Have you ever found yourself stifling a yawn during yet another monotonous meeting, wondering if there's more to the workday than just deadlines and dreary tasks? Our latest guest, Jeff Harry of Rediscover Your Play, brings a whirlwind of energy as he champions injecting play into the workplace, transforming it into a hub of creativity and fulfillment. This episode is not your typical business talk; it's an exploration of how integrating play can nurture mental health and skyrocket employee engagement.
We're tossing the conventional playbook out the window and challenging you to rethink the very foundation of your work ethos. This isn't about adding a ping pong table to the break room; it's about tapping into the 'zone of genius' where employees can leverage their passion and talent. Imagine meetings where your favorite snack is as welcome as your ideas, and where creativity isn't stifled by the four walls of a conference room. It's a fresh take on Maslow's hierarchy of needs, infused with insights from the Blackfoot Nation.
But it's not all fun and games; we also confront the stark realities of corporate culture, from impersonal layoffs to prioritizing profits over people. Through discussing real-life corporate missteps, we highlight the urgent need for a more humane approach to employee treatment and HR practices. Jeff Harry's magnetic mission and approach to work will leave you eager to shake things up at your office, one playful step at a time.
Connect with Jeff Harry at:
Rediscover Your Play
The Bow Tie Story
LinkedIn
Instagram
YouTube
TicTok
Connect with us:
Email the podcast.
Join us on Instagram - we appreciate your support!
Dana Dowdell - Boss Consulting - @bossconsultinghr - @hrfanatic
Have you ever found yourself stifling a yawn during yet another monotonous meeting, wondering if there's more to the workday than just deadlines and dreary tasks? Our latest guest, Jeff Harry of Rediscover Your Play, brings a whirlwind of energy as he champions injecting play into the workplace, transforming it into a hub of creativity and fulfillment. This episode is not your typical business talk; it's an exploration of how integrating play can nurture mental health and skyrocket employee engagement.
We're tossing the conventional playbook out the window and challenging you to rethink the very foundation of your work ethos. This isn't about adding a ping pong table to the break room; it's about tapping into the 'zone of genius' where employees can leverage their passion and talent. Imagine meetings where your favorite snack is as welcome as your ideas, and where creativity isn't stifled by the four walls of a conference room. It's a fresh take on Maslow's hierarchy of needs, infused with insights from the Blackfoot Nation.
But it's not all fun and games; we also confront the stark realities of corporate culture, from impersonal layoffs to prioritizing profits over people. Through discussing real-life corporate missteps, we highlight the urgent need for a more humane approach to employee treatment and HR practices. Jeff Harry's magnetic mission and approach to work will leave you eager to shake things up at your office, one playful step at a time.
Connect with Jeff Harry at:
Rediscover Your Play
The Bow Tie Story
LinkedIn
Instagram
YouTube
TicTok
Connect with us:
Email the podcast.
Join us on Instagram - we appreciate your support!
Dana Dowdell - Boss Consulting - @bossconsultinghr - @hrfanatic
This episode is brought to you by Boss Consulting HR and our downloadable products. We launched downloadable products in 2023, and I'm excited to share them with you through the Quirky HR podcast. If you head over to Boss Consulting HR and navigate to the downloadable section, we'll, of course, make sure that it's linked in the podcast description. There you can find resources for small business owners, hr departments of one, new business owners who are not quite sure where to go to get started, all for a purchase. Our goal is to provide all the resources and tools for small business owners so that you can make sure that you are doing right by your employees and running your HR function appropriately. So, with that, check them out over on Boss Consulting HR and we'll get right into the show. Welcome back to Quirky HR. We are talking today with Jeff Harry. He is an expert in all things workplace play and he is the founder of Rediscover your Play. Jeff, thank you for joining me on Quirky HR.
Jeff Harry:Oh, I'm so excited for this.
Dana Dowdell:I feel like. So, Jeff, you can't see him, but he's wearing a Lego bow tie, and so I think that's like foreshadowing into his subject matter. But if you can tell us a little bit about who you are, what you do and also how you found yourself in this niche of workplace play.
Jeff Harry:Yeah, so I'll give you the quick Batman origin story. So did you ever see Big with Tom Hanks?
Dana Dowdell:God, years ago maybe.
Jeff Harry:I know years ago, right. Well, in the movie he plays with toys for a living and I saw that in third grade and I was like you can do that for a living. So I started writing toy companies in third grade on my word processor. That dates me. And I just kept doing that until I got into the toy industry I think 16 to 18 years later.
Jeff Harry:And have you ever gotten exactly what you've always wanted and then been so disappointed when you got there? You know, like no toys, no joy, no high fives, no play, you know no camaraderie. It felt like we were selling pillows, like it didn't really matter what we were selling. So I remember being so disappointed being in that industry. So I had to leave my dream industry and I left New York at the time that's where I was living and I came to the San Francisco Bay area and I found a job on Craigslist. Well, for anyone that knows Craigslist, it's one of the shadiest sites. It's where you buy furniture, like in a dark alleyway, like that's what you usually do with it. And it was.
Jeff Harry:The job was teaching kids engineering with lego and it was playing for a living. And I was like, oh, this is awesome, and it paid 150 a week. It was like a joke of the job, joke of a job. But we got to play and it was only seven of us at the time and we just messed around like we pick cities, we thought were fun. We pick people, we thought were fun, we're just making it up.
Jeff Harry:As we went along and it became the largest Lego-inspired STEM organization in the US and we had no idea what we were doing, right. We started partnering with Lego. We started partnering with all the top tech companies Facebook, google, adobe and I started running team building events for these top companies and I thought they were the greatest companies of all time. And then when you were there, you were like, oh, they're not playing. Like they're not that fun. Like Google, even though it has a slide, is not that fun.
Jeff Harry:So it inspired me to create a workshop with my friend, Gary Ware called dealing with a-holes in the workplace through play. Just as like a joke, we were just like kind of messing around with it. Um, and it became so popular and it took us to like Australia that I was like, oh, I can do more of this. So that when the pandemic hit, I was like I'm just gonna do this full time and I just started making up workshops to really address major companies' pain points so that the jobs wouldn't suck so much like work wouldn't suck so much and people could actually play for a living while doing their job.
Dana Dowdell:And here you are.
Jeff Harry:Here I am.
Dana Dowdell:Okay, you told me I can ask tough questions, so yeah, Bring it. Where's the balance? You know, like I feel like work psychology tells us that the, the social connections that you have at work and the culture at work play a huge part in engagement, productivity, longevity, all of those positive HR metrics that we look at, but yet we still don't do a good job at it.
Dana Dowdell:So, how do you work with clients to make sure that the balance is there, that it's not too, you know, because of course a CEO, a manager, a leader is going to say, well, how do we ensure that they're not just fucking off for the day? Right, Like, how do?
Jeff Harry:we ensure that stuff.
Dana Dowdell:Right Like what's. Where's the balance?
Jeff Harry:I think it's the same balance of like well, I'm so worried. Everyone's working at home. How do I know they're doing their work? Is the work getting done? Like, what are we talking about? Like, right, like I there what I recently read that your boss has a bigger impact on your mental health than your therapist and I was like, oh gosh, you know, right, right. So I think what we have gone, in my opinion, right, we've skewed to such a more toxic masculine leadership vibe that's very individualistic, very ego driven, very Elon Musk, steve Jobs, you know, mark Zuckerberg type celebration of that type of leadership for so long that the humanity is gone. Maybe the humanity was never there, right? And then, during the pandemic, was this was the opportunity? I thought a lot of companies would be like, all right, now we're gonna care about change things up.
Jeff Harry:You know this is our joke. And instead they just got worse and I'm like where's the humanity, where's the compassion, where's the empathy? You know, I I do a talk all over the four called the four-day work week. You know why the four-day work we could like solve so many of problems? Because I'm like people are not doing eight hours of work, man, they can't even focus for four to six hours.
Jeff Harry:We haven't even addressed the fact that a lot of people have not recovered from that crazy time. They were just there two years ago. There's so much pain and animosity from an employee side that employers don't even get, and I'm speaking at 30 HR conferences this year and speaking to so many employers that are like you know, if we just do this one thing, everyone's going to turn around, you know, and then people are going to be back and you're like I don't think you get it, like I don't think you know how angry employees are right now and how exploited, used and taken advantage of they feel like Play, I feel like in the corporate sense gets looked at as like oh, let's do a team building.
Jeff Harry:Yeah.
Dana Dowdell:You know like let's do a quarterly team building thing. So what does play look like at work?
Jeff Harry:Yeah. So I hate forced fun. You know you put Samantha in a room with Chad and they hate each other. And you put them in an escape room and then you're like, all right, now play. They're going to hate each other afterwards Like it's not going. Bowling, you know many times, is not going to heal the workplace, right?
Jeff Harry:So when I talk about play, I talk about play is any joyful act where you forget about time, right, it's where you're fully in the moments, where you're in your zone of genius, and I also talk about how play is the opposite of perfection. Perfection is rooted in ego and shame and constantly trying to be right, while play is rooted in experimentation, a sense of wonder and awe. Right, and Stephen Johnson used to always talk about how you'll find the future where people are having the most fun. So if you want an argument for why you need to play more at work, innovation and creativity are built off of it right. Even Google back in the day, they had the Google 20% rule, where they would give their staff 20% of their time to do whatever they wanted, as long as it benefited Google, and that was five hours a week, right. And what came from that? Gmail, adsense, google News, google Maps, the foundation of Google came from play. So when I talk about play in the workplace, I talk about like what is your staff's zone of genius? What's the work where they forget about time? How do we give them just a little bit more of that work? How do we give them freedom to solve problems on their own, to give them a certain level of autonomy to figure it out, rather than like we got to do it in this way and only in this way? When you give them a playground where they can fail, they're more likely to do innovative, creative things that actually not only will help your company but might save your company, rather than you doing it the regular, standard way.
Jeff Harry:I'll give you a great example. During covid um Washington Post, there was a guy on the Washington Post who was like hey, let me take over the tiktok channel. We're not using it, it's the Washington Post, let me just mess around on there. And by him just making ridiculous videos that were informing the public about what was going on during the pandemic, Gen Z was most recognized newspaper was Washington Post because of this one dude. Right, look it up, don't believe me. Right, same thing with the Buffalo Bills. They did a bunch of. They gave these two guys like a whole floor and they were like, do whatever you want, just have fun with it, and they, they all of a sudden they had so many more fans. So when you allow for play Milwaukee public library, why do I know about the Milwaukee public library, nerdy librarians showing you what it is to be a librarian in Milwaukee? Why did all their recruitment go up? Why do all? Why did their patronage go up? Go up Allowing their people to play and it benefits people, profitability, productivity and just pride in the organization.
Dana Dowdell:Can we talk about the messaging in giving direction to play, because this idea of here's our TikTok, have at it.
Jeff Harry:Yeah, yeah, yeah. Here's our TikTok. Have at it, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Dana Dowdell:And I think sometimes and I'm reflecting a little bit is like giving direction with an outcome. Yeah, like, here's the plan, you figure out how to get there. That's not necessarily play Right.
Jeff Harry:Oh no, it can be, you know, because you're creating rules, right, you're giving a playground with rules, right, you're giving a playground. It's just think about recess right, there were rules, there were boundaries, you know. And I think what usually happens is compliance is like well, I don't know if we can approve that, or I don't know if we can aprove that, and it's just like well, then you're also crushing a certain level of innovation, right? So this is where you have to allow for some mistakes to potentially be made, and also, with anything let's say we're talking about TikTok they always can get approved by somebody else before they go out, right?
Jeff Harry:But I think the idea of playing more at work is more this idea of how do you ensure your staff feel seen, heard, appreciated and valued. That's a great way to do it. There's other ways, right. Recognize your staff's language of appreciation, figure out what their zone of genius is.
Jeff Harry:There's many other ways to do it, but when you see a manager being like all right, I know we have a certain project. We've always tried it this way. I'm going to give you the freedom to do it a different way and let's just see what happens. It allows for people to be like, ooh, can I show a little bit more of me Not that whole be your full, authentic self BS that we talk about, but, honestly, can I do something that I never thought I could do at work, type of thing that can help the organization out? That's when people actually feel more engaged. But usually you go to work and you're just like I'm just going to be a shell of myself and just get through the day, and that's currently what is happening in most workforces with, I think Gallup said 86% of people are disengaged at work, so clearly we're messing up right now.
Dana Dowdell:It's an interesting idea too, because I feel like sometimes when we say, okay, play at work, it's. Let's get a ping pong table in the lobby. And you know, but that's not what you're saying it's. It's that ability to Create a space for people to think outside of their daily tasks.
Jeff Harry:Yeah.
Dana Dowdell:That may and maybe it doesn't always have to have a work related outcome to it.
Jeff Harry:Yeah, and and the thing you have to remember as well well, when you're like, okay, what is your zone of genius right? What's your flow work? That's what I talk about, the work where you forget about time, that's their play. So can we help them? Just do a little bit more of that? And studies find positive psychology studies find that you're five times more productive when you're allowed to do your zone of genius work to start the day, because then all of your other work, um, is more productive, because you feel like, oh, I could be a little bit more of myself at work yeah, what?
Dana Dowdell:how do we incorporate play? Or can you give some examples of play that does not have a work outcome tied to it, where it's like here's a project, let's figure out how to do it?
Jeff Harry:Um, where it doesn't have a time. That's so interesting because most of the time it's like it must be tied right. You know, I'm just it has to be um, like I.
Dana Dowdell:I don't know if this would be one, but like one of uh, one of my clients is a medical office, and so one of our I guess it is still a work outcome, but one of our medical receptionists created these like figurines for the doctors. And that's what goes on their desks, and I think she changes them out for like seasonality. I love that right.
Jeff Harry:Again, it's allowing for a certain level of creativity, I think of meetings, right? Well, first of all, let's just be honest. Right, let's cancel meetings. Let's cancel like half our meetings. Like a meeting at 4 pm on a Friday when that gets canceled, it's the greatest thing on earth, right? So how do we change up our meetings? Let's say we're talking about brainstorming meetings.
Jeff Harry:You get into a box building, in a box room around a box table and then you're like we should think outside the box everybody. Okay, fine, leave the building, go get ice cream while you're having your meeting. Just break the method. I was just telling someone the other day. They were like how do we do this? If we're on Zoom, everyone bring their favorite food and you're just going to eat your favorite food for the first 10 minutes and talk about it and then start your meeting. Just like break the mold of what doesn't work. If it's boring or you've been doing it for a really long period of time and none of you like it, ask yourself, why are we doing it this way? Let's just like break what we think is work.
Dana Dowdell:Yeah, okay, so you have this claim. I think that Maslow's hierarchy of needs is wrong.
Jeff Harry:Yeah, so it's. Some people can interpret it as wrong, some people can interpret it as misinterpreted. So a lot of people don't know that Maslow hung out with the Blackfoot Nation tribe in Canada and he borrowed the hierarchy from them. But in many ways people say he misinterpreted it, because when you look at the Blackfoot hierarchy of needs first of all its not a triangle, it's actually a teepee and it's all connected, meaning you can be all three levels at the same time all the time. So it's much more complex. And then self-actualization. Maslow's like self-actualization very much at the top. Blackfoot Nation hierarchy of needs. It's at the bottom. So the whole idea of like, okay, self-actualization, how do I show up as myself? How do I know who I am? And then how do I contribute to the world? Right, so that's at the bottom. Community actualization is in the middle of their hierarchy of needs. What's community actualization? How do we show up as a community? How do we show up for each other?
Jeff Harry:In Native American tribes poverty didn't exist, meaning one person couldn't be in poverty, because everyone then would be in poverty so if someone was suffering from something like depression, the community would come to that person and be like what do you need? Do you need us to plow your land? Do you need us to take care of your kid? Like we as a group would go and help you out, rather than be like here's a pill, you're good, you know, right, like the community looks out for one another, so that's community actualization.
Jeff Harry:And then this is the best thing at the very top and this is why a lot of Westerners right, a lot of Westerners, a lot of people, especially men, have midlife crises is at the very top is something called cultural perpetuity, and what it means is breath of life. So your life, your 80 to 100 years, is not very significant. It just isn't In the greatest scheme of things, it just is not. But at the same time, you are also the main connection between your ancestors and your descendants. You are the link, so you get to breathe whatever is given to you by your ancestors and you get to breathe out whatever you believe needs to be passed on to your descendants, so you can stop historical trauma, generational trauma, you can take certain successes and pass those along.
Jeff Harry:So because of all of that, you don't think of yourself as just in this life and you don't think about trying to make a legacy in this life, because you know you're part of something much bigger than you. And what's interesting is, when a lot of people follow Maslow's hierarchy needs, they get to the top and then they're still miserable and they're like what happened. I don't understand this. I'm rich, I have the positions of power. I'm now putting my name on all these buildings. Who cares? It's dissatisfying because they're not thinking about the larger connection they have to both their ancestors and their descendants.
Dana Dowdell:Okay, okay, I'm, I'm convinced. I was like Maslow's hierarchy of needs is wrong. What?
Jeff Harry:Or incomplete. How about we just say that sure, complete sure, sure.
Dana Dowdell:I think that's fair. I think that's fair. So, um, talk to us about the physiology of play, like you know what happens to our brains when we're in a state of play, yeah, and, and how that flows through to work productivity so I I run this workshop where we have people like think back on what they love to do as a kid.
Jeff Harry:Ooh, we can even do it here if you want. It's super fun. But then I have them share stories with each other about that type of play and people get really excited and what happens chemically is you drum up a certain certain amount of dopamine not that fake dopamine that you're doom scrolling, but like real dopamine when you're like celebrating a win or you know eating something really good, right, and then you drum up also a certain level of oxytocin, the same feeling you get when you're like holding a baby or hanging out with a pet, right, um, and then there even is sometimes, depending on what type of play you're doing you could drum up a certain level of serotonin which is like a mood stabilizer. It actually calms you down. You get this when you're running, you get this when you meditate, you get this when you're in flow, and then you also get a certain amount of endorphins. That's the painkiller. And that painkiller you get when you laugh, and anytime you get anyone to laugh, you actually are taking pain away from them. Another way to take pain away is to cancel meetings. So I don't know if that's another option. We really should be considering that. But yeah, dopamine, oxytocin, serotonin, endorphins the dose, as I think Radha Agarwal came up with, is really important.
Jeff Harry:In addition to that, you build a certain level of bonding with someone else.
Jeff Harry:So say, for example I don't know if you watched Ted Lasso, he did this a lot with his staff.
Jeff Harry:But there's a certain level of attunement that happens between people when you play, and attunement's the first way you play as a baby, where your parent or your guardian holds you up and your eyes lock and your brainwaves match identically. It's one of the only times in your whole life that this happens and you feel seen, heard, appreciated, valued, loved. All these things are happening without any words being said and many of us then search for that level of attunement for the rest of our lives and our friendships and our relationships at work. So you can feel when there's a certain attunement with a team. You can feel when a meeting is attuned, when a project is attuned and we're connecting with one another. So, whatever we can do to focus on that and take steps to make sure, what am I doing, to make sure my staff feel seen, heard and appreciated, so that I can be attuned with them dramatically helps with communication even if you're not talking right Like nonverbal communication through attunement.
Dana Dowdell:All right, I don't consider myself a creative person and I don't know that. A lot of people go into HR because they have creative tendencies and that's the primary listenership. So how do we, as people who practice in HR or leadership, get creative in adding play to the workplace?
Jeff Harry:Yeah, so it's interesting. So play is whatever you do, where you forget about time. I can't emphasize this enough because a lot of people are like, well, I don't play Right. And I was talking to a lawyer once that I was coaching and she was like I don't ever play. And I was like, ok, well, what do you do? And she goes. Well, I take people that hate each other and I get them to agree on one thing, like that's what I like doing. And I was like that's your play.
Jeff Harry:So I think we have to break the bonds of what's creative and what's not creative. As an HR person, being able to solve a dispute between two people is very difficult. Being able to creatively figure out a benefit package for a certain person or help them with FMLA and be quite creative, even if you don't consider it creative or innovative. So I think we have to let go of that and be like okay, what's the work where you forget about time? What's the work you love to do most? What's the work that and I know this is crazy to say the work that you do, even if you weren't getting paid to do it what's that work? How do we do more of that work? How do you feel when you do that work?
Dana Dowdell:Because I bet you, if you double down on that, it would dramatically help the organization out and you'd enjoy going to work more um, I'm a I've mentioned it thousands of times probably in this podcast, but Dan Pink's motivation theory um autonomy, mastery and purpose, and I feel like that's very much like you know. You're giving people an opportunity to master something or explore something, autonomy to do it, and then it's connecting them to purpose, and it sounds like this concept of play is very much yeah, and you do that.
Jeff Harry:You do that naturally, like when you're at play, especially when you're them to purpose, and it sounds like this concept of play is very much aligned with that. You do that naturally when you're at play, especially when you were a kid. That's when you're most yourself.
Jeff Harry:And I think what's scary for a lot of people, especially in the workplace, is like well, I don't want to be myself at work, I don't want anyone to know who I actually am. I make a lot of TikTok videos and there's so many people that post on TikTok and they're like please let no one that actually knows me see this, because this is my side, so I get it play is vulnerable. Your workplace might not be ready for it yet. I don't want to force it upon organizations. I'm just saying if you provide the opportunity, you'd be amazed with what the results might be.
Jeff Harry:But before you can play, you really have to make sure that you've built the psychological safety and you've apologized for whatever discretions that organization might have made in the past. Before that, I have this whole make work suck less framework, and one of the first things I say is just like you need to listen to people and allow them to vent and validate and then apologize even if you didn't do anything, even if you weren't the one that arrived when you walked into all this drama. A great example of this is I was on like 100, 120 flights last year. I wrote a letter and gave chocolate to every flight that I was on Right and in the letter I go us passengers have been awful and I'm so sorry that we were that way, right?
Jeff Harry:I apologize, I didn't do anything, it wasn't on me, but just simply that the acknowledgement the for that we never acknowledged that, this happened and that the last few years have been really messed up, and really (Sorry) fucked up, its just been so bad, for so many people and we never apologise for that, we never acknowledged that then we rushed everyone back to work like nothing happened, like millions of people just didn't die, right, it's just.
Dana Dowdell:It's so inhumane I was about to say it's there's like no humanity to it.
Jeff Harry:There's no, and here's the crazy part, we're the only department that has human in the title, so why are we being asked to be inhumane at the most important position? A great example of this is Google. Google used to be called Don't Be Evil. I even bragged about Google earlier. I even bragged about Google earlier. There were stories of people. Specifically, there was this one guy who had worked at Google for over 15 years. He goes into work at 4 am to get a project done because he cares about his job right and his fob key doesn't work. And that's how he found out he got laid off.
Dana Dowdell:No.
Jeff Harry:In addition to hundreds of other people, never got to say goodbye to anyone. No goodbye gift or present or party. He just found out with his fob what that sounds. Evil. Google, like you know what I'm saying, right, you know? Or Sephora when they hit the 10 billion dollar mark, instead of sending out bonuses, their staff and stuff like that, they sent out a stale cookie that said 10b on it and they gave it to every staffer at sephora. That was how they celebrated like?
Dana Dowdell:I'm like is do you okay? Do you think it's HR's coming up with these ideas?
Jeff Harry:I don't know who's coming up, but I feel like it's on HR to be like that's not a good idea. Hi everybody, maybe we're not do that. Spotify hit 229 million subscribers right, highest profitability, all this stuff. They did four rounds of layoffs that same year, so they had people hit their marks, hit their metrics, and then they were like thank you. And it was like, well, I thought, when I hit my metrics, I'm rewarded. And they were like, yeah, and then they just laid people off. So what is going on? Sorry, I just have too many of these stories. The last one, Dollar Tree. This was in TikTok, John Oliver.
Dana Dowdell:Yeah, I watched it.
Jeff Harry:Do you want me to go? Do you want me to?
Dana Dowdell:say it Go for it. Yeah, go for it.
Jeff Harry:So Dollar Trees have been getting robbed because they're short-staffed. They only have one to two people there at a time. A Dollar Tree randomly I I think in the south got robbed. Person is held up by gunpoint with, maybe, I think, one other staffer, money's taken and then, of course, she calls her district manager off and she's like, yeah, we just got robbed. And the district manager's like are you okay? And yeah, yeah. And then the second thing the district manager was like so who's covering the coverage for tomorrow? I just want to get an idea of, like you know, coverage. Do I have to do that? Like what's going on? Ten minutes after a gun was in that person's face, they're asking about coverage.
Dana Dowdell:Like what happened, do you think? Do you think we've tasked managers with too much too like task managers with too much productivity metrics? Um, things that, like the ability to take a step back and look at the humans is yes, yeah, absolutely.
Jeff Harry:I think I think we've tasked managers too much. I think we've burnt out staff long time ago and we never have talked about it. Like I think we've gaslighted a lot of staff by being like, oh, you're burnt out, maybe you should go to therapy. And you're like no, it's my workload.
Jeff Harry:I was just talking to a nurse yesterday on a flight and she was just like I'm doing the job of two or three people, like you know. And then I'm like well, how do you want to feel seen, heard and appreciated? And she's like I just want more staff, so like I can go home and hang out with my kid. You know, like it's basic stuff, right. And, and I think also there's so much put on HR when you watch a lot of organization I'm talking about just fortune 500 companies right now that are they're very profitable and with those profits, what have they done? They've laid off staff, bought back stock, rewarded investors and themselves, and then they do that again and they keep doing that over and over again at the detriment of their employees. So like it's really hard for HR to hold all that back right, because they were supposed to tell their staff like, hey, if you work really hard and you do the things that we ask you to do, you're going to get rewarded, and that just wasn't true.
Jeff Harry:And that's where we really have to ask ourselves okay, where are our actual values? Because on the flip side of Sephora and the $10 billion stale cookie look it up or whatever $2 billion, whatever number it was when Spanx went public, their CEO gave away first-class tickets, tickets and ten thousand dollar bonuses to all their staff, not including their usual bonus. Just like I have extra money here you go right, you know. So there are ways to actually treat your staff with respect. We just have to ask ourselves what is our goal? Are we Walmart, where we exploit our staff and charge the least amount of money so that we can make the most amount of money? Or are we more like Costco, where we're going to pay our staff a little bit more because we think if we invest in our staff, we'll actually do better financially?
Jeff Harry:Right, we just got to decide who we are in that organization. Like, what's our people strategy? Yep, yeah, it's not even our people show. Are we humane or not? And then you as an HR person have to decide whether you want to stay there. Sure, because when you say people strategy, then all of a sudden it gets back into the language of HR. That separates you from the human aspect of it.
Dana Dowdell:Oh my God, All right. Where can people find you?
Jeff Harry:Oh man, this was so much fun.
Dana Dowdell:It flies by right.
Jeff Harry:It flies by. Oh my gosh. They can find me at rediscoveryourplaycom. You simply click on the let's play button and we can nerd out and we can figure out how to make work suck less for your staff. Or you can see me mock the workplace on all my social media accounts. I'm on TikTok, instagram, linkedin, youtube, all of them at at Jeff Harry plays J, e, f, f, h, a, r, r, y, p, l, l A Y.
Dana Dowdell:S Amazing. As always, we will make sure all of the places to find Jeff are in the show notes and hopefully there's photos of you in the bow tie so that way people can see it, because it's quite amazing. I love it, jeff. Thank you so much for being on quirky HR.
Jeff Harry:This was super fun. Thanks so much for having me.