I’ve just accepted an offer to join a 25-person org their first dedicated HR & culture hire. I’m anticipating a need to help staff understand the HR & Culture function, as well as my specific role, and I wondered if anyone can recommend resources or advice? I plan to do listening tours but also wondered if you have thoughts, or have seen helpful resources, describing the scope and purpose of HR & culture leaders, especially in a mission-driven context. I know that a few of the staff are in their first professional role, so I’m particularly keen to be explicit / transparent for them.
I don’t have any specific resources for HR and Culture leads, but I guess a general question that I often bring to people doing this work and thinking about how to talk about it, is a bit of a flip: Do you have a clear sense of the nature of the role? There are versions of ‘HR & Culture’ that are just the oppressive/ top-down/ ‘protect the org and management’ HR of the past, with a nicer-sounding word attached, and there are versions that are more focused on facilitating collective input, feedback, wisdom from across those impacted by policies and processes and actively working to shift traditional power dynamics and inequities within an organisation.
So I almost wonder, rather than thinking about general descriptions of the role, do you have a sense what the particular combination of a) the organisation and b) you, want the role to be?