Ferraro Foods

For years, HR has talked about earning a seat at the table. That conversation is over. Most of us have the seat. The question now is what we do with it.

The seat was never the point. A chair in the executive meeting doesn't make HR strategic, and neither does adding "business partner" to a title. Being strategic means understanding the business well enough to influence decisions, challenge leaders when necessary, and recognize when the right answer and the easy answer are not the same thing.

I work in a fast-paced, multi-location distribution business. Our employees are drivers, warehouse associates, salespeople, buyers, customer service representatives, managers, and executives. Each group faces different challenges, and many decisions can't wait for a scheduled meeting or a lengthy HR process.

That environment has shaped my philosophy: HR should create structure without creating bureaucracy.

Get Off the Carpet and Onto the Concrete

One of the most valuable things an HR leader can do is learn how the company actually operates.

Walk the warehouse. Ride along with a driver. Listen to sales reps. Understand why Operations needs a decision today instead of next week. Learn what happens when a position stays vacant, when a manager ignores performance issues or rushes a termination, and when a process designed at corporate doesn't work at a specific location.

Companies sometimes change policies before they understand the true impact on employees. We once changed our holiday work schedule, sent out a memo, and assumed everyone understood it. A few days after the holiday, a sidebar conversation with a warehouse employee showed me that employees weren't even sure whether they had lost their holiday pay.

So, I kept asking questions.

After talking with more warehouse employees and hearing where the communication had broken down, it became clear this wasn't one confused employee. The same communication gap had affected multiple locations.

That's the kind of thing you don't always see from behind a desk.

You can't effectively advise the business if you only understand the HR side of the equation. You have to understand how a decision actually lands with the people expected to carry it out.

But being close to the operation doesn't mean always agreeing with it. Sometimes HR has to be the one who says, "I understand why you want to do this, but we can't do it this way."

That's where credibility matters, and it's much easier to earn when people have seen you on the concrete.

Consistency Matters More Than the Policy

An organization can write excellent policies and still have serious employee-relations problems. Employees experience the company through their managers, not through the employee handbook.

If one manager documents performance issues, another ignores them, and a third wants to terminate immediately, the organization doesn't have a consistent performance-management process, whatever the policy says. The same is true for attendance, conduct, safety, pay decisions, and communication.

That's why one of HR's most important jobs is making manager accountability the norm. Before approving a significant employment decision, I ask five questions:

1. What happened?

2. What documentation exists?

3. How have we handled similar situations?

4. Was the employee given clear expectations?

5. Would we make the same decision if the employee, manager, or location were different?

The last question matters most. Asking these questions protects the organization and creates fairness for employees.

Employee Advocacy and Business Advocacy Are Not Opposites

There's a common assumption that HR has to choose between advocating for employees and protecting the business. I don't believe those goals conflict.

Some of the best business decisions happen when HR asks how a decision will land with employees. And advocating for employees doesn't mean avoiding hard conversations, discipline, or termination.

During a site closure, I slowed the business down before severance packages went out. The packages were being auto-populated from a spreadsheet, but the process wasn't accounting for individual employment factors that should have shaped them.

Learning your job is being eliminated because a site is closing is hard enough. Learning your severance package isn't what you expected because someone missed a line in a spreadsheet is something else entirely.

Taking the extra time wasn't HR getting in the way of the business. It was HR doing its job. We corrected the packages before they reached employees, protected people from an unfair outcome, and protected the company from the trust and potential legal fallout that could have followed.

Employees deserve clear expectations and consistent treatment. Businesses deserve accountability and performance. Good HR protects both.

That balance gets harder as a company grows or changes quickly. Processes that work at one location can break when they're stretched across several sites, leaders, and employee groups. HR has to recognize when more structure is needed without allowing the structure itself to become the obstacle.

Listen for the Small Things

Some of the most valuable information I get doesn't come from a report or a dashboard. It comes from conversations.

Employees will tell you where processes are breaking. Managers will tell you where they're struggling. Turnover, engagement surveys, investigations, exit interviews, payroll issues, and seemingly minor complaints can reveal patterns long before they become major problems.

A single complaint may be an isolated issue. The same complaint across three locations is information.

One manager struggling with documentation may need coaching. Ten managers struggling with documentation means the organization needs a better process.

We saw this with a centralized recruiting team supporting multiple sites. One issue kept surfacing: backfills weren't arriving consistently or quickly enough. The immediate solution was often temporary labor, but that's expensive in a business where employees create value by knowing their operation and their customers in granular detail.

“That's where HR adds value: when we move past solving the issue in front of us and start asking, ‘What is this telling us about the organization?’”

The recruiting team wasn't the problem. The process was.

We were recruiting reactively and waiting for someone to leave before starting the process to replace them. Once we recognized the pattern, we flipped the model. Instead of waiting for vacancies, we began forecasting headcount needs using seasonality and turnover trends so recruiting could get ahead of anticipated openings.

The individual complaints pointed us toward a much bigger opportunity.

That's where HR adds value: when we move past solving the issue in front of us and start asking, "What is this telling us about the organization?"

Be Willing to Be Uncomfortable

HR is often the least popular person in the room.

You may need to slow down a termination, challenge an executive, or push back on an inconsistent decision. You may need to tell a manager their documentation isn't enough, or admit that an HR process is creating unnecessary work for the operation.

That discomfort is part of the job. Our responsibility isn't to make every decision easy. It's to help the organization make better ones.

Back to the Concrete

The HR leaders who have the greatest impact won't be the ones who position themselves only as compliance experts, culture champions, or employee advocates. They'll be the ones who carry all of those responsibilities while understanding how the business makes money, serves customers, manages risk, and gets work done.

So, here's my challenge. This week, get off the carpet. Spend an hour on the concrete, wherever the concrete is in your business. Ask one frontline employee what slows them down, and one manager what they wish HR understood.

That's where the seat at the table gets earned, every day.