Porschia: [00:00:00] Today we are talking about human resources 101. Why are human resources important with Leilani Quiray? Leilani Quiray is founder and CEO of Be The Change HR, a conscious company and social enterprise providing HR support for small to medium sized businesses. In any facet of HR from pre hire to post term and everything else that happens in between.
She and her team also teach free job readiness courses and provide free coaching to trafficking survivors. Her team members are not only HR pros, they are life changers. I love that. Hi, Leilani. How are you
LeiLani: today? I’m doing so great. Thank you for having me on your podcast.
Porschia: Absolutely. I’m excited to have you with us to discuss human [00:01:00] resources 101.
Uh, but first we want to know a little bit more about you. Um, so tell me about seven year old Leilani.
LeiLani: Seven year old Leilani wanted to be an attorney. And although it is a far, it’s far from being an HR professional, it’s not so far. In some ways, you know, there’s this, this line that between an HR professional and an attorney that any HR pro knows when you step over it.
But at the same time, some of the mindset can be a little bit similar, but when I was little, I wanted to be an attorney. So that was definitely, um, something I thought, okay, I’m going to do this. And, and, and my family was encouraging me to do, I never, I didn’t become an attorney, but that was it.
Porschia: Yeah, yeah, and I can definitely see that, that connection and in what we do with coaching and consulting, um, you know, you can see the red flags, you can see where that’s a lawsuit, you know, from the, uh, kind of HR perspective, [00:02:00] um, and then there’s always employment law, right, which is, you know, All of those factors, I’ll say with compliance and things are happening the way they’re supposed to with the people in the business.
Um, so tell us Leilani, what was your first job? Oh,
LeiLani: um, when I was in high school, I was in a Spanish class and the teacher asked me if I wanted to be a host. at the restaurant. And so that was my very first job. Um, a small Mexican restaurant in Southern California. Uh, and, and I kind of liked that, but not, not a whole lot.
Um, where my career really comes into play is. My second job. So my second job was the next door neighbor who owned a construction company and wanted to know if I wanted to work after school in the office. And I was like, I don’t want to work in food service [00:03:00] anymore. I want to do this thing. And so after school, a couple of days a week, um, I would go to this construction office and help with the accounting and the payroll.
And therein starts the, you know, sort of Uh, soiree into human resources with the entry point being payroll for a construction company. So that, that one was the one where I was like, okay, I didn’t know it at the time. Of course, I didn’t know it. I just kind of, I say I grew up HR. I just fell into it and always kept a role in HR.
Porschia: Yeah. Yeah. Very cool. Very cool. So you were getting a lot of business experience early on, uh, you know, being in the office and dealing with payroll. I think a lot of aspects that business owners, you know, when they become a business owner, they don’t even think about and you already had all of that background.
So that’s great.
LeiLani: On top of that, there was a CPA that would pay me 20 cash under the table. This is in the nineties. That’s a lot of money, but he wouldn’t pay me [00:04:00] cash to, to, um, enter in information to QuickBooks for taxes. So between those two, here’s how it starts. My mom was like, I wanted more clothes than I had.
And I only had a 200 budget every year for my clothes for the entire year. And so I was like, well, I’m, I need, she’s like, get a job. And I was like, fine. So this is why I got a job because I wanted to have more money to do the things I want to do, which at the time was shopping, maybe not a whole lot has changed since then.
I still really love shopping, but, um, being able to have jobs like that, where I had no idea what type of skill I was learning. so early on, but from bookkeeping to taxes to payroll, it was just the start of my career. Now fast forward. When I started the business, I went back to that same person and said, Hey, can you do my books?
Cause he had a bookkeeping company all these years later. And he says to me, no. You need to do it yourself. And I know you know how to do it. And I was like, that’s [00:05:00] true. All these years, part of the foundation of career was, you know, working in QuickBooks. So very helpful, not exciting, but very helpful.
Porschia: Yeah.
Yeah. And that’s that whole full circle moment. Um, so tell us Leilani about some highlights or pivotal moments in your career before you started your business.
LeiLani: Yeah, that would be, I feel like the, the true entrepreneurial journey that I’ve started businesses before this. And there’s a, there’s a bit of a timeline in my twenties, um, by the time I got to college, I was running payroll, multi state organization on that old system called Kronos and thousands of employees.
And, you know, when I was finished with that, I was starting to work mainly in human resources departments of one very early on. It was, it was never in, you know, going into a larger [00:06:00] organization that had a large HR department. It was like, well, I did payroll and some of you folks out there know if you’re in accounting and payroll.
It’s a natural like pull to human race because they’ll ask you the questions. That’s the problem. The paychecks questions become the HR questions. Um, and it was a natural draw into that. So it was always in a organization that was a department of one and that everyone knows when you’re thrown. Into a situation like that, you learn really quickly how to do something because you have to, because you’re the only one.
And so by the time I was 25, I thought it was a great idea to start my first HR consulting firm. I called it L HR solutions. I didn’t tell anyone at the time that I named it after Elle Woods and legally blonde. I thought it was super cute. I love the story. Um, and I had that business for about nine months.
And then it failed. And then during that time, and this is such a integral part of like my life story and why I have a social impact organization during that time, and I won’t go into the gory [00:07:00] details, but for a handful of years hit rock bottom and it was a very dark place. So when I came out of that and I knew I was.
Emotionally and mentally and financially healthy enough of this climb out of this hole, I knew I’m going to help people who’ve been in similar situations to me find healthy, gainful employment. So in my late 20s, I ended up. Doing job readiness, workplace readiness, non profit work through non profits in Southern California called Working Wardrobes and WHW.
And what those orgs do is prepare someone to enter into the workforce by teaching them how to search for a job, how to write a resume. And as an HR professional, it was a natural step for me to coach that. I mean, that stuff is like, you know, you know, super, super easy. So, um, these pieces of starting my first business, you know, having a really dark, difficult time climbing my way out of that, having it be the service that I give the [00:08:00] world of helping mainly women find healthy, gainful employment through those types of skills, um, was really like markers in my career.
I continue to climb the corporate ladder and I continue to head down the path of a human resources professional. Turned executive. And then one day I woke up, I had a bad year, wasn’t my worst, but I had a bad year and I thought, why am I doing this for other people? This means human resources, like giving my blood, sweat, and tears to other organizations that aren’t value aligned.
And, and why do I have to. Beg and feel guilty about wanting to do my volunteerism. And so that was the birth of Be the Change HR, doing human resources and philanthropy really under one roof so I could live out my purpose of those two specific things.
Porschia: Wow. Um, you’ve got a very powerful story, Leilani, which I’m sure you know.
Um, one similarity that we have is I started this [00:09:00] business at 25 as well. So I, I was another crazy 25 year old thinking, you know what, I’m going to do this business thing. Um, and it’s just, It’s nice to see that natural progression in your career, um, which it sounds like back full circle to kind of where you are now.
Um, so, uh, when you think about human resources, we hear that you’ve kind of been in it forever. It sounds like, but yeah. When you decided to start Be the Change, um, HR, was there, you know, any other job idea, maybe, or business idea, I should say, that you thought about, um, or was it just like, nope, I’m gonna focus on
LeiLani: HR?
It’s, it’s almost always been human resources. There was a small period of time, late 20s, early 30s, I thought maybe I wanted to do PR or interior design. Um, but it was such a, it was one of those, like, do I want to continue a career in this? Or should I explore other things and [00:10:00] the answer was like very quickly, no, I really enjoyed human resources and I’ve been lucky enough to have this career long enough to see the progression of it.
Right. When I started it was a personnel department, that’s what we called it, you know, and it was a cost center and it was a burden and it was all these things. And if we fast forward to today and, and, and thank goodness. It’s becoming an integral piece of the business, a business partner, someone with the seat at the C suite level, because the humans we have in our businesses are so important in their whole person and they should be taken care of, not just an employee in an organization.
And so it, I, I’m very fortunate to always have been in this career. Um, and I’ve got to see it really evolve into something better than it has been in the past.
Porschia: Yeah. Yeah. Um, it’s, it’s, I love how you kind of made that connection and you’re right. It used to be the personnel [00:11:00] department and now it’s HR or even some companies call it the people department, you know, just so much.
And, and people really seeing the value in HR, um, to your point. And then the strategic value of it, like you’re mentioning at the executive level and like strategic human capital management and what that looks like. Um, So, how would you describe a typical HR department, Leilani?
LeiLani: It depends on, you know, what the organization looks like, of course, but I’ll start with when you have an HR department of one, right?
There’s always some point, we like these magic numbers, so every, you know, one HR professional at every 50, or maybe one to 100. When we get higher than that, I hear that there’s no human resource, I’m like, somebody’s doing it. Like, there’s no way nobody’s doing this. Um, and that person typically at that level would be what we would call a generalist.
So someone who is a, [00:12:00] uh, a Jack or Jill of all trades who can handle anything in, in the world of human resources. And then once an organization. And again, if we do the 1 to 50, 1 to 100 ratio, you start to figure out as an org, um, strategically and what the business’s objectives are and where it’s headed, right?
The goals in the next, you know, couple of years, 5 years, 10 years, what should your HR department look like? If your business has more than one vertical and you have this product here and this thing over here. Maybe looking at HR business partners makes sense, right? So an HR generalist or something like that, or a manager, you want to call it a director VP, like can be, um, either of those.
And then you’ll have more of an executive at the top overseeing these two individuals or several individuals that are. Being partners with those pieces of the business. Other ways we see is having people who are specialists. So if you know, you’ve got an HR generalist, um, maybe they’re supporting the whole org or [00:13:00] region, and then you have specialists based again on what the business really needs.
Sometimes there’s benefit specialists, right? Who handle all the fails things for the employees. Um, it’s just really evaluating, okay, what does the org need on the people aspect and who do we need to bring in to support that?
Porschia: Yeah, I love it. I love it. Um, so one thing I have seen a lot and I think it’s just kind of like to that progression of H.
- that you were talking about earlier is a lot of companies and organizations breaking out learning and development from H. R. kind of making it more of its own, um, you know, department or vertical. What are your thoughts on that?
LeiLani: I mean, that makes a ton of sense. Anytime in an organization, I know you know this so well, anytime in an organization, like something’s going awry or there’s something that needs to be a skill gap, any of that, it’s always like training, right?
Up leveling the employees of [00:14:00] the leadership, making sure that everyone has those resources and In that skill or in leadership or the coaching, all of these things need to be put in place. And so that is one we see quite regularly is an L and D, a learning and development department. Yeah, it’s important.
Not everybody knows everything. And you, you, these businesses have these goals. And so it’s like, well, what’s the gap and how do we fill them? Almost always it’s like coaching and training almost
Porschia: always. Yeah. Yeah, it’s funny. I was talking to, um, an executive, uh, the other day, and he’s got well over 30 years of experience, and he said exactly what you just told me.
He said, in all the industries I’ve been in, all the companies I’ve gone in to fix, Usually the number one thing that they need is training. So, um, yeah, yeah, he made that same kind of point. So, um, you know, as we were kind of looking into, you know, questions about human resources and what like business owners and executives want to know, um, we actually came [00:15:00] to this kind of what I think is a basic question, but I would love an expert like you to answer it for us.
Um, why do you think human resources are important?
LeiLani: Yes. Two, two big reasons. One is the one I think that might keep business, probably does keep business owners and leaders up at night. And that’s that compliance regulation piece. No business owner, unless you’re an HR professional running a company, but even I don’t know everything.
Um, when it comes to the specifics in federal law and state law and county law and city law. And these things are constantly changing. And just, just, I mean, I can even feel it in my own body, like, even saying that is stressful because no leader or business owner has the time to stay on top of those types of things, especially if you’re in states that are constantly changing and adding on [00:16:00] new laws like California and New York and Washington.
And so it’s, it’s so tough. And so this compliance piece of, are we doing things properly? By the law, and let’s be honest, these laws exist also to protect workers because somebody somewhere did something that disadvantaged someone in some way, and these laws have to exist. And I often position it that way.
People feel annoyed. Oh, there’s, I have to put my, the salary now on the job posting. It’s like, well, why were you hiding it in the first? The whole reason that these things are existing is in order to create pay equity in the marketplace and not to base it. I’ll just give one example on what someone made in the last job, right?
It shouldn’t be based on that. It’d be based on the person’s ability, what they’re budgeting for the role, what’s competitive in the market. And so, um, these little things, it’s important to have human resources to understand the many facets of all of these [00:17:00] like regulations and laws that are out there on all those levels.
And then the other piece is the strategy, right? Aside from the law, we’ve got, um, the strategy and I’ll make a big umbrella. How do we create a happy, healthy workforce? Right and that translates to so many different things. How do we make sure we take care of a whole person in our organization and make it a great working environment and keep make sure they’re engaged.
And yes, this translates to, you know, higher productivity. Lower turnover, the things that will make and save companies, uh, money, save money and profits, but it’s not the, the, the first reason, right? You don’t do it because you’re trying to make more money you do because it’s the right thing to do. And so these strategies will come into play in the entire employee life cycle from being an employer of choice and what that might mean for your organization.
And are you there? Do you have some gaps? Do you have a lot of work to do? Do you need everybody in leadership to [00:18:00] be with a coach and a therapist because it’s that bad, you know what I mean? Like there’s all these things. And then into the life cycle of how do you reward your employees and how do you take care of them even at exit and, and all of these, these strategies that will go into play and so human resources, a great HR professional.
Can do both and balance both and make sure that they’re both at the forefront in taking care of an organization and its people. I
Porschia: love that. I love that the compliance and regulation part, and then also the strategy, uh, part of, you know, dealing with the people in your workforce. Um, so Leilani from your perspective, what are some of the biggest challenges you’ve seen business owners and executives have with human resources in their
LeiLani: companies?
Ooh. Well, we just look at the last handful of years and everything that’s been happening. , Uhhuh, right? The
Porschia: news, right? It’s all over the news.
LeiLani: HR people are tired. I mean, we all are. Let’s be [00:19:00] honest. We all are. Um, there’s so much going on in the world, stuff that indirectly and directly has to do with businesses.
Um, that is it, that it breaks the heart, to be honest. It’s a lot. Um, and so it, you know, HR professionals are at the forefront of that. A lot of us go into this work because we like people we do. I promise we do. Sometimes I get a bad rap, but we, we do. And I think it’s important to know that about HR professionals in business and that’s.
That is a difficult thing that they have to deal with. And, um, it’s a heavy burden to carry. And when the landscapes are constantly changing and the things that are happening are constantly changing, HR is the one that has to shift, whether it’s a new law, a new best practice, a new thing to focus on, like, you know, what’s come to the forefront, which it should have for a very long time is diversity, equity, inclusion, right?
It takes tragedy. To make sure that that is now [00:20:00] seen by employers of this is important to create a psychologically safe work environment where people, anyone feels like they belong. And then comes the diversity, right? Not the training first. It’s like, you got to have a safe work environment. So I think, I think that really speaks to it.
Yeah.
Porschia: Yeah. Um, so what are some tips that you would give a business owner or an executive if they wanted to enhance their HR
LeiLani: department? Oh, so many different ways. It depends on how large your HR department is. Um, if you don’t have a human resources professional and you need one, but you don’t need that full time person, it’s really helpful to go to a consulting firm.
That can help you on a, on a, on a light level of evaluating where your HR is, both compliance and strategy today and what gaps you might have and what you’re doing great is also important. Make sure that they praise you as well for all the stuff you’ve done well, but really, um, getting an idea when you’re a [00:21:00] smaller business, okay.
What do I need and what am I doing? Well, in order to make it to that next step. And of course, that next step is if you have professionals in house, um, in order to elevate that, make sure they have the tools and resources. There are so many out there that aren’t too expensive. Professional associations, like Sherm or Pyra, you know, subscriptions to things that will be less expensive than hiring an employment attorney that they can go get their answers from.
Um, but elevating HR staff with that and training and, and, and anything that they need to, like, be a better HR department. And then finally. As an executive, as a leader, as a business owner, really having that supportive mindset in general of human resources. Um, I would challenge anyone who, who heard the word HR and went, Oh, like to challenge them to really like, look at it for what I’m saying.
And for, you know, for how it really does help a business and changing the viewpoint. Which most people love [00:22:00] HR, but there’s this always every once in a while people are like, Oh no, HR is here, right? Changing that mindset to support the people that you have in your organization that are, that are holding up the humans that you have.
Porschia: Yeah. Yeah. I mean, just a lot of great points that you made there, Leilani. Um, one thing I see when we go into organizations and. I’m sure you’ve probably seen this as well. Um, so we go in and we’re talking about, you know, talent development, coaching, consulting, training, um, around, you know, what I call the people problems.
And sometimes people, uh, generally some executives think, you know, that’s the, the soft skills, the hand holding kind of stuff, you know, um, and they do sometimes think of like, You know, those aspects and HR as just like a cost center, you know, checking that that checkbox. Um, so I really liked what you [00:23:00] said about really being supportive.
of HR. Um, if you, you know, in your work come across an executive or a business owner who kind of has some of those thoughts, how do you approach it, uh, with them?
LeiLani: Oh, this is managing up and understanding your leader and figuring out the why behind that. Um, very early on. On in my career as a human resources professional, um, there were two things I had to learn.
One of them was not everything is black and white. Not everything is yes, you can. No, you cannot. There’s there’s so much gray area and leaders and business owners like to hear that instead of it being like, no, no, no, you’ll get sued. If you do that, it’s like, don’t take that Um, and, and I’m talking about the HR person.
It’s. Of course, our leaders need to work on being the best leader they can be, but there’s a way for us to like manage up and that’s one way. The other is, you know, we are talking to leaders and business owners, [00:24:00] so let’s talk what they care about. Not a hundred per, I’m not saying it’s all about the money, but I mean, I’m saying, you know, if you can go to them with these new programs and project an ROI.
Right. Or bring them metrics with numbers behind it. If we implement this program, I project we will reduce tone turnover by 10%. And here’s what that projection is. Cause you can find those numbers easily on the internet. How you, how you, um, uh, figure out how much it costs and turnover and present that to the team to show value in that business mindset, which also will help the HR professional continue to develop a skill outside of what we’re normally used to doing in human resources.
Um, and then again, leaders just need to work on being the best leader that they can be to support those in HR. Yeah,
Porschia: great. Great. So, um, another question for you, Leilani, what do you think is the connection between human resources and company culture? [00:25:00]
LeiLani: Yeah, um, company culture always exists, right? It’s always, always there human resources.
If it’s not already something that leadership in the business is focusing on, it’s really part of what they should be doing to identify and evaluate where the culture is at. At this point in time and where they want it to be, um, it could be a lot of really fun work to either work with a specialist that does this or do this themselves and that’s identify like core values and what are the values of an organization and how does that translate into the culture that they have now and the culture that they want.
And it can be a really, I mean I think it’s a really fun exercise to go into these things and figure out how do you measure that, how do you measure culture and engagement. And again, the fun part is the gap. If we’re here, how do we get here? And what things do we need to implement in that time period?
What leadership, you know, do we need to [00:26:00] kind of have buy in of the things that we’re going to do in order to get here to make a happier, healthier workforce? And so it should always be directly tied. Even if you’re an HR department of one, you could do it. And, and it could be a fulfilling aspect, aside from the regulatory stuff that you’re always having to pay attention to.
Porschia: Mm hmm. Yeah. So tell us more about Be the Change HR. Yeah.
LeiLani: Um, Be the Change HR is in its sixth year of business. Um, we’ve got almost a dozen human resources professionals across the U. S. In almost every single time zone, except Hawaii and, um, Alaska, but not opposed, especially Hawaii. Fun to have someone there.
Clients there, right? Um, we do human resources for small and mid market businesses. And what that looks like is, uh, either they outsource the entire HR function. To our HR professionals, or part of it, or we [00:27:00] run projects for midsize companies who have internal HR and maybe the VP needs more of a task force behind a project, or maybe the HR team is just new and they need that more executive level.
All the HR pros on this squad are. Uh, senior level professionals, 15, 20, even 30 years experience. And do we do have some specialists in comp, uh, policy and technical writing, diversity, equity, and inclusion. We even have a licensed counselor on staff. Um, and so we help, yeah, all businesses and all industries that are small and midsize.
And then the social impact piece, which I talked about a little bit earlier. Um, and, and. The beginning of where that came from. So myself and all the HR consultants on the team, we teach job readiness classes to trafficking survivors around the country, and we offer it to the nonprofits for free. So work with seven nonprofits across us at any given time we’re teaching class.
[00:28:00] In fact, tomorrow I’ll be traveling to Connecticut. To teach at partnership to end human trafficking at the home that they have there. Um, this month we’re doing resume writing. So we do these job readiness skills and then internally in the organization, all the HR professionals are paid for their time to do this work and sent through training in order to be prepared to be present for a trauma survivor.
A 2% of our top line revenue goes to this program. And it’s why we’re called be the change HR. Just
Porschia: amazing. Just amazing. Thank you. I love, you know, what you do and how your business is set up and, and really giving back. That’s, that’s just very admirable. Um, so we’ll be providing a link to your website and other social channels in our show notes so that people can find you online.
Um, but what is the best way for someone to get in touch with you?
LeiLani: Yeah, we are on every single social media channel at be the change HR. And then you’re welcome [00:29:00] to connect with me on LinkedIn. Come say hi in my
Porschia: DMS. All right. All right. Um, so Leilani, we like to ask every guest this last question. Um, how do you think executives or professionals can get a positive edge in their career?
I always
LeiLani: say the same thing. Um, And, and I, and I laugh at it. So true in order to get an edge to very specific things, always have a therapist and a coach work on yourself. Um, and, and those things that we all grow up with, um, that we, that can affect us, especially when we’re upset. So those triggers and then a coach to really elevate who you are as a leader, as a manager, as a business owner, to truly show up for your people and yourself.
So there are always therapists and a coach. Everyone needs both.
Porschia: I love [00:30:00] it. I love it. I agree. Thank you, Leilani. You have shared a lot of wisdom with us today, and I’m sure that our listeners can use it to be more confident in their careers and with their businesses. We appreciate you being with
LeiLani: us. Thank you so much for having me.
