear and they know this is coming, I'm not sure you can count on the responses, right? The second problem is garbage in, garbage out with the data. Okay. And then the third problem is I don't believe there's a large language model that has been trained well enough to deal with the intricate dance of a performance review. But the relying on an email response as the basis for a major decision in an environment of fear, there's just not a lot of choice architecture foundation around that. Hopefully that helps.

▶5:47HostMan, you're publishing research on behavioral science in HR later this year. What are some of the most surprising findings that challenge our traditional understanding of employee motivation and productivity?

▶6:00GuestI'll say this, but I say it with good intentions. I think the first is that the law of conservation of mass energy exists in sociology, meaning people, employees, including me and you, most of us in most incidents will default to the conservation of energy. Okay. And you see this when you look at the data behind a very controversial topic, return to office, work from home, and has all of the saved time from commutes been devoted to solving business problems? The data set doesn't seem to say that. And so there's multiple examples of the law of conservation happening. There's another one that, Dave, I bet you've learned just through your lived experience around the world is that When people or employees ask for feedback, most of the time, in most cases, they're asking to be validated. And that's something for us to reckon with when we think about give more feedback. How do we do it? What's the right time? How do we meet people where they are? But first, we must admit that when, Dave, I say, hey, give me some feedback. Most of the time, I kind of want validation. And then finally, I'll leave one about well-roundedness versus deep expertise. I get this from young aspiring career people all the time. Should I be well-rounded? Should I be an expert? It really depends, but I think the experience and observations I've had in my life is that the higher paying jobs value deep expertise more than well-roundedness. Good to— what I will pay a premium for is people who have answers and that can solve something for me. So that's kind of what my lived experience has told me.

▶7:52HostMan, in your experience, how can HR leaders move beyond what you called gimmicky things and anecdotes to implement evidence-based practices that actually help employees be happier and more productive?

▶8:05GuestYeah, great. It's a great question. I, I would— advise any CHRO or board to first hire someone on the team that reports to you, the CHRO, that has conducted field experiments and measured human behavior. This person probably doesn't come from HR, but they've conducted field experiments and measured human behaviors. Not a research person, uh, or desktop research person, but again, field experiments. Second, I would say insist that your team presents a contra argument every time they make a proposal for you. So they should propose the reasons why you shouldn't agree with them. And it's a great discipline to do that. And then finally, establish a culture of muscle memory that big and small decisions, when practical and when it doesn't slow things down, that we will create A/B tests to learn, that we exercise humility. We'll say, okay, we're gonna We would do this, but let's have an A/B test to make sure what we think is happening actually happens. That's what I would advise.

▶9:11HostMin, with your unique perspective, having worked at GE and seeing the evolution of HR practices, what do you think is the biggest misconception about employee behavior and management practices?

▶9:24GuestRight now, I think there's a lot of suspicion about management and HR. And much of it deserved, right? I think we need to fix the trust issue between management and employees. If we don't, we'll see a resurgence of unions, especially within democratic nations. And this is especially true in the dawn of AI. And as robots become cheaper to create and deploy, I think we need somehow for management and the workforce to Trust each other.

▶9:56HostMin, what parting advice would you like to share with our community?

▶10:00GuestI think save your money, live below your means. And I know it's kind of odd coming from an HR person, save your money, live below your means. And there's two reasons why. The first is you can only be a free thinker if you have F.U. money. The second is get ready. We're entering about two decades of rapid market displacement. The debate on whether AI will reduce jobs, increase jobs, I could see it both ways. But what I can also see, what history has showed us, is that in the near term, as we go through creative destruction, there, there will be some pain. Save your money, live below your means.

▶10:39HostMin, thank you so much for joining us on the Built By People podcast. It was a pleasure to have you involved.

▶10:43GuestMy pleasure.